December 22

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2006 Calendar

December 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar. There are 9 days left in the year.

[edit] Events

1603 - Mehmed III Sultan of the Ottoman Empire dies and is succeeded by his son Ahmed I.
1807 - The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the United States Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.
1809 - The Non-Intercourse Act, lifting the Embargo Act except for the United Kingdom and France, passes the United States Congress.
1849 - The execution of Fyodor Dostoevsky is canceled at the last second.
1851 - The first freight train is operated in Roorkee in India.
1864 - Savannah, Georgia falls to General William Tecumseh Sherman
1885 - Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, became the first Prime Minister of Japan.
1894 - The Dreyfus affair begins, in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason, on antisemitic grounds.
1910 - Chicago Union Stock Yards Fire, 21 firemen were killed.
1937 - The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.
1944 - German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium. See Battle of the Bulge
1944 - Vietnam People's Army is formed to resist Japanese occupation of Vietnam
1963 - Cruise ship Lakonia burns 180 miles north of Madeira with the loss of 128 lives.
1964 - Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted of obscenity
1974 - Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli vote to become the independent nation of Comoros. Mayotte remains under French administration.
1984 - Subway vigilante Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American youths on an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City.
1988 - Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, was assassinated.
1989 - After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship.
1989 - Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of |East and West Germany.
1989 - Two Tourist coaches collide on the Pacific Highway north of Kempsey NSW (Kempsey Bus Crash).
1990 - Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland
1997 - Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas were massacred by paramilitary forces.
1999 - The Spanish Civil Guard finds near Calatayud (Zaragoza) another van loaded by ETA with 750 kg of explosives (see related event on December 21 1999).
1999 - Tandja Mamadou became President of Niger.
2001 - Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai.
2001 - Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.
2001 - Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.