Celebrations Today – December 6
Holidays and observances
- Anniversary of the Founding of Quito (Ecuador)
- Armed Forces Day (Ukraine)
- Christian feast day:
- Abraham of Kratia
- Aemilianus (Roman Catholic Church)
- Blessed János Scheffler
- María del Monte Carmelo Sallés y Barangueras
- Nicholas of Myra, and its related observances:
- St Nicholas Day, where St. Nicholas/Santa Claus leaves little presents in children’s shoes. (International)
- December 6 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
- Constitution Day (Spain)
- Day of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies of Azerbaijan
- Independence Day of Finland, celebrates the independence of Finland from Russia in 1917.
- National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women (Canada)
Celebrations Today – USA: December 6
National Pawnbrokers Day
National Microwave Oven Day
National Gazpacho Day
St. Nicholas Day
Miners’ Day
National Miners’ Day
National Mitten Tree Day
National Put on Your Own Shoes Day
Today in US History: December 6
The Washington Monument
Horydczak on Top of Washington Monument, between 1920 and 1950.
Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydcak, 1923-1959
On December 6, 1884, workers placed the 3,300-pound marble capstone on the Washington Monument and topped it with a nine-inch pyramid of cast aluminum, completing construction of the 555-foot Egyptian obelisk. Nearly fifty years earlier, the Washington National Monument Society choose Robert Mills‘ design to honor first American president and founding father George Washington. The privately funded organization laid the monument’s cornerstone on Independence Day, 1848, in Washington, D.C.
For twenty years, lack of funds and loss of support for the Washington National Monument Society left the obelisk incomplete at a height of about 156 feet. Finally, in 1876, President Ulysses Grant authorized the federal government to finish construction. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers took over the project two years later.
Washington Monument, between 1920 and 1950.
Theodor Horydczak, photographer
Washington as It Was: Photographs by Theodor Horydcak, 1923-1959
Day and night, spring through winter, the Washington Monument is a focal point of the National Mall and a center of celebrations including concerts and the annual Independence Day fireworks display. The observation deck affords spectacular panoramic views of the nation’s capital.
When construction was completed in 1884, the Washington Monument was the world’s tallest masonry structure. Today, the approximately 36,000-stacked blocks of granite and marble compose the world’s tallest freestanding masonry structure. In a city of monuments, locals refer to the obelisk as “The Monument.” By law—District of Columbia building code–it will remain the tallest structure in Washington, D.C., dominating the skyline and accenting Pierre-Charles L’Enfant’s plan for the city.
- There are many images of Washington, D.C. in American Memory. Search across the pictorial collections on Washington Monument to locate such photographs.
- Search the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) for many other images of the Washington Monument.
- Search on Washington Monument in The Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals collection to retrieve documents pertaining to the monument’s design, completion, and statistics.
- Search on Washington Monument in The Nineteenth Century in Print: Books to retrieve documents relating to the history of the monument.
- A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation contains a wide variety of congressional information associated with the early history of Washington, D.C. Search on Washington Monument to find congressional materials related to the monument.
- There are 192 commemorative stones that line the interior walls of the Washington Monument. Read President Calvin Coolidge’s speech at the Dedication of the New Mexico Stone in the Washington Monument on December 2, 1927—one of many Coolidge addresses available in Prosperity and Thrift: The Coolidge Era and the Consumer Economy, 1921-1929.
- Take a spin to the strains of the “Washington Monument Waltz,” published in Washington D.C. in 1885. Search the collection Music for the Nation: American Sheet Music, 1870-1885 on Washington Monument.
- Visit the exhibition Worthy of Washington in the American Treasures exhibition to view the Washington Monument as it stood incomplete for twenty-five years.
- To find additional resources related to the history of the Washington, D.C., consult A Guide to Washington, D.C., Materials.
Salmon P. Chase
Portrait of Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase,
between 1860 and 1865.
Selected Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
On December 6, 1864, Abraham Lincoln nominated Salmon P. Chase chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court; he was sworn in on December 15. A graduate of Dartmouth College, Chase studied law under Attorney General William Wirt.
He championed Sunday schools and temperance in the 1830s, and by the 1840s was an active member of the abolitionist movement. Chase defended fugitive slaves in Ohio and played a key role in creating the Free Soil Party, which opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories. With Free Soil support, Chase was elected to the Senate early in 1849.
Chief Justice Taft Dedicated Salmon P. Chase Memorial,
June 3, 1923.
Prints & Photographs Online Catalog
Chase founded the Ohio Republican party and next served as the state’s first Republican governor from 1855 to 1859. In office, he vigorously opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act and defended the rights of African Americans.
At the 1860 Republican convention, Chase permitted delegates pledged to support him to cast decisive votes for Abraham Lincoln. As a reward, in 1861–just two days after beginning his second term as senator, Chase left the Senate to serve as Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury.
Chase continued to support African Americans. He drafted the first two clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Signed into law in 1868, the amendment extended citizenship rights to all people born or naturalized in the United States.
In a letter to the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association, Chase asserted:
Our national experience has demonstrated that public order reposes most securely on the broad basis of universal suffrage. It has proved, also, that universal suffrage is the surest broad basis of universal guarantee and most powerful stimulus of individual, social, and political progress. May it not prove, moreover, in that work of re-organization which now engages the thoughts of all patriotic men, that universal suffrage is the best reconciler of the most comprehensive lenity with the most perfect public security and the most speedy and certain revival of general prosperity?Hon. Salmon P. Chase, Chief Justice of the United States to Williams Syphax and J. F. Cook, Committee,
Celebration by the Colored People’s Educational Monument Association in Memory of Abraham Lincoln…, August 16, 1865.
African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907
Supreme Court—where he served until his death, Chase presided over the Senate’s impeachment trial and acquittal of President Andrew Johnson. Chase suffered a stroke and died on May 7, 1873. He was honored with a formal state funeral. Originally buried in Oak Hill Cemetery in Washington, D.C., he was later reinterred in Spring Grove Cemetery in Ohio, the state that he served.
Learn more:
- Read “Address and Reply on the Presentation of A Testimonial to S. P. Chase.” This 1845 document from African American Perspectives: Pamphlets from the Daniel A. P. Murray Collection, 1818-1907 records a ceremony honoring Chase for his defense of escaped slave Samuel Watson.
- For a less-than-flattering review of Chase’s performance on the campaign trail read page 92 of H. P. Hall’s Observations. A prominent Minnesota journalist, Harlan Page Hall’s memoir is available through the collection Pioneering the Upper Midwest: Books from Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, ca. 1820-1910.
- The Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress consists of approximately 20,000 documents. Search on Salmon P. Chase to view correspondence regarding the statesman.
- Read a letter from Chase to Mrs. Abraham Lincoln on the occasion of Lincoln’s taking the oath of office.
- The Atlantic Monthly carried an August 1900 article on Chase as a radical statesman. The Nineteenth Century in Print: Periodicals also has four other articles on Chase.
Today in History – December 6-External Links
Today’s Weather in History
Today in Earthquake History
This Day in Naval History
Today’s Document from the National Archives
Today’s Events, Births & Deaths –Wikipedia
Today in History by AP
On this Day -1950 to 2005 – Today’s Story–BBC
On This Day: The New York Times
This Day in History –History.com
Today in Canadian History – Canada Channel
History of Britain that took place On This Day
Russia in History –Russiapedia