Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
All · January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December

---

Recent changes · Editing guidelines

---

It is now 12:56 on Friday, July 3, 2020 (UTC) · Purge cache for this page

---

---

December 1: World AIDS Day

• 1828 – Returning to Buenos Aires with troops who fought in the Cisplatine War, Juan Lavalle (pictured) deposed provincial governor Manuel Dorrego, reigniting the Argentine Civil Wars.
• 1923 – The Gleno Dam in the Italian province of Bergamo failed due to poor workmanship, flooding the downstream valley and killing at least 356 people.
• 1959 – Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty, the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War, banning military activity in the Antarctic and setting the continent aside as a scientific preserve.
• 1966 – The first Gävle goat, a Swedish Yule goat tradition, was constructed in Gävle and then burned to the ground on New Year's Eve.
• 1991 – More than 92 percent of Ukrainian voters approved their country's independence as declared on 24 August.

9th Dalai Lama (b. 1805) · Jeni Bojilova-Pateva (b. 1878) · J. B. S. Haldane (d. 1964)

---

December 2

• 1823 – U.S. president James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
• 1852 – Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (pictured) established the Second French Empire, declaring himself Emperor of the French as Napoleon III.
• 1950 – Korean War: With the conclusion of the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River, the Chinese army expelled UN forces from North Korea.
• 1989 – The Malayan Communist Party and the Malaysian government signed a peace accord to end the 21-year Communist insurgency.
• 2001 – Less than two months after disclosing accounting violations, Texas-based energy firm Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, evaporating nearly $11 billion in shareholder wealth.

William Shirley (b. 1694) · John Breckinridge (b. 1760) · Chaudhry Muhammad Ali (d. 1982)

---

December 3

• 1904 – Himalia, the largest irregular satellite of Jupiter, was discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, California.
• 1910 – Freda Du Faur (pictured) became the first woman to climb Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand.
• 1959 – The current flag of Singapore was adopted, six months after the island became self-governing within the British Empire.
• 1979 – As per the results of a two-day referendum, the current Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran was adopted.
• 2009 – A suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, killed 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.

Gilbert Stuart (b. 1755) · Sheng Shicai (b. 1895) · Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll (d. 1939)

---

December 4: Navy Day in India

• 1829 – Sati, the Hindu funeral custom of a widow's self-immolation on her husband's pyre, was prohibited in parts of British India after years of campaigning by Ram Mohan Roy.
• 1872 – The American brigantine Mary Celeste (painting shown) was found apparently abandoned under circumstances that remain unknown.
• 1949 – Duncan Stewart, the British governor of Sarawak, was fatally stabbed in Sibu during his first visit to the colony.
• 1980 – The English rock group Led Zeppelin officially disbanded.
• 2006 – Six black teenagers assaulted a white student in Jena, Louisiana; the subsequent court cases became a cause célèbre for perceived racial injustice in the U.S.

John Leamy (d. 1839) · I. K. Gujral (b. 1919) · Hannah Arendt (d. 1975)

---

December 5: Krampusnacht in parts of Central Europe

• 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII (portrait shown) issued the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, giving Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
• 1757 – Seven Years' War: Prussian troops under Frederick the Great defeated Austrian forces at the Battle of Leuthen.
• 1945 – Flight 19, a squadron of five U.S. naval TBF Avenger torpedo bombers, disappeared in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle.
• 1965 – The "glasnost meeting" took place in Moscow, becoming the first demonstration in the Soviet Union after World War II and marking the beginning of the civil rights movement in the country.
• 2005 – The Civil Partnership Act came into force, granting civil partnerships in the United Kingdom rights and responsibilities identical to civil marriage.

Ealhswith (d. 902) · Clyde Cessna (b. 1879) · Princess Alice of Battenberg (d. 1969)

---

December 6: Saint Nicholas Day (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Finland (1917); L'Escalade begins in Geneva (2019)

• 1060 – Béla I was crowned King of Hungary in Székesfehérvár.
• 1847 – Mexican–American War: American and Mexican forces clashed at the Battle of San Pasqual, a series of skirmishes near San Diego, California.
• 1912 – The Nefertiti Bust (pictured), listed among the "Top 10 Plundered Artifacts" by Time magazine, was found in Amarna, Egypt, before being taken to Germany.
• 1989 – Claiming to be "fighting feminism", 25-year-old Marc Lépine killed fourteen women before committing suicide at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada.
• 1999 – The Recording Industry Association of America filed a lawsuit against the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster, alleging that the service facilitated widespread copyright infringement.

Marie Adélaïde of Savoy (b. 1685) · William Arnott (b. 1827) · Satoru Iwata (b. 1959)

---

December 7: Armed Forces Flag Day in India; National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day in the United States

• 574 – Suffering from mental illness, Roman emperor Justin II had his general Tiberius proclaimed Caesar, adopting him as his own son.
• 1869 – American outlaw Jesse James committed his first confirmed bank robbery in Gallatin, Missouri.
• 1942 – Second World War: A small unit of Royal Marines launched Operation Frankton, in which they damaged six ships in the port of Bordeaux in German-occupied France.
• 1975 – The Indonesian military invaded East Timor under the pretext of anti-colonialism, beginning an occupation.
• 2015 – The JAXA space probe Akatsuki (illustration shown) entered into orbit around Venus to study the planet's atmosphere, five years after its first attempt failed.

Abd al-Rahman al-Sufi (b. 903) · Charles Garnier (d. 1649) · Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)

---

December 8: Rōhatsu in Japan

• 1813 – Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 (audio featured) premiered in Vienna, conducted by the composer himself.
• 1854 – In his apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX proclaimed the dogmatic definition of the Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was conceived free of original sin.
• 1941 – The Holocaust: The Chełmno extermination camp in occupied Poland, the first such Nazi camp to kill Jews, began operating.
• 1972 – During an aborted landing and go-around while approaching Chicago's Midway International Airport, United Airlines Flight 553 crashed into a residential neighborhood, destroying five houses and killing forty-five people.
• 2009 – Bombings in Baghdad carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq killed at least 127 people and injured at least 448 others.

John Pym (d. 1643) · Father Mathew (d. 1856) · Yuliya Krevsun (b. 1980)

---

December 9: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Catholicism, 2019)

• 1775 – American Revolutionary War: After their loss in the Battle of Great Bridge, British authorities were forced to evacuate from the Colony of Virginia.
• 1905 – Legislation establishing state secularism in France was passed by the Chamber of Deputies.
• 1969 – U.S. secretary of state William P. Rogers proposed a plan, later called the Rogers Plan, for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt's and Jordan's acceptance of the plan over Palestine Liberation Organization objections led to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
• 1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox (patient pictured), making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated.
• 2016 – South Korean president Park Geun-hye was impeached, marking the culmination of the country's political scandal.

Gertrude of Brunswick (d. 1117) · Joe Kelley (b. 1871) · Denise Phua (b. 1959)

---

December 10: Human Rights Day; Nobel Banquet in Stockholm, Sweden

• 1768 – The first ion of the Encyclopædia Britannica was released in Edinburgh.
• 1884 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by American author Mark Twain was first published in the United Kingdom and Canada, two months earlier than in the US.
• 1911 – Calbraith Perry Rodgers (pictured) completed the first transcontinental flight across the United States.
• 1979 – The Kuomintang dictatorship of Taiwan arrested a large number of opposition leaders who had organized pro-democracy demonstrations, an incident cred with ending the party's rule in 2000.
• 1989 – At the first open pro-democracy demonstration in Mongolia, journalist Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announced the formation of the Mongolian Democratic Union, which would be instrumental in ending communist rule four months later.

Nikephoros III Botaneiates (d. 1081) · Caroline Mehitable Fisher Sawyer (b. 1812) · Abdullah Yusuf Ali (d. 1953)

---

December 11

• 1886 – The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
• 1899 – Second Boer War: In the Battle of Magersfontein, Boers defeated British forces trying to relieve the Siege of Kimberley.
• 1920 – Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army ambush of a British Auxiliary patrol in Cork, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in the city (aftermath pictured).
• 1998 – With the pilot believed to have been suffering from spatial disorientation, Thai Airways Flight 261 crashed in a rice paddy on its landing attempt at Surat Thani airport, resulting in 101 deaths.
• 2006 – The first action in the Mexican Drug War began as President Felipe Calderón ordered Mexican soldiers and Federal Police units into the state of Michoacán.

Al-Fath ibn Khaqan (d. 861) · George Mason (b. 1725) · Marco Pierre White (b. 1961)

---

December 12: Feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Catholicism); start of the Yule Lads' arrival in Iceland

• 627 – A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeated Emperor Khosrow II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh, near present-day Mosul, Iraq.
• 1388 – Unable to defend her possessions, Maria of Enghien sold the Lordship of Argos and Nauplia to the Republic of Venice.
• 1939 – The Royal Navy destroyer HMS Duchess (pictured) collided with HMS Barham, the battleship she was escorting, sinking with heavy loss of life.
• 1979 – A M_w8.2 earthquake struck just offshore of Tumaco, Colombia, causing at least 300 deaths, mostly by the resulting tsunami.
• 2012 – North Korea made its first successful satellite launch, as Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2 reached orbit.

Samuel Hood, 1st Viscount Hood (b. 1724) · Gustave Flaubert (b. 1821) · Evelyn S. Lieberman (d. 2015)

---

December 13: Friday the 13th

• 1643 – First English Civil War: Roundhead forces serving under Sir William Waller led a successful surprise attack on a winter garrison of Royalist infantry and cavalry.
• 1769 – Dartmouth College (building pictured), in what is now Hanover, New Hampshire, was established by a royal charter, becoming the last university founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
• 1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Japanese forces captured Nanking in China and then committed numerous atrocities over the next several weeks.
• 1989 – The Troubles: The Provisional Irish Republican Army engaged in a fierce firefight with the King's Own Scottish Borderers at a vehicle checkpoint complex in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland.
• 2011 – After murdering a woman at his home, a man threw grenades and fired a rifle at crowds in Liège, Belgium, killing 6 people and injuring 125 others, before committing suicide.

Heinrich Heine (b. 1797) · Taylor Swift (b. 1989) · Jill Craigie (d. 1999)

---

December 14: Feast day of Saint John of the Cross (Catholicism, Anglicanism, Lutheranism); Martyred Intellectuals Day in Bangladesh (1971); Monkey Day

• 1911 – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team (pictured) became the first people to reach the South Pole.
• 1963 – The dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir in Los Angeles failed, releasing a flood that killed five people and destroyed 277 homes.
• 1999 – Torrential rains caused flash floods in the Venezuelan state of Vargas, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of thousands of homes, and the complete collapse of the state's infrastructure.
• 2009 – The tino rangatiratanga flag, representing the Māori people, was officially recognized by the government of New Zealand.

Al-Ashraf Khalil (d. 1293) · Lupe Vélez (d. 1944) · KaDee Strickland (b. 1975)

---

December 15: Zamenhof Day (Esperanto culture)

• 1025 – Constantine VIII became sole Byzantine emperor, 63 years after being crowned co-emperor.
• 1778 – American Revolutionary War: In the Battle of St. Lucia, the Royal Navy prevented French Navy ships from reaching their garrison on Saint Lucia in the West Indies.
• 1939 – The American historical epic film Gone With the Wind (poster shown), adapted from Margaret Mitchell's Pulitzer Prize–winning novel of the same name, premiered in Atlanta, Georgia.
• 1961 – Former Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death after being found guilty on fifteen criminal charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Izaak Walton (d. 1683) · J. Paul Getty (b. 1892) · Surya Bonaly (b. 1973)

---

December 16: National Day in Bahrain (1961); Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

• 1598 – The Korean navy, led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, defeated a Japanese fleet at the Battle of Noryang, ending their invasions of the Korean peninsula.
• 1689 – The Parliament of England enacted the Bill of Rights, setting out basic civil rights and later influencing other documents such as the U.S. Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
• 1901 – English writer Beatrix Potter privately published 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit (illustration shown) after several publishers' rejections.
• 1930 – German-American gangster Herman Lamm, the "father of modern bank robbery", killed himself during a botched robbery attempt in Clinton, Indiana, rather than be captured by police.
• 2012 – A woman was gang-raped and fatally assaulted on a bus in New Delhi, generating public protests across India against the authorities for not providing adequate security for women.

Nathaniel Fiennes (d. 1669) · Bertha Lamme Feicht (b. 1869) · H. D. Kumaraswamy (b. 1959)

---

December 17

• 1790 – The Aztec sun stone, now a modern symbol of Mexican culture, was excavated in the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City.
• 1903 – Aboard the Wright Flyer (pictured) in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright conducted the first successful flights of a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
• 1939 – World War II: After sustaining moderate damage in the Battle of the River Plate two days earlier, the German cruiser Graf Spee was scuttled by its commander, Hans Langsdorff, to avoid its internment by Uruguay.
• 1989 – The Simpsons, the longest running American prime-time entertainment series, made its debut on the Fox television network with the episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".
• 2009 – The livestock transport ship MV Danny F II capsized and sank in bad weather off the coast of Lebanon, resulting in 43 human and more than 28,000 sheep and cattle deaths.

Domenico Cimarosa (b. 1749) · Willard Libby (b. 1908) · Eva Ekvall (d. 2011)

---

December 18: Qatar National Day (1878)

• 1499 – Muslims in the city of Granada began a rebellion against their Castilian rulers in response to forced conversions to Catholicism.
• 1867 – In Angola, New York, the last coach of a Lake Shore Railway train derailed, plunged 40 feet (12 m) down a gully, and caught fire, resulting in approximately 49 deaths.
• 1939 – Second World War: The Luftwaffe won a victory over the Royal Air Force in the Battle of the Heligoland Bight, greatly influencing both sides' future aerial warfare strategy.
• 1969 – On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the sixth James Bond film and the only one to star George Lazenby, premiered at the Odeon Leicester Square in London.
• 2009 – The Copenhagen Summit on climate change (participants pictured) ended with the drafting of the non-binding Copenhagen Accord.

Edith of Wessex (d. 1075) · Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (d. 1829) · Tara Conner (b. 1985)

---

December 19

• 1154 – Henry II was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey, London.
• 1776 – Thomas Paine (portrait shown) published the first in a series of pamphlets entitled The American Crisis, opening with the line: "These are the times that try men's souls."
• 1941 – Second World War: Six Italian Royal Navy divers on manned torpedoes detonated limpet mines, disabling four vessels, including two Royal Navy battleships.
• 1984 – China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997.
• 2013 – The European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory was launched, with the goal of constructing the largest and most precise star catalogue ever made.

Pope Urban V (d. 1370) · Grace Marie Bareis (b. 1875) · Stella Gibbons (d. 1989)

---

December 20

• 1860 – South Carolina became the first of eleven slave states to secede from the U.S., leading to the eventual creation of the Confederate States of America and later the American Civil War.
• 1948 – Indonesian National Revolution: Dutch forces captured the Indonesian Republic's temporary capital, Yogyakarta, and seized President Sukarno.
• 1971 – Two groups of French doctors involved in humanitarian aid merged to form Médecins Sans Frontières.
• 1987 – The deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history occurred when the MV Doña Paz (pictured) sank after colliding with an oil tanker in the Tablas Strait, Philippines, resulting in an estimated 4,000 deaths.
• 1999 – Portugal transferred the sovereignty of Macau, which it had administered since the mid–16th century, to China.

Jean Jannon (d. 1658) · Kan'ichi Asakawa (b. 1873) · Dawn Steel (d. 1997)

---

December 21

• 1124 – Lamberto Scannabecchi was elected pope, taking the name Honorius II.
• 1844 – The Rochdale Pioneers opened their store in Rochdale, England, forming the basis for the modern co-operative movement.
• 1919 – After serving two years in prison for encouraging people to resist military conscription, anarchist Emma Goldman (pictured) was deported from the United States to Russia.
• 1963 – An attempt by Greek Cypriot police to search certain Turkish Cypriot women in Nicosia escalated into island-wide violence, leading to 538 deaths and the displacement of nearly 27,000 people.
• 1995 – In accordance with the Oslo II Accord, Israeli troops withdrew from the city of Bethlehem in preparation for the transfer of its control to the Palestinian National Authority.

Sun Sheng (d. 956) · Joseph Carruthers (b. 1857) · Henry Reuterdahl (d. 1925)

---

December 22: December solstice (04:19 UTC, 2019); Yule begins; Yaldā Night in Iran

• 69 – Roman emperor Vitellius (depicted on coin) was captured by soldiers loyal to Vespasian and executed at the Gemonian stairs in Rome.
• 1769 – Having been soundly defeated in battle, the Qing dynasty agreed to terms of truce, ending the Sino-Burmese War.
• 1920 – The 8th Congress of Soviets approved the GOELRO plan, the first Soviet plan for national economic recovery and development.
• 1939 – Members of the All-India Muslim League observed a "Day of Deliverance" to celebrate the resignations of members of the Indian National Congress over the decision to enter the Second World War at the request of the United Kingdom.
• 2001 – Richard Reid unsuccessfully attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe on a transatlantic flight from Paris to Miami, Florida.

Étienne Martellange (b. 1569) · Jean-Victor Poncelet (d. 1867) · Alan Bush (b. 1900)

---

December 23: First day of Hanukkah (Judaism, 2019); Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; Festivus

• 583 – Yohl Ikʼnal acceded to the throne of the Maya city-state of Palenque.
• 1783 – George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis (painting shown).
• 1919 – The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was enacted, lifting most of the existing common-law restrictions on women in the United Kingdom.
• 1984 – An engine fire caused Aeroflot Flight 3519 to crash shortly after takeoff from Krasnoyarsk, USSR, killing all but one of the 111 people on board.

Francis Tresham (d. 1605) · Madam C. J. Walker (b. 1867) · Carla Bruni (b. 1967)

---

December 24

• 1814 – The United Kingdom and the United States signed a peace treaty in Ghent, present-day Belgium, ending the War of 1812.
• 1846 – The Sultanate of Brunei ceded the island of Labuan to the British Empire as a crown colony.
• 1955 – According to legend, the NORAD Tracks Santa program began after children began calling the Continental Air Defense Command Center to inquire about Santa Claus's whereabouts due to a misprinted phone number in an advertisement (pictured).
• 1979 – The Soviet government deployed troops in Afghanistan, starting the Soviet–Afghan War.
• 2008 – The Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, began attacks on several villages in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing hundreds and committing numerous atrocities.

Gongsun Shu (d. 36) · Johnny Gruelle (b. 1880) · Maria Koepcke (d. 1971)

---

December 25: Christmas (Western Christianity; Gregorian calendar); Quaid-e-Azam Day in Pakistan

• 1066 – Norman Conquest: William the Conqueror was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey, although he continued to face rebellions over the following years and was not secure on the throne until after 1072.
• 1809 – American physician Ephraim McDowell performed the world's first removal of an ovarian tumor.
• 1989 – Romanian Revolution: Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena were condemned to death on a wide range of charges and executed.
• 2009 – A fire destroyed Longford's 19th-century St Mel's Cathedral (restored cathedral pictured), considered the "flagship cathedral" of the Irish midlands.

Sverker I of Sweden (d. 1156) · Lady Grizel Baillie (b. 1665) · Joan Miró (d. 1983)

---

December 26: Boxing Day in the Commonwealth; Kwanzaa begins (African diaspora in the Americas)

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington led a column of the Continental Army across the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack against Hessian forces at the Battle of Trenton.
• 1825 – Imperial Russian Army officers led about 3,000 soldiers in protest against Nicholas I's assumption of the throne after his elder brother Konstantin removed himself from the line of succession.
• 1919 – American baseball player Babe Ruth (pictured) was sold by the Boston Red Sox to their rivals, the New York Yankees, beginning the 84-year-long "Curse of the Bambino".
• 1996 – The Federation of Korean Trade Unions called on its 1.2 million members to refuse to work, beginning the largest organized strike in South Korea's history.

Masrur al-Balkhi (d. 893) · Bazoline Estelle Usher (b. 1885) · Raja Pervaiz Ashraf (b. 1950)

---

December 27

• 1657 – Citizens of New Netherland presented the Flushing Remonstrance to Peter Stuyvesant, the director general, requesting an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship.
• 1845 – John L. O'Sullivan, in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argued that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country "by the right of our manifest destiny", popularizing the term's use.
• 1904 – The stage play Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, by Scottish author and dramatist J. M. Barrie (pictured), premiered in London.
• 1966 – A group of three men made the first descent into the Cave of Swallows, the largest known cave shaft in the world, in Aquismón, Mexico.
• 2002 – The company Clonaid claimed that a cloned human baby had been born, although it has yet to present any verifiable evidence.

George Whitefield (b. 1714) · George Cayley (b. 1773) · Chyna (b. 1969)

---

December 28: Proclamation Day in South Australia (1836)

• 893 – An earthquake destroyed the city of Dvin, Armenia, resulting in about 30,000 casualties.
• 1879 – The Tay Bridge, spanning the Firth of Tay in Scotland between Dundee and Wormit, collapsed during a violent storm while a train was passing over it, killing all on board.
• 1907 – The last confirmed sighting of the now-extinct huia (illustration shown) occurred in the Tararua Range on New Zealand's North Island.
• 1989 – In one of Australia's worst natural disasters, an earthquake measuring 5.6 M_L struck Newcastle, New South Wales, killing 13 people and injuring more than 160 others, and causing an estimated A$4 billion in damages.
• 2009 – A suicide bomber attacked a Shia procession commemorating the day of Ashura in Karachi, Pakistan, causing 43 deaths.

Wang Zongbi (d. 925) · Arthur Hunter Palmer (b. 1819) · Barbara Judge (b. 1946)

---

December 29

• 1779 – American Revolutionary War: Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell led a contingent of British soldiers to capture the city of Savannah, Georgia.
• 1911 – Sun Yat-sen (pictured) was elected the provisional president of the Republic of China in Nanjing.
• 1940 – The Blitz: The Luftwaffe conducted a major night bombing raid on the British capital, beginning what was later called the "Second Great Fire of London".
• 1959 – Physicist Richard Feynman gave a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" at Caltech, anticipating the field of nanotechnology.

Christina Rossetti (d. 1894) · Adele Zay (d. 1928) · Ann Demeulemeester (b. 1959)

---

December 30: Rizal Day in the Philippines (1896)

• 1460 – Wars of the Roses: Richard of York was killed and his army destroyed in the Battle of Wakefield at Sandal Magna in West Yorkshire, England.
• 1702 – Queen Anne's War: James Moore, the British colonial governor of Carolina, abandoned a siege against St. Augustine in Spanish Florida, retreating to Charles Town in disgrace.
• 1903 – In the deadliest single-building fire in United States history, the Iroquois Theatre fire in Chicago claimed over 600 lives.
• 1954 – The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation was established to consolidate criminal investigation and intelligence into a single agency.
• 2009 – Pro-government counter-demonstrators held rallies (pictured) in several Iranian cities in response to recent anti-government protests held on the holy day of Ashura.

André Messager (b. 1853) · Rosalinde Hurley (b. 1929) · C. Harold Wills (d. 1940)

---

December 31

• 1225 – Lý Chiêu Hoàng, the only empress regnant in Vietnam's history, married Trần Thái Tông to establish the Trần dynasty, with both the bride and groom seven years of age.
• 1857 – Queen Victoria selected Ottawa (Parliament Hill pictured), then a small logging town, to be the capital of the British colony of Canada.
• 1907 – New York City held its first annual ball drop event in Times Square as part of New Year's Eve celebrations.
• 1999 – Panama assumed full control of the Panama Canal Zone from the United States, in accordance with the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties, concluding a 20-year transition period.

Ahmad Maymandi (d. 1032) · Henri Matisse (b. 1869) · Henry Gerber (d. 1972)

---

---

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive
All · January · February · March · April · May · June · July · August · September · October · November · December

---

Recent changes · Editing guidelines

---

It is now 12:56 on Friday, July 3, 2020 (UTC) · Purge cache for this page