Soviet T-26 light tanks and T-20 Komsomolets armored tractors advancing into Finland during the Winter War, 2 Dec 1939 (public domain via WW2 Database)
80 Years Ago—December 7, 1939: In Soviet-Finnish war, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy declare neutrality.
Lou Gehrig is elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame; at 36, he is the youngest player honored to that date.
The number three gun of the destroyer USS Ward and her crew, credited with firing the first shot at Pearl Harbor (US Navy photo)
75 Years Ago—Dec. 7, 1944: At Ormoc Bay on Leyte, destroyer USS Ward is damaged by a kamikaze; exactly three years earlier, USS Ward fired the first shots during the attack on Pearl Harbor—she is scuttled by destroyer USS O’Brien under the command of William Outerbridge, who had commanded the Ward on Dec. 7, 1941. (Read more: “Remember Pearl Harbor—The US Navy’s Role at Pearl Harbor”).
Nazi women’s leader Gertrud Scholtz-Klink asks all German women over 18 to volunteer to serve in the armed services to release men to the front.
USS Ward on fire after being struck by a Japanese kamikaze in Ormoc Bay, Philippines, 7 Dec 1944, three years to the day after she fired the first US shot of the Pacific War (US Navy photo 80-G-270773)
In 1922, Elissa Tillman is tired of serving as a secretary at her father’s newspaper, the Pittsburgh Review, and she’s tired of only having articles published under a male pen name. Finally, she believes she has a crack at a big scoop – until she discovers her father has hired a new reporter and assigned him the story. To make things worse, the new reporter is Cole Parker, Elissa’s childhood friend and the old flame who broke her heart several years earlier.
In 1933, Polish Jew Anna Leibowicz has found refuge in New York City. But when she becomes pregnant, her mother’s shame leads Anna to run away in search of their long-lost father, rumored to be living in Chicago. Soon she’s penniless and hungry and stranded in Indiana.
