Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December
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| An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2006 day arrangement |
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December 1: Union Day in Romania (1918), World AIDS Day (awareness ribbon pictured)
- 1640 - John IV was declared King of Portugal, resulting in a war with Spain.
- 1822 - Pedro I was crowned the first Emperor of Brazil.
- 1955 - Rosa Parks was arrested for violating racial segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama after refusing to give her seat on a bus to a white man, precipitating the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- 1958 - The colony of Ubangi-Shari became an autonomous territory within the French Community and took the name Central African Republic.
- 1990 - Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres beneath the English Channel seabed.
Recent days: November 30 – November 29 – November 28
December 2: National Day in the United Arab Emirates (1971) and Laos (1975).
- 1823 - U.S. President James Monroe (pictured) issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
- 1848 - Franz Joseph became Emperor of Austria.
- 1942 - The Manhattan Project: Scientists led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the experimental nuclear reactor Chicago Pile-1.
- 1956 - Cuban Revolution: The yacht Granma, carrying Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement, reached the shores of Cuba.
- 1975 - The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government in Vientiane, forcing King Savang Vatthana to abdicate, and established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
Recent days: December 1 – November 30 – November 29
- 1854 - Miners at Eureka Stockade clashed violently with the police and the military in Ballarat, Victoria in Australia.
- 1904 - The Jovian moon Himalia was discovered by Charles Dillon Perrine at Lick Observatory in San Jose, California.
- 1937 - Issue 1 of The Dandy, the world's longest running comic, went on sale.
- 1967 - A team led by Christiaan Barnard at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky.
- 1999 - The Mars Polar Lander (pictured) reached Mars and disappeared.
Recent days: December 2 – December 1 – November 30
December 4: Navy Day in India
- 1639 - English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks made the first observation of a transit of Venus (2004 picture shown).
- 1676 - Scanian War: In an area north of Lund, Sweden, forces led by Swedish Field Marshal Simon Grundel-Helmfelt defeated the invading Danish army under the command of King Christian V of Denmark.
- 1791 - The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, was first published.
- 1829 - The practice of sati was formally abolished in British India after years of campaigning by Ram Mohan Roy against this Hindu funeral custom of widows immolating themselves.
- 1977 - The President of the Central African Republic had himself crowned as Emperor Bokassa I.
Recent days: December 3 – December 2 – December 1
December 5: Father's Day in Thailand, St Nicholas's Eve in various European countries.
- 1492 - Christopher Columbus became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
- 1590 - Niccolò Sfondrati became Pope Gregory XIV (pictured), succeeding Pope Urban VII who died two months earlier.
- 1766 - Auctioneer James Christie conducted his first sale in London.
- 1933 - Prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States officially ended when the 21st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
- 1936 - The 1936 Soviet Constitution, also known as the "Stalin" constitution, was adopted.
Recent days: December 4 – December 3 – December 2
December 6: Independence Day in Finland (1917), Constitution Day in Spain.
- 1768 - The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was published.
- 1917 - Halifax Explosion: A ship in Halifax Harbour carrying trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid caught fire after a collision with another ship and exploded, devastating Halifax, Canada.
- 1922 - The Irish Free State came into existence, one year after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
- 1957 - Project Vanguard: An attempt to launch the first American satellite failed with an explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral (pictured).
- 1989 - Marc Lépine killed 14 women in the École Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal.
Recent days: December 5 – December 4 – December 3
- 1732 - The Royal Opera House (original theatre pictured) opened at Covent Garden in London.
- 1815 - Michel Ney, Marshal of France, was executed by a firing squad near Paris' Jardin du Luxembourg for supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.
- 1941 - World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy made its attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii.
- 1949 - Chinese Civil War: The government of the Republic of China relocated from Mainland China to Taipei on the island of Taiwan.
- 1995 - The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
Recent days: December 6 – December 5 – December 4
December 8: Constitution Day in Romania (1991).
- 1854 - Pope Pius IX (pictured) proclaimed the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception.
- 1941 - World War II: Takashi Sakai and the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Hong Kong and quickly achieved air superiority by bombing Kai Tak Airport.
- 1941 - The Holocaust: The Chełmno concentration camp in Poland, the first Nazi extermination camp to use poison gas, began operations.
- 1980 - Mark David Chapman fatally shot former Beatle John Lennon outside the Dakota apartments in New York City.
- 1991 - Leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine met to dissolve the Soviet Union and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Recent days: December 7 – December 6 – December 5
December 9: Independence Day in Tanzania (1961)
- 1897 - Stage actress, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde.
- 1905 - Legislation on the separation of church and state in France was adopted, triggering civil disobedience by French Catholics.
- 1946 - The Doctors' Trial, the trial for crimes committed in Nazi human experimentation during World War II, began in Nuremberg, Germany.
- 1958 - The John Birch Society was founded to fight the perceived threat of communism in the United States.
- 1961 - Tanganyika (flag pictured) gained independence from Britain (Tanganyika would become part of Tanzania three years later).
Recent days: December 8 – December 7 – December 6
December 10: Constitution Day in Thailand (1932); Human Rights Day (1948).
- 1508 - The Papal States, France, Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire formed the League of Cambrai, an alliance against the Republic of Venice.
- 1868 - The first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London.
- 1898 - The signing of the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American War. Spain recognised the independence of Cuba and sold Guam, the Philippines and Puerto Rico to the United States for US$20 million.
- 1901 - The first Nobel Prizes were awarded, on the anniversary of the 1896 death of their founder, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel (pictured).
- 1936 - Edward VIII signed his instrument of abdication, becoming the only British monarch to voluntarily relinquish the throne.
Recent days: December 9 – December 8 – December 7
December 11: Republic Day in Burkina Faso (1958)
- 1282 - Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last independent Prince of Wales to rule in Wales, was killed in an ambush.
- 1602 - Geneva successfully repelled a late night attack by the combined forces of Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy and King Philip III of Spain (pictured), an event commemorated annually during the Fête de l'Escalade.
- 1931 - The Statute of Westminster gave complete legislative independence to the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
- 1946 - The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was established.
- 1981 - About 900 civilians in El Salvador were killed in the El Mozote massacre.
Recent days: December 10 – December 9 – December 8
December 12: Independence Day in Kenya (1963).
- 1531 - The Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary outside of modern-day Mexico City.
- 1897 - Belo Horizonte, the first planned city of Brazil, was inaugurated.
- 1901 - Guglielmo Marconi (pictured) received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, from Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall, England to Cabot Tower in St. John's, Newfoundland.
- 1915 - President Yuan Shikai of the Republic of China reinstated the monarchy and declared himself Emperor.
- 1964 - Jomo Kenyatta became the first President of the Republic of Kenya.
Recent days: December 11 – December 10 – December 9
December 13: Republic Day in Malta (1974), St. Lucia Day.
- 1545 - Counter-Reformation: The Council of Trent, an ecumenical council convoked by Pope Paul III (pictured) in response to the growth of Protestantism, opened in Trento, Italy.
- 1862 - American Civil War: Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside were decisively defeated in the Battle of Fredericksburg.
- 1981 - Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, suspended Solidarity and imprisoned many union leaders.
- 2003 - Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was found hiding in a spider hole during Operation Red Dawn and captured.
Recent days: December 12 – December 11 – December 10
- 1896 - Glasgow Subway, the third oldest metro system in the world, began operations in Glasgow, Scotland.
- 1911 - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen (pictured) and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole.
- 1918 - King Frederick Charles of Finland renounced the throne after the defeat of the German Empire in World War I.
- 1962 - Mariner 2 became the world's first spacecraft to successfully fly by Venus.
- 1995 - The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, France to end the Yugoslav wars.
Recent days: December 13 – December 12 – December 11
December 15: Hanukkah begins at sunset (Judaism, 2006); Zamenhof Day
- 1791 - The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution (pictured), collectively known as the United States Bill of Rights, were ratified.
- 1891 - James Naismith introduced the first version of basketball, with thirteen rules and nine players on each team.
- 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.
- 1994 - The web browser Netscape Navigator 1.0 was first released.
- 1995 - The European Court of Justice handed down the Bosman ruling, allowing footballers in the European Union to freely transfer from one UEFA Federation to another at the end of their contracts.
Recent days: December 14 – December 13 – December 12
December 16: National Day in Bahrain (1971), Victory Day in Bangladesh (1971), Independence Day in Kazakhstan (1991).
- 1598 - Admiral Yi Sun Sin's Korean navy defeated the Japanese fleet in the Battle of Noryang Point, the final naval battle of the Imjin War.
- 1653 - The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell (pictured) became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England.
- 1689 - The Parliament of England adopted the Bill of Rights, declaring that Englishmen possessed certain positive civil and political rights.
- 1773 - Boston Tea Party: To protest the British Tea Act, members of the Sons of Liberty dumped crates of tea bricks from three British East India Company ships into Boston Harbor.
Recent days: December 15 – December 14 – December 13
December 17: National Day in Bhutan (1907)
- 1862 - American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
- 1903 - Orville and Wilbur Wright aboard the Wright Flyer (pictured) conducted the first successful flight of a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
- 1944 - Malmedy massacre: Waffen-SS troops under Joachim Peiper shot at about 150 unarmed prisoners of war with machine guns near Malmedy, Belgium.
- 1989 - The Simpsons made their debut as an animated series on the Fox television network.
Recent days: December 16 – December 15 – December 14
December 18: Republic Day in Niger (1958)
- 218 BC - Second Punic War: Hannibal Barca (pictured) had his first great victory over the Roman Republic at the Battle of the Trebia.
- 1865 - Slavery in the United States was abolished when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted.
- 1961 - Indonesia invaded Dutch New Guinea to annex West Papua on New Guinea.
- 1966 - Epimetheus, one of Saturn's natural satellites, was discovered, but was mistaken as Janus. It took 12 years to determine that they are two distinct objects sharing the same orbit.
- 1987 - The first version of the programming language Perl was released by Larry Wall.
Recent days: December 17 – December 16 – December 15
- 1843 - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (pictured), a novella about Ebenezer Scrooge, was first published.
- 1972 - Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt aboard Apollo 17 returned to Earth. No human has visited the Moon since.
- 1974 - An early personal computer, the Altair 8800, went on sale.
- 1984 - The People's Republic of China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997.
- 1998 - The U.S. House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.
Recent days: December 18 – December 17 – December 16
- 1803 - As part of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans was transferred from France to the United States.
- 1860 - South Carolina seceded from the United States, leading to the American Civil War.
- 1917 - Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky (pictured) founded the Cheka, the first Soviet secret police.
- 1995 - The NATO-led IFOR began peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 1999 - Portugal transferred sovereignty of Macau to the People's Republic of China.
Recent days: December 19 – December 18 – December 17
- 69 - Vespasian (pictured) became the fourth Roman Emperor in the Year of the Four Emperors.
- 1913 - Arthur Wynne published the first crossword puzzle in the New York World.
- 1937 - The animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based on the fairy tale Snow White by the Brothers Grimm, premiered to a widely receptive audience.
- 1962 - Rondane National Park, Norway's first national park, was established.
- 1988 - Pan Am Flight 103: A terrorist bomb exploded and destroyed a Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270, including 11 on the ground.
Recent days: December 20 – December 19 – December 18
December 22: Winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere and Summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere (00:22 UTC, 2006); Last night of Hanukkah (2006).
- 1864 - American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea ended with the capture of Savannah, Georgia.
- 1885 - Itō Hirobumi, a samurai from Chōshū, became the first Prime Minister of Japan.
- 1989 - Berlin's historic Brandenburg Gate re-opened after nearly 30 years, symbolized the unity of East and West Germany.
- 2001 - Burhanuddin Rabbani of the Northern Alliance handed over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai (pictured).
- 2001 - CC the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.
Recent days: December 21 – December 20 – December 19
December 23: Hanukkah ends at sunset (Judaism, 2006); The Emperor's Birthday in Japan.
- 1823 - A Visit from St. Nicholas, later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, was first published.
- 1888 - During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (pictured) infamously cut off the lower part of his own left ear and gave to a prostitute.
- 1947 - The transistor, invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
- 1954 - The first successful human organ transplant: Drs. Joseph Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison transplanted a kidney to a patient from his twin brother.
- 1990 - The Republic of Slovenia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Recent days: December 22 – December 21 – December 20
- 1777 - Christmas Island, the oldest atoll in the world, was discovered by Captain James Cook.
- 1865 - Confederate veterans founded the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group.
- 1906 - Reginald Fessenden (pictured) transmitted the first radio broadcast.
- 1914 - British and German soldiers interrupted World War I to celebrate Christmas, beginning the Christmas truce.
- 1974 - Cyclone Tracy destroyed most of Darwin, Australia.
Recent days: December 23 – December 22 – December 21
December 25: Christmas in Western Christianity.
- 800 - Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, a title that had been out of use in the West since the abdication of Romulus Augustulus in 476.
- 1776 - George Washington and his army crossed the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton.
- 1868 - The Republic of Ezo was founded in Hokkaido by rebels loyal to the deposed Tokugawa shogunate. In the first elections ever held in Japan, they elected Admiral Enomoto Takeaki as their President.
- 1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union.
Recent days: December 24 – December 23 – December 22
December 26: Boxing Day; St. Stephen's Day; Kwanzaa
- 1790 - French Revolution: Louis XVI of France gave his royal assent to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
- 1898 - Pierre and Marie Curie (pictured) announced the discovery of a new element, later to be named radium.
- 1908 - Jack Johnson defeated Tommy Burns, becoming the first African American Heavyweight Champion of the World.
- 1991 - The Supreme Soviet officially dissolved itself and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
- 2004 - An earthquake in the Indian Ocean generated a tsunami that killed upwards of 200,000 people, mostly in Indonesia.
Recent days: December 25 – December 24 – December 23
- 1831 - Aboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin left Plymouth, England on what became an historic expedition to South America.
- 1904 - Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up, a stage play by J. M. Barrie, premiered in London.
- 1918 - A public speech by famed Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (pictured) in Poznań sparked the Greater Poland Uprising against Germany.
- 1945 - International ratification of the Bretton Woods Agreement, leading to the establishment of the International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
- 1949 - Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed the papers that relinquished sovereignty of most of Dutch East Indies, now known as Indonesia.
Recent days: December 26 – December 25 – December 24
December 28: Proclamation Day in South Australia (1836); Day of the Holy Innocents in Iberoamerica.
- 1065 - Westminster Abbey, built by Edward the Confessor between 1045 and 1050, was consecrated.
- 1835 - Osceola (pictured) led his Seminole warriors in Florida into the Second Seminole War against the U.S. Army.
- 1879 - The Tay Bridge in Dundee, Scotland collapsed as a train passed over it, killing all on board.
- 1895 - History of cinema: Using their cinematographe, the Lumière brothers showed motion pictures to a paying audience for the first time.
- 1999 - Saparmurat Niyazov was proclaimed President for Life in Turkmenistan.
Recent days: December 27 – December 26 – December 25
- 1170 - Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (pictured) was slain in his own cathedral by four knights of Henry II of England.
- 1845 - The Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States, becoming the state of Texas.
- 1890 - The United States Army killed over 400 members of the Great Sioux Nation at the Wounded Knee Massacre.
- 1911 - Sun Yat-sen was elected the first President of the Republic of China.
- 1937 - The Irish Free State was replaced by a new state called Ireland when a new constitution was adopted.
Recent days: December 28 – December 27 – December 26
December 30: José Rizal Day in the Philippines.
- 1853 - Gadsden Purchase: The United States bought 30,000 square miles of land south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande from Mexico for 10 million U.S. dollars.
- 1880 - Paul Kruger became the President of the Transvaal Republic.
- 1927 - The Ginza Line, the oldest subway line in Asia, opened in Tokyo, Japan.
- 1947 - King Michael was forced to abdicate as Romania became a People's Republic.
- 1965 - Ferdinand Marcos became President of the Philippines.
Recent days: December 29 – December 28 – December 27
December 31: New Year's Eve, Eid ul-Adha in Islam (2006), Hogmanay in Scotland.
- 406 - The Vandals, Alans and Suebians crossed the Rhine River to begin an invasion of Gaul.
- 1600 - The British East India Company (flag pictured) was founded by a Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth I.
- 1963 - The Central African Federation officially collapsed, eventually to become Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
- 1972 - American baseball player Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash en route to deliver aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua.
- 1999 - Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected President of Russia, resigned and named Vladimir Putin as Acting President.
Recent days: December 30 – December 29 – December 28
