The good, the bad and the ugly

“On Dec. 16, 1773, in Boston Harbor, a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the water. The tea was worth more than $700,000 in today’s currency.

“On Dec. 17, 1843, Charles Dickens’ classic story “A Christmas Carol” is published. Dickens’ father, a clerk in the navy pay office, was thrown into debtors’ prison in 1824, and 12-year-old Charles was sent to work in a factory. The miserable treatment of children and the institution of the debtors’ jail became topics of several Dickens novels.

“ On Dec. 14, 1909, the famous brick surface of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (the “Brickyard”) is completed.

“On Dec. 12, 1913, two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece “The Mona Lisa” is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as janitors on the morning of Aug. 21, 1911.

“On Dec. 13, 1950, an unknown actor named James Dean appears in a Pepsi commercial, dancing with other teens around a jukebox. Dean would later personify the angry, restless youth culture in films that made a deep impression on the American public, including “Rebel Without a Cause” (1955).

“ On Dec. 15, 1973, Jean Paul Getty III, the grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, five months after his kidnapping by an Italian gang. J. Paul Getty secured his grandson’s release by paying just $2.7 million, the maximum amount that he claimed he was able to raise.

“On Dec. 11, 1985, the Unabomber kills his first victim. Hugh Scrutton was killed in his computer store in Sacramento, Calif., by a mail package that exploded in his hands.