Today is Monday, Dec. 15, the 349th day of 2025. There are 16 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On Dec. 15, 2013, Nelson Mandela was laid to rest in a state funeral, ending a 10-day mourning period for South Africa’s first Black president. Mandela died on Dec. 5 of that year at the age of 95.
Also on this date:
In 1791, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, went into effect following ratification by Virginia.
In 1890, Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, during a confrontation with Indian agency police.
In 1939, the Civil War motion picture epic “Gone with the Wind,” starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, had its world premiere in Atlanta.
In 1944, a single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while en route to Paris.
In 1967, the Silver Bridge between Gallipolis, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia, collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people.
In 2011, the flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was lowered in a Baghdad airport ceremony, marking the formal end of the American military mission in that country. The war left 110,000 Iraqis and 4,500 Americans dead.
In 2016, a federal jury in Charleston, South Carolina, convicted Dylann Roof of the racist killings of nine Black church members who had welcomed him into their Bible study gathering. The following year he would become the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime, a sentence upheld in 2021.
Today’s Birthdays: Singer Cindy Birdsong (The Supremes) is 86. Rock musician Dave Clark (The Dave Clark Five) is 86. Baseball Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland is 81. Actor Don Johnson is 76. Film and theater director Julie Taymor is 73. Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia is 71. Rock musician Paul Simonon (The Clash) is 70. Actor and filmmaker Lee Jung-jae is 53. Actor Adam Brody is 46. Actor Michelle Dockery is 44. Actor Charlie Cox is 43. Actor Camilla Luddington is 42. Rock musician and actor Alana Haim is 34. Actor Maude Apatow is 28.