By The Associated Press

Today is Monday, Dec. 16, the 351st day of 2024. There are 15 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On Dec. 16, 1944, the World War II Battle of the Bulge began as German forces launched a surprise attack against Allied forcesa through the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxembourg. (The Allies were eventually able to turn the Germans back.)

On this date:

In 1653, Oliver Cromwell became lord protector of England, Scotland and Ireland.

In 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor to protest tea taxes.

In 1907, 16 U.S. Navy battleships, which came to be known as the “Great White Fleet,” set sail on a 14-month round-the-world voyage to demonstrate American sea power.

In 1950, President Harry S. Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “world conquest by Communist imperialism.”

In 1960, 134 people were killed when a United Air Lines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided over New York City.

In 1991, the U.N. General Assembly rescinded its 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism by a vote of 111-25.

In 2000, President-elect George W. Bush selected Colin Powell to become the first African-American secretary of state.

In 2001, after nine weeks of fighting, Afghan militia leaders claimed control of the last mountain bastion of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida fighters, but bin Laden himself was nowhere to be seen.

In 2011, in San Francisco, eight years of being investigated for steroid allegations ended for home run king Barry Bonds with a 30-day sentence to be served at home. (Bonds never served the sentence; his conviction for obstruction of justice was overturned.)

In 2012, President Barack Obama visited Newtown, Connecticut, the scene of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre; after meeting privately with victims’ families, the president told an evening vigil he would use “whatever power” he had to prevent future shootings.

In 2013, Ray Price, one of country music’s most popular and influential singers and bandleaders, died in Mount Pleasant, Texas at age 87.

In 2014, Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in the northwestern Pakistan city of Peshawar, killing at least 148 people, mostly children.

In 2019, House Democrats laid out their first impeachment case against President Donald Trump; a sweeping report from the House Judiciary Committee said Trump had “betrayed the Nation by abusing his high office to enlist a foreign power in corrupting democratic elections.”

In 2020, the first COVID-19 vaccinations were underway at U.S. nursing homes, where the virus had killed 110,000 people.

Today’s Birthdays: Artist Edward Ruscha is 87. Actor Liv Ullmann is 86. CBS news correspondent Lesley Stahl is 83. Pop singer Benny Andersson (ABBA) is 78. Rock singer-musician Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top) is 75. Actor Benjamin Bratt is 61. Filmmaker James Mangold is 61. Actor-comedian JB Smoove is 59. Actor Miranda Otto is 57. Actor Krysten Ritter is 43. Actor Theo James is 40. Actor Anna Popplewell is 36.

Actor Stephan James is 31.