George Washington crosses the Delaware, "To Kill a Mockingbird" premieres, Gorbachev resigns, and passengers on a Christmas flight into Detroit foil the "Underwear Bomber," all on this day.
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National Portrait Gallery, London
1642: English scientist and mathematician Isaac Newton, who has been considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived, is born in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, Lincolnshire, England. Newton described universal gravitation and the three laws of motion, which dominated the scientific view of the physical universe for the next three centuries.