This Day in History: December 2

1804 - Napoleon was crowned emperor of France at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris.


1816 - The first savings bank in the U.S., the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opened for business.

1859 - John Brown, a militant abolitionist, was hanged for his raid on Harper's Ferry the previous October.

1862 - Circus entrepreneur Charles Ringling was born.

1901 - Gillette patented the first disposable razor.

1917 - During World War I, hostilities were suspended on the eastern front.

1927 - The Ford Motor Company unveiled the Model A automobile. It was the successor to the Model T.

1939 - New York's La Guardia Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at 12:01 a.m.

1942 - A self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was demonstrated by Dr. Enrico Fermi and his staff at the University of Chicago.

1943 - "Carmen Jones" opened on Broadway.

1954 - The U.S. Senate voted to condemn Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy for what it called "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." The censure was related to McCarthy's controversial investigation of suspected communists in the U.S. government, military and civilian society.

1961 - Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared in a nationally broadcast speech that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that he was going to lead Cuba to communism.

1969 - The Boeing 747 jumbo jet got its first public preview as 191 people flew from Seattle, WA, to New York City, NY. Most of the passengers were reporters and photographers.

1970 - The Environmental Protection Agency began operating under its first director, William Ruckelshaus.

1982 - Doctors at the University of Utah implanted a permanent artificial heart in the chest of retired dentist Barney Clark. He lived 112 days with the device. The operation was the first of its kind.

1988 - Benazir Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister of Pakistan.

1990 - The Midwest section of the U.S. prepared for a massive earthquake predicted by Iben Browning. Nothing happened.

1991 - American hostage Joseph Cicippio was released by his kidnappers. He had been held captive in Lebanon for over five years.

1993 - Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar was shot to death by security forces in Medellin.

1993 - An unemployed man opened fire at an unemployment agency in Oxnard, CA. He killed three workers at the location and a police officer during a chase that ended in Ventura, where the man himself was gunned down.

1993 - The space shuttle Endeavor blasted off on a mission to fix the Hubble Space Telescope.

1994 - "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss was convicted in Los Angeles of three counts of pandering.

1994 - In Pensacola, FL, Paul Hill was given two life sentences for murdering a doctor and security guard outside an abortion clinic in July 1994.

1995 - NASA launched a U.S.-European observatory on a $1 billion dollar mission intended to study the sun.

1997 - U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno declined to seek an independent counsel investigation of telephone fund-raising by President Clinton and Vice President Gore. It was concluded that they had not violated election laws.

1998 - Microsoft Corp. chairman Bill Gates donated $100 million to help immunize children in developing countries.

1999 - The British government transferred political power over the province of Northern Ireland to a the Northern Ireland Executive.

2001 - Enron Corp. filed for Chapter 11 reorganization. The filing came five days after Dynegy walked away from a $8.4 billion buyout. It was the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.