Today is Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, the 349th day of the year. There are 16 days left in 2025.
On Dec. 15, 2013, South Africa’s first Black president, Nelson Mandela, was laid to rest in a state funeral that closed a 10-day national period of mourning. Mandela had died on Dec. 5 at the age of 95.
Other events on this date:
– 1791: The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, took effect after Virginia ratified them.
– 1890: Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed on the Grand River in South Dakota during a clash with Indian agency police.
– 1939: Gone with the Wind, featuring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, premiered in Atlanta.
– 1944: Bandleader and U.S. Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller vanished over the English Channel while flying to Paris.
– 1967: The Silver Bridge linking Gallipolis, Ohio, and Point Pleasant, West Virginia, collapsed into the Ohio River, killing 46 people.
– 2011: The U.S. flag was lowered at a ceremony at a Baghdad airport, marking the formal end of the American military mission in Iraq; the conflict resulted in roughly 110,000 Iraqi and 4,500 American deaths.
– 2016: In Charleston, South Carolina, a federal jury convicted Dylann Roof for the racially motivated slayings of nine Black members of a church Bible study; in 2017 he was sentenced to death under federal hate-crime charges, a sentence upheld in 2021.
Notable birthdays observed today include singer Cindy Birdsong (The Supremes), 86; musician Dave Clark (The Dave Clark Five), 86; Hall of Fame manager Jim Leyland, 81; actor Don Johnson, 76; director Julie Taymor, 73; Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, 71; bassist Paul Simonon (The Clash), 70; actor Lee Jung-jae, 53; actor Adam Brody, 46; actor Michelle Dockery, 44; actor Charlie Cox, 43; actor Camilla Luddington, 42; musician and actor Alana Haim, 34; and actor Maude Apatow, 28.
