On this day... December 9

On this day...

December 9 1872 – P. B. S. Pinchback took office as Governor of Louisiana, the first African American governor of a U.S. state. 1917 – First World War: Hussein al-Husayni, the Ottoman mayor of Jerusalem, surrendered (pictured)the city to the British. 1931 – The approval of the Spanish Constitution by theConstituent Cortes paved the way to the establishment of theSecond Spanish Republic. 1958 – The John Birch Society, named after John Birch, an American missionary who was killed in China by communists, was founded to fight the perceived threat of communism in the United States. 1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox, making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated from nature.