Dec. 6. 1918: U.S. Dept. of War abolishes the practice of manacling defiant prisoners to the walls of their cells in solitary confinement, used to torture conscientious objectors in U.S. prisons during World War I.

Dec. 7. 1995: Up to 1.75 million striking French workers demonstrate in marches shutting down the country as part of an escalating series of general strikes protesting government cutbacks and global exploitation of workers.

Dec. 8. 1941: Representative Jeanette Rankin casts the only vote in Congress against American entry into World War II. 1979: The Oneida Nation files suit in an effort to regain control of the three million acres illegally taken by New York state.

Dec. 9. 1975: U.N. Declaration on the Rights of the Disabled. 1987: Start of Intifada for Palestinian Independence.

Dec. 10. 1906: IWW sponsors first sit-down strike in U.S., at a General Electric plant in Schenectady, New York. 1967: The first "commercial" atomic bomb is detonated under the New Mexico desert as part of an experiment in natural gas recovery.

Dec. 11. 1961: First U.S. air cavalry helicopter units arrive in Vietnam. 1986: UN agency UNICEF, promoting child education, established. The program becomes a center of U.S. refusal to pay its UN dues, with the U.S. claiming that UNICEF programs were socialist and anti-American.

Dec. 12. 1918: Senator Hiram Johnson (R-CA) denounces U.S. invasion of revolutionary Russia. 1973: Women members of United Steelworkers of America (Local 1066) protest sex discrimination, Gary, Indiana.

Dec. 13. 1927: Death of Samuel Gompers, president and founder of the AFL. 1982: United Nations adopts Nuclear Freeze resolution.

Dec. 14. 1890: Socialist scholar and labor organizer Daniel De Leon born. 1917: U.S. peace activist and suffragist Kate Richards O'Hare jailed five years for speech denouncing World War I.

Dec. 15. 1970: Pres. Nixon signs the Taos Land Bill. 48,000 acres of land are returned to the Taos Pueblo in New Mexico, the first U.S. legislation ever to return a sizable amount of federal land to the Native Americans from whom it was stolen. 1970: The Nez Perce tribe of Idaho and Confederated Tribe of Colville, Wash., win $1.1 million for loss of tribal lands in 19th century.

Dec. 16. 1968: Spain revokes order expelling Jews from country imposed by Queen Isabella in 1492. 1991: Activists in Brussels, Belgium, protesting Vatican funding for an observatory desecrating sacred Apache site at Mount Graham, Arizona, pull a bulldozer up to a prominent local cathedral.

Dec. 17. 1966: Against U.S. wishes, UN General Assembly approves an international treaty banning nuclear weapons in space.

Dec. 18. 1920: First public radio broadcast in U.S. 1972: Bach Mai hospital, Vietnam, bombed by the U.S.

Dec. 19. 1940: Civilian public service camps for conscientious objectors established.