MOMENTS IN TIME

The History Channel

• On Dec. 18, 1620, the Mayflower docks at what today is Plymouth, Mass., and its passengers disembarked to begin their new settlement, Plymouth Colony. The winter of 1620-1621 was brutal, and by spring, only 52 of the original 102 Mayflower passengers were still alive.

• On Dec. 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor in protest of the British Parliament’s Tea Act of 1773. The value of the tea was more than $700,000 in today’s currency.

• On Dec. 14, 1909, workers place the last of the 3.2 million 10-pound bricks that pave the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Indiana. Since then, all but a 1-yard-wide strip at the start-finish line has been buried under asphalt. Kissing those bricks after a successful race remains a tradition among Indy drivers.

• On Dec. 13, 1916, a powerful avalanche kills hundreds of Austrian soldiers in barracks near Italy’s Mount Marmolada. Over a period of several weeks, avalanches killed an estimated 10,000 Austrian and Italian soldiers.

• On Dec. 17, 1961, a fire at a filled-to-capacity circus in Brazil kills more than 300 people and severely burns 500 more. The cause of the fire was never conclusively determined, but it may have been the result of sparks from a train passing nearby.

• On Dec. 15, 1973, Jean Paul Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, five months after his kidnapping by an Italian gang. Getty had initially refused to pay his 16-year-old grandson’s $17 million ransom, but finally agreed after the boy’s severed right ear was sent to a newspaper in Rome.

• On Dec. 12, 1980, American oil tycoon Armand Hammer pays $5,126,000 at auction for a notebook containing writings by the legendary artist Leonardo da Vinci. The manuscript, written around 1508, contained 72 loose pages featuring some 300 notes and detailed drawings, all relating to the common theme of water and how it moved.

(c) 2011 King Features Synd., Inc.