On this day: December 31
POSTED: 02:25 AM PST Dec 29, 2012
UPDATED: 11:00 PM PST Dec 30, 2012
Times Square holds its first New Year's Eve celebration, the board game Monopoly is patented, "Calvin and Hobbes" say goodbye, and the U.S. relinquishes control of the Panama Canal, all on this day.
German Federal Archive/Wikimedia Commons
1951: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe following World War II. Pictured is a construction project in Recklinghausen, Germany, in the early 1950s that was undertaken with funding from the Marshall Plan.
