On this date in history:

In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth, Mass., following a 63-day voyage from England aboard the Mayflower.

In 1913, the first crossword puzzle in an American newspaper appeared in The New York Sunday World.

In 1937, Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature film, opened in Los Angeles.

In 1958, three months after a new French Constitution was approved, Charles de Gaulle was elected the first president of the Fifth Republic by a sweeping majority of voters.

In 1968, Apollo 8, the first manned voyage to orbit the moon, was launched. (Apollo 11 was the first mission to put astronauts on the moon's surface.)

In 1975, the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal led a raid on a meeting of OPEC oil ministers in Vienna. German and Arab terrorists stormed in with machine guns, killed three people and took 63 others hostage, including 11 oil ministers. (The hostages were later freed.)

In 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 exploded and crashed in Lockerbie, Scotland, killing everyone aboard and 11 people on the ground for a total death toll of 270.

In 1990, a boat carrying about 100 U.S. sailors involved in Operation Desert Shield capsized off the Israeli coast. Twenty-one people died.

In 1991, 11 former Soviet republics declared an end to the Soviet Union and forged a commonwealth that guaranteed independence.

In 1992, 54 people were killed when a chartered jetliner carrying 340 people on a holiday to southern Portugal crashed in bad weather.

In 1993, Hungary's Parliament endorsed the nomination of Peter Boross as president, succeeding Jozsef Antall, who died in office Dec. 12.

In 1998, the shaky coalition of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu collapsed when Israel's Parliament voted 81-30 to dissolve the government.

In 2009, the U.S. government set a 3-hour limit on the time airlines can keep passengers waiting on a plane without giving them food or letting them off the aircraft.

In 2010, a Census Bureau report showed the United States with a population of 308,747,538. California remained the most populous state, followed by Texas and Florida.

In 2012, U.S. distributors said armored children's backpacks costing hundreds of dollars each were big sellers in the week since an elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn.

In 2013, soldier, diplomat, military historian John Eisenhower, son of former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, died in Maryland. He was 91.

Copyright 2014 by United Press International