TODAY IN HISTORY - DECEMBER 22

Today is Sunday December 22, 2013 the 356th day and 51st week of the 2013, there are only 9 days and one week left in the year.
 Highlights of today in history
1965 Nigeria: Nigeria Unity:  Balewa appeals for co-operation
The Prime Minister, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, appealed to all true patriot in Nigeria to co-operate with him in his onerous task of preserving Nigerian unity. He said that it has always been his policy  to regard all Nigerians as equal irrespective of their tribe and urged Nigerians  to suppress their tribal sentiments and come together in other to build for posterity, a united and prosperous nation.
The Prime Minister made the appeal at Arondizuogu while responding to an address of welcome presented to him by the Orlu and Arondizuogu communities.s
He thanked Dr. Kingsley Mbadiwe, Minister of Trade for all he had been doing for the nation and congratulated Orlu  people for producing a man like Mbadiwe , adding that if Nigeria had 200 people of Dr. Mbadiwe’s qualities his task of nation building would be less burdening.
 
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1894 France: Dreyfus affair begins in France
French officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason by a military court-martial and sentenced to life in prison for his alleged crime of passing military secrets to the Germans. The Jewish artillery captain, convicted on flimsy evidence in a highly irregular trial, began his life sentence on the notorious Devil's Island Prison in French Guyana four months later.
The Dreyfus case demonstrated the anti-Semitism permeating France's military and, because many praised the ruling, in France in general. Interest in the case lapsed until 1896, when evidence was disclosed that implicated French Major Ferdinand Esterhazy as the guilty party. The army attempted to suppress this information, but a national uproar ensued, and the military had no choice but to put Esterhazy on trial. A court-martial was held in January 1898, and Esterhazy was acquitted within an hour.
In response, the French novelist Émile Zola published an open letter entitled "J'Accuse" on the front page of the Aurore, which accused the judges of being under the thumb of the military. By the evening, 200,000 copies had been sold. One month later, Zola was sentenced to jail for libel but managed to escape to England. Meanwhile, out of the scandal a perilous national division was born, in which nationalists and members of the Catholic Church supported the military, while republicans, socialists, and advocates of religious freedom lined up to defend Dreyfus.
1900 Germany:  First "Mercedes" is delivered to its buyer
The first car to be produced under the "Mercedes" name was delivered to its buyer: Emil Jellinek, the Austrian car racer, auto dealer to the rich and famous, and bon vivant. Jellinek had commissioned the Mercedes car from the German company Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft. It was faster, lighter, and sleeker than any car the company had ever made before, and Jellinek was confident that it would win races so handily that besotted buyers would snap it up. (He was so confident that he bought 36 of them, paying D-M-G 550,000 marks in all.) In exchange for his extraordinary patronage, the company agreed to name its new machine after Jellinek's 11-year-old daughter, Mercedes.
In 1886, the German engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach had built one of the world's first "horseless carriages": literally, their vehicle was a four-wheeled carriage with an engine bolted to it. In 1889, the two men built the world's first four-wheeled automobile powered by a four-stroke engine. They formed Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft the next year.
In 1896, Emil Jellinek saw an ad for the D-M-G auto in a German magazine. Jellinek was a rich tobaccotrader and banker with a passion for fast (of course, "fast" was a relative term), flashy cars. As the story goes, Jellinek travelled to D-M-G's Cannstatt factory, charged onto the factory floor (wearing a pith helmet, pince-nez, mutton-chop sideburns and a luxurious moustache), and demanded the most spectacular car the company had. The first of his D-M-G cars was sturdy, but it could only go 15 miles per hour—not even close to fast enough for Jellinek.
1941 United States: Churchill and Roosevelt discuss war and peace
On this day, British Prime Minister Winston Churchillarrived in Washington, D.C.for a series of meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelton a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace.
Now that the United Stateswas directly involved in both the Pacific and European wars, it was incumbent upon both Great Britain and America to create and project a unified front. Toward that end, Churchill and Roosevelt created a combined general staff to coordinate military strategy against both Germany and Japan and to draft a future joint invasion of the Continent. Roosevelt also agreed to a radical increase in the U.S. arms production program: the 12,750 operational aircraft to be ready for service by the end of 1943 became 45,000; the proposed 15,450 tanks also became 45,000; and the number of machine guns to be manufactured almost doubled, to 500,000.
Among the momentous results of these U.S.-Anglo meetings was a declaration issued by Churchill and Roosevelt that enjoined 26 signatory nations to use all resources at their disposal to defeat the Axis powers and not sue for a separate peace. This confederation called itself the "United Nations." Lead by the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union, all 26 nations declared a unified goal to "ensure life, liberty, independence and religious freedom, and to preserve the rights of man and justice." The blueprint for the destruction of fascism and a future international peacekeeping organization was born.
 
 
1956 United States: First gorilla born in captivity
On this day in 1956, a baby gorilla named Colo enters the world at the Columbus Zoo in Ohio, becoming the first-ever gorilla born in captivity. Weighing in at approximately 4 pounds, Colo, a western lowland gorilla whose name was a combination of Columbus and Ohio, was the daughter of Millie and Mac, two gorillas captured in French Cameroon, Africa, who were brought to the Columbus Zoo in 1951. Before Colo's birth, gorillas found at zoos were caught in the wild, often by brutal means. In order to capture a gorilla when it was young and therefore still small enough to handle, hunters frequently had to kill the gorilla's parents and other family members.
Gorillas are peaceful, intelligent animals, native to Africa, who live in small groups led by one adult male, known as a silverback. There are three subspecies of gorilla: western lowland, eastern lowland and mountain. The subspecies are similar and the majority of gorillas in captivity are western lowland. Gorillas are vegetarians whose only natural enemy is the humans who hunt them. On average, a gorilla lives to 35 years in the wild and 50 years in captivity.
 
1960 Nigeria: alleged Tax Leakage: FG to inquire
The Prime Minister of Nigeria, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewaat its monthly Press conference held in Lagos expressed serious concern about allegations that the Government’s decision to increase import and excise duties on a number of imported goods, leaked to a section of importers before the announcement was madepublic.
The Prime Minister told the Pressmen that “he was looking into the matter and he would not hesitate to deal with whoever was responsible for the leakage and if he is completely satisfied that there was a leakage.
Whoever is the  Minister reported by a  section of the press to  have given out the information that there was a leakage.
Whoever initiated the rumour that there was a leakage, if he was satisfied that there was no such leakage and that the story was just fabricated to damage the reputation of his government”
And Prime Minister added: “I shall deal with it in a manner that such an irresponsible person will not indulge in such a rumour again.”
 
1971 United Nations: Waldheim elected U.N. Secretary-General
The United Nations General Assembly votes to ratify the U.N. Security Council's nomination of Austrian diplomat Kurt Waldheim to lead the U.N. Waldheim went on to serve two terms as head of the world body, leaving the post in 1982.
In 1986, during a campaign for the Austrian presidency, documents were uncovered revealing that he had served as an intelligence officer in German army units that had committed war atrocities in the Balkans during World War II.Waldheim, who had previously claimed that he spent much of the war in Vienna, admitted that he had lied about his wartime record but denied any knowledge of atrocities. He went on to win the Austria presidency despite the allegations but became an international pariah.
After the annexation of his country by Nazi Germanyin 1938, Waldheim was conscripted into the German army and served on the Russian front until 1941, when he was wounded. Waldheim claimed that he spent the rest of the war studying law in Vienna, but it is now known that he was an interpreter and intelligence officer for German army units stationed in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia and Greece from 1943 and 1945. Waldheim's units engaged in brutal reprisals against Yugoslav partisans and civilians and deported most of the Jewish population of Salonika, Greece, to Nazi death camps. There is no evidence that he personally killed, tortured, or deported anyone, but he did provide the logistical and intelligence support that enabled others to do so. He won praise and promotion from his Nazi superiors, and evidence indicates that on one occasion he ordered a group of prisoners shot.