Other Notable Events, December 15

In 1791, the Bill of Rights, comprising the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect.

In 1890, Sioux Indian leader Sitting Bull was killed in a skirmish with U.S. soldiers along the Grand River in South Dakota.

In 1891, Dr. James Naismith established the first rules of basketball in Springfield, Mass.

In 1939, the film version of Gone with the Wind premiered in Atlanta.

In 1943, the Battle of San Pietro between U.S. forces and a German panzer battalion left the 700-year-old Italian town in ruins.

In 1948, a federal grand jury in New York indicted former U.S. State Department official Alger Hiss on perjury charges.

In 1954, Davy Crockett, a show that may be considered TV's first miniseries, aired in a five segments on Walt Disney's Disneyland program.

In 1961, Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi SS officer regarded as the architect of the World War II Holocaust, was condemned to death by an Israeli war crimes tribunal.

In 1973, the American Psychiatric Association reversed its longstanding position and declared that homosexuality isn't a mental illness.

In 1982, Teamsters Union President Roy Williams and four others were convicted in federal court of conspiring to bribe U.S. Sen. Howard Cannon, D-Nev.

In 1989, Panamanian lawmakers designated Gen. Manuel Noriega head of state and declared that a state of war existed with the United States.

In 1990, in a landmark right-to-die case, a Missouri judge cleared the way for the parents of Nancy Cruzan to remove their daughter from life-support systems.

In 1992, Salvadorans celebrated the formal end to their country's 12-year civil war.

In 1993, British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds issued a framework for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.

In 1997, 85 people were killed in the crash of a Tajik charter airliner in the United Arab Emirates.

In 2006, Al-Jazeera English, the world's first English-language news TV channel with headquarters in the Middle East, was launched in Doha, Qatar.

In 2008, the Illinois Legislature began impeachment proceedings against Gov. Rod Blagojevich, accused of trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

In 2011, the United States formally ended its nearly nine-year military mission in Iraq in a solemn ceremony at Baghdad's international airport.

In 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama, in his weekly radio and Internet address, said our hearts are broken by the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn. He called for meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this -- regardless of the politics.