TODAY IN HISTORY

Tuesday, December  13, 2011 AP Highlight in History:  On Dec. 13, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to attend the post-World War I peace conference at Versailles, becoming the first chief executive to visit Europe while in office.   AP Photo
On this date in: 1642 Dutch navigator Abel Tasman arrived in present-day New Zealand. 1769 Dartmouth College in New Hampshire received its charter. 1862 Confederate forces dealt Union troops a major defeat at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia. 1981 Authorities in Poland imposed martial law in a crackdown on the Solidarity labor movement. AP Photo 1988 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a visa to visit New York. 1989 South African President F.W. de Klerk met for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town. 1996 The U.N. Security Council chose Kofi Annan of Ghana to be the world body's seventh secretary-general. 2000 Republican George W. Bush claimed the presidency 36 days after Election Day. 2001 The Pentagon released a captured videotape of Osama bin Laden in which the al-Qaida leader said the deaths and destruction achieved by the Sept. 11 attacks exceeded his "most optimistic" expectations. 2001 Five suspected Islamic militants killed nine people in an attack on India's parliament before being killed themselves. 2001 President George W. Bush served formal notice that the United States was pulling out of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. 2002 Cardinal Bernard Law resigned as Boston archbishop because of the priest sex abuse scandal. 2003 Ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces while hiding in a hole under a farmhouse in Adwar, near his hometown of Tikrit. AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky 2007 Shareholders of Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, approved a takeover by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. 2007 The Mitchell Report on performance-enhancing drugs in baseball was released, implicating seven MVPs and 31 All-Stars.		Video Highlights of This Day in History Today's Birthdays: Country singer Taylor Swift turns 22 years old today. AP Photo/Evan Agostini Name Profession Age George P. Shultz Former Secretary of State 91 Dick Van Dyke Actor 86 Lou Adler Music producer 81 John Davidson Singer 70 Ferguson Jenkins Baseball Hall of Famer 68 Ted Nugent Rock musician 63 Wendie Malick Actress ("Just Shoot Me") 61 Tom Vilsack Secretary of agriculture 61 Ben Bernanke Federal Reserve chairman 58 Steve Forbert Rock singer 57 Morris Day R&B singer-actor (The Time) 55 Steve Buscemi Actor 54 Johnny Whitaker Actor ("Family Affair") 52 Richard Dent Football Hall of Famer 51 Gary Zimmerman Football Hall of Famer 50 Jamie Foxx Actor, singer 44 Sergei Fedorov Hockey player 42 James Kyson Lee Actor ("Heroes") 36 Chelsea Hertford Actress ("Major Dad") 30 Amy Lee Rock singer (Evanescence) 30 Actor Christopher Plummer turns 82 years old today. AP Photo/Vince Bucci