Today is Saturday, Dec. 7, the 342nd day of 2024. There are 24 days left in the year.

On Dec. 7, 1941, the Empire of Japan launched an air raid on the U.S. Navy base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, killing more than 2,300 Americans. The United States declared war against Japan the following day.

In 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

In 1982, convicted murderer Charlie Brooks Jr. became the first U.S. prisoner to be executed by lethal injection, at a prison in Huntsville, Texas.

In 1988, a major earthquake in the Soviet Union devastated northern Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people.

In 1993, six people were killed and 19 wounded in a mass shooting aboard a Long Island Rail Road train in New York.

In 2004, Hamid Karzai (HAH’-mihd KAHR’-zeye) was sworn in as Afghanistan’s first popularly elected president.

In 2018, James Alex Fields Jr., who drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a 2017 white nationalist rally in Virginia, was convicted of first-degree murder.