Moments in Time – Dec. 18, 2019

#Middlebury

• On Jan. 5, 1643, in the first record of a legal divorce in the American colonies, Anne Clarke of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is granted a divorce from her absent and adulterous husband, Denis Clarke, by the Quarter Court of Boston.
• On Jan. 1, 1818, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” is published. The book by 20-year-old Mary Shelley is frequently called the world’s first science fiction novel. In Shelley’s tale, a scientist animates a creature constructed from dismembered corpses.
• On Jan. 4, 1896, six years after Wilford Woodruff, president of the Mormon Church, issued his Manifesto reforming political, religious and economic life in Utah, the territory is admitted into the Union as the 45th state. Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto included a renunciation of the traditional Mormon practice of polygamy.
• On Dec. 30, 1922, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.
• On Jan. 3, 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower closes the American embassy in Havana and severs diplomatic relations between the United States and Fidel Castro’s government in Cuba. The action signaled that the U.S. was prepared to take extreme measures to oppose Castro’s regime.
• On Jan. 2, 1974, President Richard Nixon signs the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, requiring states to limit highway speeds to 55 mph or lose federal highway funding. It was a result of fuel shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo.
• On Dec. 31, 1999, the United States officially hands over control of the Panama Canal, putting the strategic waterway into Panamanian hands for the first time. The 50-mile canal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, officially opened when the SS Arcon sailed through in August 1914.

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