DECEMBER 1, 1869 – George Sterling is born in Sag Harbor, New York .

DECEMBER 1, 1969 - The first draft lottery in the United States is held for Vietnam War service. It is the first since World War II.

DECEMBER 1, 1889 – Fletcher Hanks is born in Paterson, New Jersey .

DECEMBER 1, 1935 – Woody Allen is born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Bronx, New York .

DECEMBER 2, 1859 - Abolitionist John Brown is hung for his raid on Harpers Ferry, West Virginia .

DECEMBER 2, 1923 – Maria Callas is born in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 3, 1899 – Paul Bern is born in Hamburg, Germany .

DECEMBER 3, 1930 – Jean-Luc Godard is born in Paris, France .

DECEMBER 3, 1976 - Bob Marley survives an assassination attempt in his Jamaican home. Once bitten, twice shot, he plays Smile Jamaica two days later.

DECEMBER 4, 1944 – Chris Hillman is born in Los Angeles, California .

DECEMBER 4, 1954 - The first Burger King is opened in Miami, Florida .

DECEMBER 5, 1848 - U.S. President James K. Polk confirms to Congress that there's gold in them there hills.

DECEMBER 5, 1886 – Louise Bryant is born in San Francisco, California .

DECEMBER 5, 1905 – Otto Preminger is born in Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine .

DECEMBER 5, 1926 – Myra Landau is born in Bucharest, Romania.

DECEMBER 5, 1932 – Little Richard is born Richard Penniman in Macon, Georgia .

DECEMBER 5, 1934 – Joan Didion is born in Sacramento, California .

DECEMBER 6, 1953 - Vladimir Nabokov completes Lolita.

DECEMBER 6, 1929 – Frank Springer is born in Queens, New York .

DECEMBER 6, 1939 – Steve Alaimo is born in Omaha, Nebraska .

DECEMBER 7, 1873 – Willa Cather is born in Gore, Virginia .

DECEMBER 7, 1886 – Tom Waits is born in Pomona, California .

DECEMBER 7, 1963 – Instant replay makes its debut during an American Army–Navy football game.

DECEMBER 8, 1882 – Thomas Mooney is born in Chicago, Illinois .

DECEMBER 8, 1886 – Diego Rivera is born Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez in Guanajuato, Mexico .

DECEMBER 8, 1813 - Beethoven 's The Symphony No. 7 debuts in Vienna . He wrote the piece while virtually deaf.

DECEMBER 8, 1928 – Noam Chomsky is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania .

DECEMBER 8, 1942 – Mario Savio is born in Queens, New York .

DECEMBER 8, 1943 – Jim Morrison is born in Melbourne, Florida .

DECEMBER 8, 1960 – Bill McKibben is born in Palo Alto, California .

DECEMBER 8, 1966 – Sinead O'Connor is born in Glenageary, Ireland .

DECEMBER 8, 1980 – Beatle John Lennon is mortally wounded by superfan Mark David Chapman in front of his Dakota Apartment home in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 9, 1930 - Buck Henry is born Henry Zuckerman in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 9, 2004 - Canada 's Supreme Court rules that gay marriage is okay.

DECEMBER 10, 1830 - Emily Dickinson is born in Amherst, Massachusetts .

DECEMBER 10, 1978 - Cross dressing director Ed Wood spends his last weekend in LA swilling vodka before suffering from a fatal heart attack.

DECEMBER 11, 1931 - Rita Moreno is born in Humacao, Puerto Rico .

DECEMBER 11, 1964 – Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 11, 1967 - Mo'Nique is born in Baltimore, Maryland .

DECEMBER 12, 1887 - Bobby Jones is born in Milton, New Hamphire .

DECEMBER 12, 1897 – Rudolph Dirks' The Katzenjammer Kids debuts in the New York Journal. It is the first comic strip to use speech balloons for dialogue.

DECEMBER 12, 1915 - Frank Sinatra is born in Hoboken, New Jersey .

DECEMBER 12, 1940 - Dionne Warwick is born in East Orange, New Jersey .

DECEMBER 12, 1972 - Hank Williams III is born Shelton Hank Williams in Nashville, Tennessee .

DECEMBER 13, 1933 - Lou Adler is born in Chicago, Illinois .

DECEMBER 13, 1948 - Lester Bangs is born in Escondido, California .

DECEMBER 13, 1971 - Gloria Casarez is born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania .

DECEMBER 13, 2000 George W. Bush, Jr. snatches the United States presidency 36 days after Election Day from the jaws of Al Gore.

DECEMBER 14, 1932 - Abbe Lane is born Abigail Francine Lassman in Brooklyn, New York .

DECEMBER 14, 1946 - Jane Birkin is born in London, England .

DECEMBER 14, 1970 - Beth Orton is born in Dereham, England .

DECEMBER 14, 1985 - Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma .

DECEMBER 15, 1883 - Harry Kemp is born in Youngstown, Ohio .

DECEMBER 15, 1910 - John Hammond, Sr. is born in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 15, 1938 - Eliot Coleman is born in Rumson, New Jersey .

DECEMBER 15, 1945 - General Douglas MacArthur abolishes Shinto, the state religion of Japan .

DECEMBER 16, 1773 - The Boston Tea Party.

DECEMBER 16, 1899 - Noel Coward is born in Teddington, London, England .

DECEMBER 16, 1908 - Remedios Varo is born María de los Remedios Alicia Rodriga Varo y Uranga in Anglés, Spain .

DECEMBER 16, 1928 - Philip K. Dick is born in Chicago, Illinois .

DECEMBER 16, 1961 - Bill Hicks is born in Valdosta, Georgia .

DECEMBER 17, 1903 - Orville and Wilbur Wright take flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina .

DECEMBER 17, 1903 - Erskine Caldwell is born in Moreland, Georgia .

DECEMBER 17, 1941 - Paul Cadmus is born in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 17, 1989 - The animated TV series The Simpsons premieres on Fox.

DECEMBER 18, 1917 - Ossie Davis is born in Codgell, Georgia .

DECEMBER 18, 1943 - Keith Richards is born in Kent, England .

DECEMBER 18, 1954 - Ulrich Roth is born in Dusseldorf, Germany .

DECEMBER 18, 1957 – The first nuclear power station in the United States goes live in Shippingport, Pennsylvania .

DECEMBER 18, 1961 - Angie Stone is born in Columbia, South, Carolina .

DECEMBER 18, 1975 - Sia is born Sia Furler in Adelaise, Australia .

DECEMBER 19, 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled The American Crisis .

DECEMBER 19, 1937 - Joseph Byrd is born in Louisville, Kentucky .

DECEMBER 19, 1940 - Phil Ochs is born in El Paso, Texas .

DECEMBER 20, 1951 - Marta Russell is born in the Mississippi Delta .

DECEMBER 21, 1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , the world's first full-length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre.

DECEMBER 21, 1401 - Masaccio is born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone in San Giovanni Valdarno, Italy .

DECEMBER 21, 1866 - Maud Gonne is born in Surrey, England .

DECEMBER 21, 1937 - Jane Fonda is born in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 21, 1940 - Frank Zappa is born in Baltimore, Maryland .

DECEMBER 21, 1943 - Gwen McCrae is born in Pensacola, Florida .

DECEMBER 21, 1953 - Betty Wright is born in Miami, Florida .

DECEMBER 22, 1940 - Jean-Michel Basquiat is born in Brooklyn, New York .

DECEMBER 22, 1988 - Chico Mendes a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, is assassinated.

DECEMBER 23, 1870 - John Marin is born in Rutherford, New Jersey .

DECEMBER 23, 1929 - Chet Baker is born in Yale, Oklahoma .

DECEMBER 23, 1946 - Kiki Preston leaps from a window of her fifth-floor apartment in the Stanhope Hotel of New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 24, 1922 - Jonas Mekas is born in Biržai, Lithuania .

DECEMBER 24, 1922 - Ava Gardner is born in Smithfield, North Carolina .

DECEMBER 24, 1945 - Lemmy Kilmister is born Ian Fraser Kilmister in Staffordshire, England .

DECEMBER 24, 1914 - The World War I Christmas Truce begins.

DECEMBER 25, 1884 - Evelyn Nesbit is born in Tarentum, Pennsylvania .

DECEMBER 25, 1908 - Quentin Crisp is born Denis Charles Pratt in Sutton, England. .

DECEMBER 25, 1957 - Shane MacGowan is born in Kent, England .

DECEMBER 26, 1891 - Henry Miller is born in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 26, 1956 – David Sedaris is born in Johnson City, New York .

DECEMBER 26, 1982 – Time Magazine Man of the Year is for the first time a non-human, the personal computer.

DECEMBER 27, 1901 - Marlene Dietrich is born in Schöneberg, Germany .

DECEMBER 27, 1927 – Show Boat considered to be the first true American musical play, opens at the Ziegfeld Theatre on Broadway in New York City, New York .

DECEMBER 28, 1612 – Galileo Galilei becomes the first astronomer to observe the planet Neptune.

DECEMBER 28, 1909 - Leonard Ware is born in Richmond, Virginia .

DECEMBER 28, 1940 - Lonnie Liston Smith is born in Richmond, Virginia .

DECEMBER 28, 1950 - Alex Chilton is born in Memphis, Tennessee .

DECEMBER 29, 1946 - Marianne Faithfull is born in London, England .

DECEMBER 29, 1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gives a speech entitled There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom , which is regarded as the birth of nanotechnology.

DECEMBER 30, 1903 – A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois leaves over 600 dead.

DECEMBER 30, 1942 - Robert Quine is born in Akron, Ohio .

DECEMBER 30, 1946 - Patti Smith is born in Chicago, Illinois .

DECEMBER 31, 1869 - Henri Matisse is born in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France .

DECEMBER 31, 1930 - Odetta is born in Birmingham, Alabama .

DECEMBER 31, 1959 - Paul Westerberg is born in Edina, Minnesota .

DECEMBER 31, 1967 – The Youth International Party is founded. Yippee!