December 17th
 

1778 ~ Birthday of Humphry Davy, chemist.

1830 ~ Death of Simón Bolívar, Latin American politician & Activist.

1843 ~ ”A Christmas Carol”, a fictional short story by Charles Dickens, was first published.

1903 ~ The first controlled, powered heavier-than-air flight occurred when the Wright brothers took to the air, both of them twice at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1961 ~ India seized Goa from Portugal.

1969 ~ U.S. Air Force announced that its UFO investigations found no evidence of extraterrestrial spacecraft.

1973 ~ The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses.

1982 ~ ”Tootsie” opened in theaters.

1989 ~ Brazil held its first free election in 25 years.

1989 ~ The first half-hour length episode of The Simpsons debuted with their Christmas special, "Simpsons Roasting Over an Open Fire".

December 18th
 

1642 ~ Abel Tasman landed at Mohua Golden Bay becoming the first European in New Zealand.

1737 ~ Death of Antonio Stradivari, Italian violin maker.

1786 ~ Birthday of Carl Maria von Weber, Composer.

1863 ~ Birthday of Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria (d. 1914)

1865 ~ Slavery was abolished in the United States, with the passing of the 13th Amendment.

1912 ~ Piltdown Man "discovered"

1916 ~ Battle of Verdun ended, with an estimated 700,000 casualties.

1936 ~ Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1946 ~ Birthday of Steven Spielberg, movie director.

2002 ~ California Governor Grey Davis announced that the state would face a budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier. The budget issue was used to support his 2003 recall from office.

December 19th
 

1732 ~ Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard's Almanack.

1848 ~ Death of Emily Brontë, Author.

1888 ~ Birthday of Fritz Reiner, Conductor.

1906 ~ Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician.

1961 ~ The Indian Army invaded the Portuguese colony of Goa.

1962 ~ Nyasaland seceded from Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

1974 ~ The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, went on sale.

1979 ~ ”Kramer vs. Kramer” opened in theaters, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep.

1984 ~ The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

1988 ~ The U.S. House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.

December 20th
 

1833 ~ Birthday of Samuel Mudd, physician, possible conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1860 ~ South Carolina became the first state to secede from the United States.

1901 ~ Birthday of Robert Van de Graaff, Physicist & Inventor.

1915 ~ Last Australian troops evacuated from Gallipoli.

1968 ~ Death of John Steinbeck, writer.

1982 ~ Death of Artur Rubinstein, musician.

1995 ~ NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia.

1996 ~ Death of Carl Sagan, Astronomer & Writer.

1999 ~ Vermont's Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as married heterosexual couples.

1999 ~ Macau was returned to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.

December 21st
 

1118 ~ Birthday of Thomas Becket, lord chancellor and archbishop of Canterbury.

1375 ~ Death of Giovanni Boccaccio, writer.

1804 ~ Birthday of Benjamin Disraeli, Politician & Writer.

1872 ~ HMS Challenger sailed from Portsmouth on the 4 year scientific expedition that would lay the foundation for the science of oceanography.

1898 ~ Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.

1914 ~ First feature-length silent film comedy, “Tillie's Punctured Romance”, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charles Chaplin, was released.

1940 ~ Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer.

1945 ~ Death of George S. Patton, U.S. General.

1988 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground.

1999 ~ The Spanish Civil Guard intercepted a Madrid-bound van driven by ETA and loaded with 950 kg of explosives. The next day, another van loaded with 750 kg was found not far from there. Shortly after 9/11, ETA confirmed their plan had been to blow down Torre Picasso.

December 22nd
 

1858 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Puccini, Composer.

1880 ~ Death of George Eliot, Writer

1898 ~ The Dreyfus affair began in France when Alfred Dreyfus was wrongly convicted of treason.

1939 ~ Death of Ma Rainey, blues singer.

1944 ~ German forces demanded the surrender of Allied troops at Bastogne, Belgium.

1989 ~ Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship.

1989 ~ Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

1990 ~ Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland.

2001 ~ Birthday of Cc the cat, first cloned pet.

2001 ~ Richard Reid tried to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes.

December 23rd

1790 ~ Birthday of Jean François Champollion, Egyptologist. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

1823 ~ “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, by Clement Clarke Moore, was first published

1834 ~ Death of Thomas Malthus, Demographer and Economist

1939 ~ Death of Anthony Fokker, aircraft manufacturer.

1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1954 ~ The first organ transplant of a kidney was performed by Doctors Murray and Harrison in Boston. Dr. Murray would later win a Nobel prize for his pioneering work.

1979 ~ Soviet military occupies Kabul, Afghanistan.

2012 ~ The Mayan calendar comes to an end (may also be December 21). This day was predicted by the Mayans to be when life on Earth is going to end.

Feastdays & Holidays

Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held.

December 24th
 

1491 ~ Birthday of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuit order)

1818 ~ Silent Night composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.

1818 ~ Birthday of James Prescott Joule, Physicist.

1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer.

1914 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Naturalist.

1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan.

1968 ~ The crew of the USS Pueblo was released by North Korea after being held for 11 months on suspicion of spying.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia.

2003 ~ The Spanish police prevented ETA from detonating 50 kg of explosives at 3:55 PM inside Madrid's busy Chamartín Station.

December 25th
 

800 ~ Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1066 ~ Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1223 ~ Saint Francis of Assisi assembles the first Nativity scene.

1642 ~ Birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, physicist and mathematician.

1821 ~ Birthday of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

1914 ~ World War I: The "Christmas truce" began.

1918 ~ Birthday of Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president.

1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot.

1989 ~ Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator (executed).

1991 ~ Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).

December 26th
 

1620 ~ Elizabeth Bathory's crimes were uncovered.

1791 ~ Birthday of Charles Babbage, Mathematician and designer of computing machines.

1792 ~ Final trial of Louis XVI of France began in Paris.

1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician.

1925 ~ Turkey adopted the Gregorian Calendar.

1933 ~ FM radio was patented.

1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.

1982 ~ TIME magazine's “Man of the Year” was for the first time given to a non-human; a computer.

1998 ~ Iraq announced its intention to fire upon US and British warplanes that patroled the northern and southern "no-fly zones".

December 27th
 

1571 ~ Birthday of Johannes Kepler, astronomer.

1822 ~ Birthday of Louis Pasteur, Scientist.

1831 ~ Charles Darwin embarked on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

1904 ~ James Barrie's play Peter Pan premiers in London.

1943 ~ Birthday of Cokie Roberts, journalist.

1949 ~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted Indonesia sovereignty.

1978 ~ Spain became a democracy after 40 years of dictatorship.

1985 ~ Naturalist Dian Fossey is found murdered in Rwanda.

1985 ~ Palestinian guerrillas killed twenty people inside Rome and Vienna airports.

2002 ~ Two truck bombs kill 72 and wound 200 at the pro-Moscow headquarters of the Chechen government in Grozny, Chechnya.

January1st
 

45 BC ~ 45 BC - Julian calendar went into effect.

404 ~ Last known gladiator competition in Rome.

1752 ~ Birthday of Betsy Ross, American seamstress.

1801 ~ Discovery of 1 Ceres, first known asteroid.

1879 ~ Birthday of E. M. Forster, English novelist.

1892 ~ Ellis Island opens to begin accepting immigrants to the United States.

1894 ~ Birthday of Satyendra Nath Bose, Indian mathematician

1901 ~ Establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia (Federation).

1983 ~ The ARPANET officially changed to use the Internet Protocol, creating the Internet.

2002 ~ Euro banknotes and coins became legal tender.

January 2nd
 

1492 ~ Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrendered.

1727 ~ Birthday of James Wolfe, British general in French and Indian War.

1757 ~ The United Kingdom captures Calcutta, India.

1872 ~ Brigham Young was arrested for bigamy (25 wives).

1882 ~ John D. Rockefeller united his oil holdings into the Standard Oil trust.

1901 ~ Female fair-ground boxer, Mrs. Grace O'Malley, mother of 6, from Great Howard street, Liverpool, KO'ed twelve Yorkshire miners in an all comers bout, with a prize purse of five shillings

1904 ~ Death of James Longstreet, Confederate general.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science fiction author.

1929 ~ Canada and the United States agreed on a plan to preserve Niagara Falls.

1942 ~ World War II: Manila was captured by Japanese forces.

January 3rd
 

106 B.C. ~ Birthday of Cicero, Roman statesman and philosopher.

1521 ~ Pope Leo X excommunicated Martin Luther.

1833 ~ Britain seized control of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic.

1892 ~ Birthday of J. R. R. Tolkien, South African-born writer and philologist.

1899 ~ The first known use of the word automobile, in an editorial in the New York Times.

1925 ~ Benito Mussolini announced that he was taking dictatorial powers over Italy.

1945 ~ Birthday of Stephen Stills, American singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

1956 ~ Birthday of Mel Gibson, Australian actor and director.

1979 ~ Death of Conrad Hilton, American hotelier.

1993 ~ In Moscow, George Bush and Boris Yeltsin signed the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START).

January 4th
 

1643 ~ Birthday of Isaac Newton, English scientist and philosopher.

1710 ~ Birthday of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Composer.

1785 ~ Birthday of Jakob Grimm, German philologist, one half of the Brothers Grimm.

1809 ~ Birthday of Louis Braille, Inventor of a writing system for the blind.

1847 ~ Samuel Colt sold his first revolver pistol to the United States government.

1884 ~ The Fabian Society was founded in London.

1948 ~ Burma gained its independence from the United Kingdom.

1961 ~ Death of Erwin Schrödinger, Austrian physicist.

1965 ~ Death of T. S. Eliot, Anglo-American poet.

1967 ~ Death of Donald Campbell when his jet-powered “Bluebird K7” crashed during an attempt to break the water speed record.

2004 ~ Spirit, the first of two NASA Mars Rovers, landed successfully on Mars.