Today in History: December 15, the Bill of Rights takes effect

Today is Monday, Dec. 15, the 349th day of 2025. There are 16 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Dec. 15, 1791, the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution, went into effect following ratification by Virginia.

Also on this date:

In 1890, Hunkpapa Lakota Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, during a confrontation with Indian agency police.

In 1939, the Civil War motion picture epic ''Gone with the Wind,'' starring Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable, had its world premiere in Atlanta.

In 1944, a single-engine plane carrying bandleader Glenn Miller, a major in the U.S. Army Air Forces, disappeared over the English Channel while en route to Paris.

In 2011, the flag used by U.S. forces in Iraq was lowered in a Baghdad airport ceremony, marking the formal end of the American military mission in that country. The war left 110,000 Iraqis and 4,500 Americans dead.

In 2013, Nelson Mandela was laid to rest in a state funeral, ending a 10-day mourning period for South Africa's first Black president. Mandela died on Dec. 5 of that year at the age of 95.

In 2016, a federal jury in Charleston, South Carolina, convicted Dylann Roof of the racist killings of nine Black church members who had welcomed him into their Bible study gathering. The following year he would become the first person in the U.S. sentenced to death for a federal hate crime, a sentence upheld in 2021.