Dec. 8. 1927: British Premier presented with 128,770 signatures of persons refusing war service. 1941: Representative Jeanette Rankin casts the only vote in Congress against U.S. entry into World War II.

Dec. 9. 1952: Four white resisters arrested for using "non-European" booths in post office, Cape Town, South Africa. 1975: U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Disabled. 1987: Start of Intifada for Palestinian Independence.

Dec. 10. 1948: United Nations passes Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 1967: The first "commercial" atomic bomb detonated under the New Mexico desert, an "experiment" in natural gas recovery.

Dec. 11. 1964: Anti-Castro protesters attempt to assassinate Che Guevara during his speech at the United Nations in New York City. 1986: U.N. agency UNICEF, promoting child education, established. The program becomes a center of U.S. refusal to pay its U.N. dues, with the U.S. claiming that UNICEF programs were socialist and anti-American.

Dec. 12. 1979: NATO deploys cruise and Pershing missiles across Europe. Annual protests follow. 1982: 30,000 women encircle U.S. cruise missile base, Greenham Common, Britain. 1983: 70 people arrested outside a Boston hotel where "New Trends in Missiles" trade conference is held. Inside the hotel, 1,000+ cockroaches are released, symbolizing the likely survivors of nuclear war.

Dec. 13. 1917: Denmark recognizes right to conscientious objection to military service. 1982: U.N. adopts Nuclear Freeze resolution.

Dec. 14. 1917: U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O'Hare jailed five years for speech denouncing World War I. 1973: United Nations affirms status of Puerto Rico as a U.S. colony and recognizes its right to independence.

Dec. 15. 1901: Birth of Margaret Mead, radical anthropologist. 1969: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) reaffirms its exclusion of African-Americans from ministry. 1982: United Nations General Assembly calls for nuclear weapons freeze.

Dec. 16. 1968: Spain revokes order expelling Jews from country, imposed by Queen Isabella in 1492. 1994: Russian Gen. Babichev refuses orders to kill Chechen civilians.

Dec. 17. 1963: U.S. Congress passes first Clean Air Act. 1966: Against U.S. wishes, U.N. General Assembly approves treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

Dec. 18. 1865: Ratification of 13th Amendment to U.S. Constitution; legal slavery abolished in U.S. 1946: Birth of Steven Biko, South African/Azanian leader of the Black Consciousness Movement; murdered by South African police in 1977.

Dec. 19. 1842: U.S. recognizes Hawai'ian independence. 55 years later, the U.S. would unilaterally annex Hawai'i instead. 1984: 27 miners killed by speedup in an Orangeville, Utah mine.

Dec. 20. 1989: U.S. invades Panama. Thousands of Panamanians die, leader Manuel Noriega jailed in U.S.; drug running, corruption continue, with new investor-friendly government. 1990: Reservist Dr. Yolanda Huet-Vaughn refuses orders for Gulf War. She is sentenced to prison and stripped of her medical license because of her conscientious objection.