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December 6th
1768 ~ First edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published.
1884 ~ The Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, banning slavery, was ratified. 1889 ~ Death of Jefferson Davis, the first and only president of the Confederate States of America. 1920 ~ Birthday of Dave Brubeck, jazz musician. 1929 ~ Birthday of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Conductor. 1933 ~ James Joyce’s novel Ulysses was judged not obscene. 1947 ~ Everglades National Park in Florida was dedicated by President Truman. 1989 ~ Marc Lépine killed 14 women in Montreal, Quebec. 1992 ~ In Ayodhya, India, Hindus demolished the Babri Masjid, a 16th century mosque. 2002 ~ Death of Philip Berrigan, civil rights activist. |
December 7th
43 BC ~ Death of Cicero, Roman politician and author.
1787 ~ Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. 1817 ~ Death of William Bligh, British naval officer. 1905 ~ Birthday of Gerard Kuiper, Astronomer. 1928 ~ Birthday of Noam Chomsky, Linguist. 1941 ~ The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the U.S. into World War II. 1965 ~ Pope Paul VI and Patriarch Athenagoras simultaneously lift mutual excommunications that had been in place since 1054. 1970 ~ Death of Rube Goldberg, cartoonist. 1972 ~ Launch of Apollo 17, the last manned lunar landing mission. 1975 ~ Indonesia invaded East Timor. |
December 8th
1542 ~ Birthday of Mary Queen of Scots.
1864 ~ Death of George Boole, Mathematician. 1925 ~ Birthday of Sammy Davis Jr., Actor & Singer. 1939 ~ Birthday of James Galway, Irish flutist. 1978 ~ Death of Golda Meir, former Prime Minister of Israel. 1980 ~ Mark Chapman murdered former Beatle John Lennon. 1987 ~ The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed. 1991 ~ Leaders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine signed an agreement ending the U.S.S.R. and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States. 1993 ~ U.S. participation in The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed into law by President Clinton. 1994 ~ U.S. participation in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was signed into law by President Clinton. |
December 9th
1608 ~ Birthday of John Milton, Poet & Writer.
1793 ~ New York City's first daily newspaper, the “American Minerva”, is established by Noah Webster. 1868 ~ Birthday of Fritz Haber, German chemist, Nobel prize winner in 1918. 1937 ~ Battle of Nanjing began. The Rape of Nanjing followed. 1950 ~ Harry Gold sentenced to thirty years in jail for stealing United States nuclear weapon secrets for the Soviet Union. 1961 ~ Adolf Eichmann found guilty of war crimes in Israel. 1987 ~ First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. 1992 ~ Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana announced their separation. 1996 ~ Death of Mary Leakey, Archeologist & Anthropologist. 2004 ~ Canada's Supreme Court ruled that homosexual marriage was constitutional. |
December 10th
1815 ~ Birthday of Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer.
1822 ~ Birthday of César Franck, Composer & Organist. 1830 ~ Birthday of Emily Dickinson, Poet. 1896 ~ Death of Alfred Nobel, chemist, founder of the Nobel Prize. 1901 ~ Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize. 1941 ~ Japanese forces landed in the Philippines, captured Guam and sank the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse. 1953 ~ Dr. Albert Schweitzer was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 1965 ~ The Grateful Dead played their first concert, at the Fillmore in San Francisco. 1978 ~ Prime Minister Menachem Begin and President Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. 2002 ~ The High Court of Australia hands down its judgment in the internet defamation case of Gutnick v Dow Jones. |
December 11th
1725 ~ Birthday of George Mason, "Father of the Bill of Rights".
1803 ~ Birthday of Hector Berlioz, Composer. 1882 ~ Birthday of Max Born, physicist and 1954 Nobel laureate. 1918 ~ Birthday of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian author, 1970 Nobel laureate. 1931 ~ The Statute of Westminster gave legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland and Newfoundland. 1941 ~ Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. 1943 ~ King Edward VIII abdicated the throne in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Warfield Simpson. 1981 ~ Javier Pérez de Cuéllar becomes UN Secretary-General. 1994 ~ A small bomb exploded on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman. The bombing was a test of explosives that would have been used in Project Bojinka. 1994 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Russian troops into Chechnya. |
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. Uhuru! 1967 ~ Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones avoided a prison term for narcotics. 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. 1903 ~ Birthday of Carlos Montoya, Spanish-American guitarist who popularized flamenco guitar music. 1925 ~ Birthday of Dick Van Dyke, Actor & Comedian. 1941 ~ Hungary and Romania declare war on the United States. 1981 ~ Martial law imposed in Poland to try to control the Solidarity labor movement. 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. 1911 ~ First expedition reached the South Pole, led by Roald Amundsen. 1939 ~ USSR expelled from the League of Nations. 1946 ~ The United Nations General Assembly voted to establish the U.N. headquarters in New York City. 1962 ~ Birthday of Ginger Lynn Allen, Actress. 1981 ~ Israel annexed the Golan Heights. 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. 1958 ~ Death of Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist. 1961 ~ An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentenced Adolph Eichmann to death. 1966 ~ Death of Walt Disney, Animator & Cartoonist. 1982 ~ Spain reopened the border with Gibraltar. 1994 ~ Netscape Navigator 1.0 first released. |
December 16th
1689 ~ The English Bill of Rights adopted.
1770 ~ Birthday of Ludwig van Beethoven, Composer. 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. 1950 ~ President Truman proclaimed a national state of emergency in order to fight “Communist imperialism”. 1998 ~ President Clinton ordered a sustained series of air strikes against Iraq by American and British forces in response to Saddam Hussein's continued defiance of 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. 1942 ~ Britain condemned the massacre of Jews. 1961 ~ India seized Goa from Portugal. 1969 ~ The USAF, in closing Project Blue Book, 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. 2003 ~ “The Return of the King” opened in theaters worldwide. |
December 18th
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. 1957 ~ The first U.S. civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity went online. 1989 ~ The British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock dropped its policy on trade union closed shops. 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 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. 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. 1997 ~ "Titanic" the highest-grossing movie of all-time, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, opened in theaters. 1988 ~ The 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. 1989 ~ American troops invaded Panama to remove dictator Manuel Noriega. 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. |
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