|
December 12th
1531 ~ Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico City.
1911 ~ The capital of India moved from Calcutta to New Delhi. 1913 ~ Mona Lisa recovered in Florence, 2 years and 3 months after it was stolen. 1915 ~ Birthday of Frank Sinatra, Singer & Actor. 1927 ~ Birthday of Robert Noyce , one of the men credited with the invention of the integrated circuit. 1963 ~ Kenya gained its independence from the UK. 1979 ~ Rhodesia changed its name to Zimbabwe. 1996 ~ Uday Hussein is seriously injured in an assassination attempt. 1999 ~ Death of Joseph Heller, Author. 2003 ~ Death of Keiko, the killer whale in the “Free Willy” movies. |
December 13th
1204 ~ Death of Maimonides, Sephardi Philosopher.
1577 ~ Sir Francis Drake began his circumnavigation from Plymouth, England. 1642 ~ Abel Janszoon Tasman reached New Zealand. 1784 ~ Death of Samuel Johnson, Essayist. 1816 ~ Birthday of Werner von Siemens, Engineer, Inventor & Industrialist. 1925 ~ Birthday of Dick Van Dyke, Actor & Comedian. 1941 ~ Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. 1974 ~ Malta became a republic. 1996 ~ Kofi Annan elected as Secretary-General of the United Nations. 2003 ~ Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was captured near Tikrit. |
December 14th
1503 ~ Birthday of Nostradamus, Astrologer & Mathematician.
1546 ~ Birthday of Tycho Brahe, Astronomer. 1799 ~ Death of George Washington, first U.S. President. 1900 ~ Max Planck published his study of the quantum theory. 1902 ~ First telegraph cable laid across the Pacific Ocean. 1911 ~ First expedition reached the South Pole, led by Roald Amundsen. 1939 ~ USSR expelled from the League of Nations. 1962 ~ Birthday of Ginger Lynn Allen, Actress. 1962 ~ Mariner 2 became the first spacecraft to fly by Venus. 1995 ~ The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris to end the Yugoslav wars. |
December 15th
37 ~ Birthday of Nero, Roman emperor.
1791 ~ The U.S. Bill of Rights ratified. 1832 ~ Birthday of Gustave Eiffel, civil engineer. 1852 ~ Birthday of Antoine Henri Becquerel, physicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics. 1916 ~ France defeated Germany in Battle of Verdun. 1923 ~ Birthday of Freeman Dyson, Physicist. 1952 ~ Death of Wolfgang Ernst Pauli, Physicist. 1961 ~ An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentenced Adolph Eichmann to death. 1966 ~ Death of Walt Disney, Animator & Cartoonist. 1994 ~ Netscape Navigator 1.0 first released. |
December 16th
1689 ~ The English Parliament adopts the Bill of Rights.
1773 ~ The Boston Tea Party. 1775 ~ Birthday of Jane Austen, Writer. 1893 ~ World premiere of Antonin Dvorak's "New World Symphony". 1901 ~ Birthday of Margaret Mead, Anthropologist. 1917 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer. 1928 ~ Birthday of Philip K. Dick, Science Fiction Writer. 1944 ~ The Battle of the Bulge began. 1944 ~ A V-2 rocket hit the Rex Cinema in Antwerp killing 567 people. 1998 ~ Operation Desert Fox: American and British aircraft began to bomb Iraqi targets after Iraq obstructed UN weapons inspectors. |
December 17th
1830 ~ Death of Simón Bolívar, Latin American politician & Activist.
1843 ~ A Christmas Carol, 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. 1969 ~ The USAF, in closing Project Blue Book, announced that its UFO investigations found no evidence of extraterrestrial spacecraft. 1961 ~ India seized Goa from Portugal. 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. 1981 ~ Brigadier General James L. Dozier is abducted by the Red Brigades in Verona, Italy. 2003 ~ “The Return of the King” opened in theaters worldwide. |
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 ~ With the proclamation by Secretary of State William Seward, of the passing of the 13th Amendment, slavery was abolished in the United States. 1912 ~ Official presentation of the discovery of Piltdown Man. 1936 ~ Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist. 1946 ~ Birthday of Steven Spielberg, movie director. 1996 ~ "Ebonics" was declared a language or dialect by the outgoing school board of Oakland, California, whose vote was overturned by the incoming board. The Clinton administration subsequently declared "black English" a form of slang that did not belong in the classroom. 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
1733 ~ 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. 1962 ~ Nyasaland seceded from Rhodesia and Nyasaland. 1974 ~ The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, went on sale. 1979 ~ ”Kramer vs. Kramer”, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, opened in theaters. 1984 ~ The UK 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 Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal. 2003 ~ Libya announced that it would begin to destroy its weapons of mass destruction. |
December 20th
1833 ~ Birthday of Samuel Mudd, physician, convicted conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
1860 ~ South Carolina became the first state to secede from the US. 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 & Archbishop of Canterbury.
1804 ~ Birthday of Benjamin Disraeli, Politician & Writer. 1898 ~ Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium. 1914 ~ First feature-length silent film comedy, “Tillie's Punctured Romance”, was released, starring Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand and Charles Chaplin. 1933 ~ Newfoundland becomes a crown colony. 1940 ~ Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer. 1945 ~ Death of George S. Patton, U.S. General. 1958 ~ Charles de Gaulle became the first leader of the Fifth Republic. 1979 ~ The U.S. Federal government bailed out the Chrysler Corporation. 1988 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground. |
December 22nd
1858 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Puccini, Composer.
1880 ~ Death of George Eliot, Writer. 1939 ~ Death of Ma Rainey, Blues Singer. 1944 ~ German forces demanded the surrender of Allied troops at Bastogne, Belgium. 1989 ~ Ion Iliescu assumed executive power of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship. 1989 ~ Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened, ending the division of East and West Germany. 1990 ~ Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland. 2001 ~ The Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the government headed by President Hamid Karzai. 2001 ~ Richard Reid tried to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes. 2001 ~ Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born. |
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. 1888 ~ Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear. 1939 ~ Death of Anthony Fokker, aircraft manufacturer. 1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. 1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader. 1956 ~ British and French forces withdrawn from Suez, Egypt. 1979 ~ Soviet military occupies Kabul, Afghanistan. Feastdays & Holidays Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held. |
December 24th
1491 ~ Birthday of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.
1818 ~ Silent Night composed by Franz Xaver Gruber. 1818 ~ Birthday of James Prescott Joule, Physicist. 1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer. 1914 ~ World War I: The Christmas truce begins. 1914 ~ Death of John Muir, Naturalist. 1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan. 1962 ~ The last of the Bay of Pigs prisoners freed. 1968 ~ The Apollo 8 crew becomes the first manned space mission to orbit the Moon. 1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia. |
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 & Mathematician. 1821 ~ Birthday of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross. 1918 ~ Birthday of Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president. 1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot. 1973 ~ A programming bug routed all ARPANET traffic through the server at Harvard, causing the server to freeze - crashing the network. 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). Feastdays & Holidays The Nativity of Jesus. |
December 26th
1610 ~ 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. 1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist. 1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician. 1941 ~ Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress. 1948 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty arrested in Hungary. 1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated. 1991 ~ Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolves the USSR. 2004 ~ An Indian Ocean tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in 13 countries. |
| All times are GMT -5. The time now is 02:19 AM. |
Powered by: vBulletin Version 3.0.10
Copyright ©2000 - 2026, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.