#TodayInHistory – December 9

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December 9 – Some important events on this day.

536 👉🏼 Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire
1212 👉🏼 Frederick II (later also Holy Roman Emperor) crowned King of Germany in Mainz
1783 👉🏼 First execution at Newgate Jail in London (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey), relocated from Tyburn (now the site of Marble Arch)
1854 👉🏼 Alfred Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” is published in “The Examiner”
1867 👉🏼 The first traffic lights are installed outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1931 👉🏼 Spain becomes a republic
1968 👉🏼 NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.
1990 👉🏼 Lech Wałęsa wins Poland’s 1st direct presidential election in Poland

1992 👉🏼 Operation Restore Hope: US Marines land in Somalia.
A civil war in Somalia had raged since the late 1980s when dictator Siad Barre began to face significant resistance to his rule at home. By the early 1990s, the conflict had led to a complete breakdown in civil order and a humanitarian disaster in the country.
In response to this, the United Nations authorized a military operation to create a humanitarian corridor in the southern portion of the country. The United States led this effort, code-named Operation Restore Hope. Marines arrived in Somalia and launched an amphibious attack on Mogadishu on this day.
After the deaths of Pakistani peacekeepers during the operation, the United Nations changed the scope of the deployment, authorizing “all necessary measures” to protect and guarantee aid deliveries to the entire country. This led to an increase in military deployment to Somalia, and in October 1993, the infamous ‘Black Hawk Down’ incident in Mogadishu occurred when eighteen American soldiers were killed and a Black Hawk helicopter shot down by rebel factions.
UN operations in Somalia lasted until 1995. The country continues to struggle with anarchy, effective government and a collapsed economy following the disastrous civil war.