Today in History ^12/05/16

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, baptised as Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era.

Lived: Jan 27, 1756 – Dec 05, 1791 (age 35)
Height: 5′ 4″ (1.63 m)
Spouse: Constanze Mozart (m. 1782 – 1791)
Children: Franz Xaver Wolfgang Mozart (Son) · Karl Thomas Mozart (Son) · Anna Maria Mozart (Daughter) · Raimund Leopold Mozart (Son) · Theresia Constanzia Adelheid Friedericke Maria Anna Mozart
Buried: St. Marx Cemetery

— Source: wiki/Wolfgang_Amadeus_Mozart

The 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution is ratified, repealing the 18th Amendment and bringing an end to the era of national prohibition of alcohol in America. At 5:32 p.m. EST, Utah became the 36th state to ratify the amendment, achieving the requisite three-fourths majority of states’ approval. Pennsylvania and Ohio had ratified it earlier in the day.
1933 : Prohibition Ends

Prohibition in the United States was a nationwide constitutional ban on the production, importation, transportation and sale of alcoholic beverages that remained in place from 1920 to 1933. It was promoted by the “dry” crusaders, a movement led by rural Protestants and social Progressives in the Prohibition, Democratic and Republican parties. It gained a national grass roots base through the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. After 1900 it was coordinated by the Anti-Saloon League. Prohibition was mandated in state after state, then finally nationwide under the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1920. Enabling legislation, known as the Volstead Act, set down the rules for enforcing the ban and defined the types of alcoholic beverages that were prohibited. For example, religious uses of wine were allowed. Private ownership and consumption of alcohol were not made illegal under federal law; however, in many areas, local laws were stricter, with some states banning possession outright. In the 1920s the laws were widely disregarded, and tax revenues were lost. Their opposition mobilized and nationwide, Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933. Some states continued statewide prohibition.

Prohibition marked one of the last stages of the Progressive Era. During the 19th century, alcoholism, family violence, and saloon-based political corruption led activists, led by pietistic Protestants, to end the liquor (and beer) trade to cure the ill society and weaken the political opposition. Among other things, this led many communities in the late 19th and early 20th century to introduce alcohol prohibition, with the subsequent enforcement in law becoming a hotly debated issue. Prohibition supporters, called drys, presented it as a victory for public morals and health. Anti-prohibitionists, known as wets, criticized the alcohol ban as an intrusion of mainly rural Protestant ideals on a central aspect of urban, immigrant, and Catholic life. Although popular opinion believes that Prohibition failed, it succeeded in cutting overall alcohol consumption in half during the 1920s, and consumption remained below pre-Prohibition levels until the 1940s, suggesting that Prohibition did socialize a significant proportion of the population in temperate habits, at least temporarily. Some researchers contend that its political failure is attributable more to a changing historical context than to characteristics of the law itself. Criticism remains that Prohibition led to unintended consequences such as the growth of urban crime organizations and a century of Prohibition-influenced legislation. As an experiment it lost supporters every year, and lost tax revenue that governments needed when the Great Depression began in 1929.

— Source: www.history.com/this-day-in-history/prohibition-ends
— Additional Source: wiki/Prohibition_in_the_United_States

Flight 19 was the designation of five Grumman TBM Avenger torpedo bombers that disappeared over the Bermuda Triangle on December 5, 1945 after losing contact during a United States Navy overwater navigation training flight from Naval Air Station Fort Lauderdale, Florida. All 14 airmen on the flight were lost, as were all 13 crew members of a Martin PBM Mariner flying boat that subsequently launched from Naval Air Station Banana River to search for Flight 19. The PBM aircraft was known to collect flammable aviation gasoline vapors in its bilges and professional investigators have assumed that the PBM most likely exploded in mid-air while searching for the flight. Navy investigators could not determine the cause of the loss of Flight 19.

Date: Dec 05, 1945
Fatalities: 27

— Source: wiki/Flight_19

The Great Smog of ’52 or Big Smoke was a severe air-pollution event that affected London during December 1952. A period of cold weather, combined with an anticyclone and windless conditions, collected airborne pollutants mostly from the use of coal to form a thick layer of smog over the city. It lasted from Friday 5 to Tuesday 9 December 1952, and then dispersed quickly after a change of weather. Although it caused major disruption due to the effect on visibility, and even penetrated indoor areas, it was not thought to be a significant event at the time, with London having experienced many smog events in the past, so-called “pea soupers”. Government medical reports in the following weeks estimated that up until 8 December 4,000 people had died prematurely and 100,000 more were made ill because of the smog’s effects on the human respiratory tract. More recent research suggests that the total number of fatalities was considerably greater, at about 12,000.

— Source: wiki/Great_Smog_of_London