• Today is Saturday, Dec. 1, the 336th day of 2012. There are 30 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On Dec. 1, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln sent his Second Annual Message to Congress, which was read aloud by the Secretary of the Senate. In it, Lincoln called for the abolition of slavery, saying that "in giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free," and toward the end of his message, wrote: "Fellow-citizens, we can not escape history. We of this Congress and this Administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves."
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• On this date:
• In 1824, the presidential election was turned over to the U.S. House of Representatives when a deadlock developed between John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. (Adams ended up the winner.)
• In 1860, the Charles Dickens novel "Great Expectations" was first published in weekly serial form.
• In 1921, the Navy flew the first nonrigid dirigible to use helium; the C-7 traveled from Hampton Roads, Va., to Washington, D.C.
• In 1934, Soviet communist official Sergei M. Kirov, an associate of Josef Stalin, was assassinated in Leningrad, resulting in a massive purge.
• In 1941, Japan's Emperor Hirohito approved waging war against the United States, Britain and the Netherlands after his government rejected U.S. demands contained in the Hull Note.
• In 1942, nationwide gasoline rationing went into effect in the United States.
• In 1952, the New York Daily News ran a front-page story on Christine Jorgensen's sex-reassignment surgery with the headline, "Ex-GI Becomes Blonde Beauty".
• In 1955, Rosa Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., city bus; the incident sparked a

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