Today’s highlight

On Dec. 12, 2015, nearly 200 nations meeting in Paris adopted the first global pact to fight climate change, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that didn’t do so.

On this date

1787: Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1870: Joseph H. Rainey of South Carolina became the first Black lawmaker sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives.

1913: Authorities in Florence, Italy, announced that the “Mona Lisa,” stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris in 1911, had been recovered.

1915: Singer-actor Frank Sinatra was born Francis Albert Sinatra in Hoboken, New Jersey.

1917: During World War I, a train carrying some 1,000 French troops from the Italian front derailed while descending a steep hill in Modane; at least half of the soldiers were killed in France’s greatest rail disaster.

1977: The dance movie “Saturday Night Fever,” starring John Travolta, premiered in New York.

1985: 248 American soldiers and eight crew members were killed when an Arrow Air charter crashed after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland.

2019: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson led his party to victory in a election that dominated by Brexit.