This week in history

•On Dec. 9, 1926, young clarinetist Benny Goodman, working hard to raise his family out of poverty in Chicago, records his first solo. Sadly, Goodman’s father was hit by a car and killed on the same day.

•On Dec. 4, 1936, actress Tallulah Bankhead auditions unsuccessfully for the role of Scarlett O’Hara in “Gone With the Wind.” Vivien Leigh later auditioned and won the part.

•On Dec. 5, 1945, five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission and never return. The bombers flew over the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace.

•On Dec. 6, 1955, the Federal government standardizes the size of license plates throughout the U.S. Previously, individual states had designed their own license plates.

•On, Dec. 10, 1974, Arkansas Democratic Representative Wilbur Mills resigns as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Mills had been stopped by Washington park police while driving at night, intoxicated, with his lights off. His companion, who jumped into the Tidal Basin, was later identified as a popular stripper who went by the names “Fanne Foxe” and the “Argentine Firecracker.”

•On Dec. 7, 1982, the first execution by lethal injection takes place at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, Texas. Charles Brooks, Jr., convicted of murdering an auto mechanic, received an intravenous injection of sodium pentathol.

•On Dec. 8, 1993, the North American Free Trade Agreement is signed into law by President Bill Clinton. NAFTA had been criticized by billionaire third-party candidate Ross Perot, who argued that if NAFTA was passed, Americans would hear a “giant sucking sound” of American companies fleeing the United States for Mexico, where employees would work for less pay and without benefits.