selected Anniversaries/December

December 1: World AIDS Day; Great Union Day in Romania (1918)

Juan Lavalle

• 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.
• 1918 – With the signing of the Act of Union, Denmark recognized the Kingdom of Iceland as a fully sovereign state in personal union through a common monarch.
• 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.
• 1971 – A period of political and economic reforms in the Socialist Republic of Croatia came to an end as the League of Communists of Yugoslavia decided to purge the state's reformist leadership.
• 1988 – Five armed men hijacked a bus carrying schoolchildren and a teacher in Ordzhonikidze (now Vladikavkaz, Russia), and were later given an Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft and ransom for the release of the hostages.

December 2

Benazir Bhutto

• 1899 – Philippine–American War: A 60-man Filipino rearguard was defeated at the Battle of Tirad Pass, but delayed the American advance long enough to ensure President Emilio Aguinaldo's escape.
• 1943 – World War II: The Luftwaffe conducted a surprise air raid on Allied ships in Bari, Italy, sinking twenty-eight vessels and releasing one ship's secret cargo of mustard gas.
• 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.
• 1988 – Benazir Bhutto (pictured) took office as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of a Muslim-majority state.
• 2001 – Less than two months after disclosing accounting violations, the Texas-based energy firm Enron filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, evaporating nearly $11 billion in shareholder wealth.

December 3

Christiaan Barnard

• 1283 – During the First Mongol invasion of Burma, the fort at Ngasaunggyan was overrun after a two-month siege.
• 1927 – Putting Pants on Philip, the first official film featuring the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy, was released.
• 1967 – Cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (pictured) performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
• 1979 – Following the result of a two-day referendum, the current Constitution of Iran was adopted.
• 1990 – Mary Robinson was inaugurated as the first female President of Ireland.

December 4: Navy Day in India

2004 transit of Venus

• 1639 – Jeremiah Horrocks and William Crabtree made the first successful observation of a transit of Venus (example pictured) from Earth.
• 1872 – The American brigantine Mary Celeste was found apparently abandoned under circumstances that remain unknown.
• 1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Navy launched a successful attack against the Pakistan Navy at Karachi, sinking three ships with no Indian casualties.
• 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 United States.

December 5: Krampusnacht in parts of Central Europe

Battle of Leuthen

• 1757 – Seven Years' War: Prussian troops under Frederick the Great defeated Austrian forces at the Battle of Leuthen (pictured).
• 1807 – Napoleonic Wars: British ships began a raid on Griessie after the Dutch captain refused a British demand for surrender.
• 1918 – National Guards and Sokol volunteers protested in Zagreb, leading to an armed clash with regiments of the Home Guard and former Common Army.
• 1933 – The prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States at the federal level ended when the Twenty-first Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, repealing the Eighteenth Amendment.
• 1958 – Britain's first motorway, the Preston By-pass, opened to the public.

December 6: Saint Nicholas Day (Western Christianity); Independence Day in Finland (1917)

Béla I of Hungary

• 1060 – Béla I (pictured) was crowned King of Hungary in Székesfehérvár.
• 1846 – 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, listed among the "Top 10 Plundered Artifacts" by Time, was found in Amarna, Egypt, before being taken to Germany.
• 1956 – At the Melbourne Olympics, 14-year-old swimmer Sandra Morgan became the youngest Australian to win an Olympic gold medal.
• 1988 – Self-government was granted to the Australian Capital Territory.

December 7: Feast day of Saint Ambrose (Christianity); National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day in the United States (1941)

A church after the 1988 Armenian earthquake

• 43 BC – Cicero, widely considered one of ancient Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists, was killed after having been proscribed as an enemy of the state.
• 1837 – British troops swiftly defeated rebels led by William Lyon Mackenzie and Anthony Van Egmond at the Battle of Montgomery's Tavern, the only major confrontation of the Upper Canada Rebellion.
• 1988 – A 6.8 M_s earthquake struck the Spitak region of Armenia, killing at least 25,000 people (aftermath pictured).
• 2011 – The United States transferred its last base in the Al Anbar Governorate to the Iraqi government, ending the Anbar campaign.

December 8: Feast of the Immaculate Conception (Roman Rite Catholicism); Rōhatsu in Japan

Model of IKAROS

• 1777 – American Revolutionary War: British commander-in-chief Sir William Howe withdrew his troops from the Battle of White Marsh to Philadelphia.
• 1963 – After being struck by lightning while in a holding pattern, Pan Am Flight 214 crashed near Elkton, Maryland, U.S., killing all 81 people on board.
• 1980 – English musician John Lennon was murdered at the entrance of the Dakota, his residence in New York City.
• 2009 – Bombings in Baghdad carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq killed at least 127 people and injured at least 448 others.
• 2010 – The Japanese experimental spacecraft IKAROS (model pictured) flew by Venus at a distance of 80,800 km (50,200 mi), completing its planned mission to demonstrate solar-sail technology.

December 9: International Anti-Corruption Day

The first computer mouse

• 1688 – In the only substantial military action in England during the Glorious Revolution, forces loyal to William of Orange were decisively victorious in the Battle of Reading.
• 1897 – French actress, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde.
• 1948 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Genocide Convention, which defines genocide in legal terms and advises its signatories to prevent and punish such actions.
• 1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse (pictured), hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
• 2008 – Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich was arrested for a number of corruption crimes, including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat that was being vacated by then-President-elect Barack Obama.

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

Raúl Alfonsín

• 1508 – The Papal States, France, Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire formed the League of Cambrai, an alliance against the Republic of Venice.
• 1847 – "Il Canto degli Italiani", the Italian national anthem since 1946, made its public debut in Genoa.
• 1901 – On the fifth anniversary of the death of their founder, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm.
• 1970 – Around the northern Thai village of Mae Salong, remnants of Chinese anti-communist forces now fighting on behalf of the Thai government launched a five-year campaign against local communist insurgents.
• 1983 – Raúl Alfonsín (pictured) became the first democratically elected president of Argentina to take office after more than seven years of military dictatorship.

December 11

Old Well at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• 1789 – The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (structure pictured), one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the only one to award degrees in the 18th century, was chartered.
• 1886 – The London-based football club Arsenal, then known as Dial Square, played their first match on the Isle of Dogs.
• 1920 – Irish War of Independence: Following an Irish Republican Army ambush of an Auxiliary patrol, British forces burned and looted numerous buildings in Cork.
• 2006 – Criticized worldwide as a "meeting of Holocaust deniers", the International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust opened in Tehran.

December 12: Beginning of the Yule Lads' arrival in Iceland

George W. Bush

• 627 – A Byzantine army under Emperor Heraclius defeated Emperor Khosrow II's Persian forces, commanded by General Rhahzadh, near present-day Mosul, Iraq.
• 1936 – Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China was kidnapped by Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, a former warlord of Manchuria.
• 1988 – Three trains collided near Clapham Junction railway station in London, killing 35 people and injuring 484 others.
• 2000 – The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Bush v. Gore that the recount of ballots cast in Florida for the presidential election be stopped, effectively making George W. Bush (pictured) the winner.
• 2021 – At the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Max Verstappen overtook Lewis Hamilton in the final lap to become the World Drivers' Champion.

December 13: Nanjing Massacre Memorial Day in China (1937)

Beyoncé

• 1809 – Napoleonic Wars: While transporting supplies to Guadeloupe, French commodore François Roquebert's expedition to the Caribbean captured the British frigate HMS Junon.
• 1928 – An American in Paris, a jazz-influenced orchestral piece by George Gershwin, premiered at Carnegie Hall in New York.
• 1991 – Croatian War of Independence: The Croatian Army retreated after the failure of Operation Whirlwind, destroying their tanks to avoid their capture.
• 2013 – Beyoncé (pictured) released her fifth studio album without any prior announcement or promotion; it sold 2.3 million copies before the end of the year.

December 14: Martyred Intellectuals Day in Bangladesh (1971)

Japanese battlecruiser Haruna

• 1650 – English domestic servant Anne Greene survived being hanged for infanticide.
• 1836 – The Toledo War, a mostly bloodless territorial dispute between Ohio and the Michigan Territory, was unofficially ended with a resolution passed by the controversial "Frostbitten Convention".
• 1913 – Haruna (pictured), the fourth and last Japanese battlecruiser of the Kongō class, was launched and went on to serve in both world wars.
• 2008 – During a press conference in Baghdad, Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at U.S. president George W. Bush and Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, yelling "This is for the widows and orphans and all those killed in Iraq".

December 15

American forces at the Battle of Arawe

• 1796 – War of the First Coalition: The French navy launched an expedition to Ireland to assist the Society of United Irishmen in a rebellion against the British.
• 1871 – Sixteen-year-old Ella Stewart sent the first telegraphed message from Arizona Territory.
• 1943 – World War II: Australian and American forces (pictured) began the Battle of Arawe against Japanese forces on New Britain as a diversion before a larger landing at Cape Gloucester.
• 1970 – The Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 touched down on the surface of Venus, making the first successful landing of a spacecraft on another planet.
• 2013 – The South Sudanese Civil War began when three opposition leaders voted to boycott the meeting of the National Liberation Council in Juba.

December 16: Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

Boston Tea Party

• 1598 – Led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Korean navy defeated a Japanese fleet at the Battle of Noryang, ending their invasions of the Korean peninsula.
• 1773 – American Revolution: A group of colonists threw chests of tea into Boston Harbor (pictured) to protest British taxation without representation.
• 1938 – Adolf Hitler instituted the Cross of Honour of the German Mother as an order of merit for German mothers with at least four children.
• 1997 – Amid an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, the British government banned the sale of beef on the bone for human consumption.
• 2012 – A woman was gang-raped and fatally assaulted on a bus in Delhi, generating protests across India against inadequate security for women.

December 17: Wright Brothers Day in the United States (1903); International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Memorial to victims killed during the 1970 Polish protests

• 942 – William Longsword of Normandy was ambushed and assassinated by supporters of Arnulf I, Count of Flanders, while the two were at a peace conference to settle their differences.
• 1948 – The Finnish Security Police was established to remove communist leadership from its predecessor, the State Police.
• 1967 – Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming near Portsea, Victoria; his body was never recovered.
• 1970 – Polish soldiers fired at workers (memorial pictured) emerging from trains in Gdynia, beginning the government's crackdown on mass anti-communist protests across the country.
• 2010 – Arab Spring: Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street vendor, set himself on fire in protest against police harassment, triggering the Tunisian Revolution.

December 18: National Day in Qatar (1878)

Atlas rocket carrying SCORE

• 1622 – Portuguese forces and their Imbangala allies defeated the Kongo army at the Battle of Mbumbi.
• 1932 – Playing indoors at Chicago Stadium on a modified American football field, the Chicago Bears defeated the Portsmouth Spartans in the first playoff game of the National Football League.
• 1958 – The United States launched SCORE (rocket pictured), the world's first communications satellite.
• 1963 – Ghanaian and other African students organized a protest in Moscow's Red Square in response to the alleged murder of medical student Edmund Assare-Addo.
• 2017 – An Amtrak Cascades passenger train derailed near DuPont, Washington, killing three people and injuring sixty-five others.

December 19

Frontispiece to A Christmas Carol

• 1828 – Nullification crisis: American vice president John C. Calhoun's South Carolina Exposition and Protest, written to protest the Tariff of Abominations, was presented to the South Carolina House of Representatives.
• 1843 – A Christmas Carol (illustration pictured), a novella by Charles Dickens about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation after being visited by ghosts, was published.
• 1983 – The Jules Rimet Trophy, awarded to the winner of the FIFA World Cup, was stolen from the offices of the Brazilian Football Confederation.
• 1997 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashed into the Musi River in Indonesia, killing 104 people.
• 2013 – The European Space Agency's spacecraft Gaia was launched with the goal of constructing the largest and most precise star catalogue ever made.

December 20

Russian and U.S. Implementation Force troops

• 1852 – Led by George Cathcart, British troops defeated Basuto and Taung forces at the Battle of Berea in present-day Lesotho, leading to an offer of peace from King Moshoeshoe I.
• 1940 – The superhero Captain America made his first published appearance in the comic book Captain America Comics #1.
• 1980 – NBC aired the American football match between the New York Jets and the Miami Dolphins without announcers.
• 1995 – Mandated by the Dayton Agreement that ended the Bosnian War, the NATO-led Implementation Force (troops pictured) began peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 1999 – Portugal transferred the sovereignty over Macau, which it had administered since the mid–16th century, to China.

December 21

Crew of Apollo 8

• 1620 – The Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower landed at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts, to establish the Plymouth Colony.
• 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.
• 1968 – Apollo 8 launched from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a trajectory to the Moon; its crew (pictured) became the first humans to visit another celestial body.
• 1988 – A bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103 detonated over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.
• 2018 – Operatives of the British Special Boat Service boarded the container ship Grande Tema in the Thames Estuary to detain four stowaways who had threatened the crew.

December 22: December solstice (03:28 UTC, 2023); Yule begins; Dongzhi Festival in China (2023)

Aerial view of the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill

• 856 – An earthquake registering an estimated 7.9 M_s struck the eastern Alborz mountains in Persia, causing an estimated 200,000 deaths.
• 1948 – Chaired by Sjafruddin Prawiranegara, the Emergency Government of the Republic of Indonesia was established to counter Dutch attempts to re-assert colonial control.
• 1988 – Brazilian unionist and environmental activist Chico Mendes was murdered at his home in Xapuri.
• 2008 – A dike ruptured at a waste containment area for a coal-fired power plant in Kingston, Tennessee, releasing 1.1 billion gallons (4.2 million m³) of coal fly ash slurry (aftermath pictured) in the largest industrial spill in US history.

December 23: Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; Festivus

Vincent van Gogh

• 1776 – American Revolutionary War: American troops, overwhelmed by British reinforcements, retreated from the Battle of Iron Works Hill.
• 1888 – During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (pictured) severed part of his left ear and gave it to a woman in a brothel in Arles, France.
• 1916 – First World War: Allied forces gained a strategic victory at the Battle of Magdhaba on the Sinai Peninsula.
• 1957 – Leading the Australia national cricket team, Ian Craig became the youngest-ever Test cricket captain at the time.
• 2008 – The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, announcing that it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential election.

December 24

Wreckage of the Tangiwai disaster

• 1871 – Aida, one of Giuseppe Verdi's most popular operas, made its debut in Cairo, Egypt.
• 1913 – Seventy-three people were crushed to death in a stampede after someone falsely yelled "fire" at a crowded Christmas party in Calumet, Michigan, U.S.
• 1918 – Forces united in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes defeated Hungarian forces to end the occupation of Međimurje.
• 1953 – A railway bridge at Tangiwai on New Zealand's North Island was damaged by a lahar and collapsed beneath a passenger train (wreckage pictured), killing 151 people.
• 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.

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

Halley's Comet

• AD 36 – After the death of Emperor Gongsun Shu of Chengjia, the empire was conquered by the Eastern Han dynasty.
• 1758 – Based on predictions by Edmond Halley in 1705, Johann Georg Palitzsch observed a comet that was later named Halley's Comet (pictured).
• 1927 – The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng, a revolutionary socialist political party that sought Vietnamese independence from French colonial rule, was formed in Hanoi.
• 1968 – In Tamil Nadu, India, families of striking Dalit workers were massacred by a gang, allegedly led by their landlords.
• 2000 – Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill officially adopting a new national anthem, with music by Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov originally composed for the anthem of the Soviet Union.

December 26: Boxing Day in the Commonwealth; Wren Day in Ireland and the Isle of Man; Kwanzaa begins (African diaspora in the Americas)

Johann Sebastian Bach

• 1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach (pictured) directed the premiere of Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes, his first Christmas cantata composed in Leipzig.
• 1800 – Philip Gidley King, Governor of New South Wales, ordered the formation of the Governor's Body Guard of Light Horse, described as the first full-time military unit raised in Australia.
• 1943 – World War II: In the Battle of Cape Gloucester, American and Australian forces bombarded Japanese positions on New Britain in the Territory of New Guinea while U.S. Marines invaded from two sides of the island.
• 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 Korean history.
• 2006 – Two earthquakes off the southwest coast of Taiwan damaged submarine communications cables, disrupting Internet services in Asia and affecting financial transactions.

December 27

Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō

• 1521 – A period of unrest in Wittenberg following the arrival of three men of the Radical Reformation, known as the Zwickau prophets, was quelled after Martin Luther's release from custody.
• 1657 – Citizens of New Netherland presented the Flushing Remonstrance to Peter Stuyvesant, the director general of the colonial province, requesting an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship.
• 1922 – The Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Hōshō (pictured), the world's first purpose-built aircraft carrier.
• 2002 – The human-cloning company Clonaid claimed to have performed the first reproductive cloning of a human, but provided no evidence for the claim.

December 28

Canadian Armour Passing Through Ortona

• 893 – An earthquake destroyed the city of Dvin, Armenia, resulting in about 30,000 casualties.
• 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces defeated a Confederate cavalry unit at the Battle of Van Buren, capturing three steamboats, Confederate troops, and various supplies.
• 1918 – At the Irish general election, Constance Markievicz was elected to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom as the first female member of Parliament, although she never took her seat.
• 1943 – World War II: After eight days of brutal house-to-house fighting, the 1st Canadian Infantry Division captured the Italian town of Ortona (depicted).
• 2018 – Netflix released Black Mirror: Bandersnatch, its first interactive content for adults.

December 29

• 1845 – The Republic of Texas was annexed by the United States, becoming the 28th state to be admitted to the Union.
• 1860 – To counter the French Navy's Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship, the Royal Navy launched HMS Warrior, the world's first iron-hulled armoured warship.
• 1913 – Cecil B. DeMille started filming Hollywood's first feature film, The Squaw Man (featured).
• 1915 – First World War: The French parliament passed a law granting the land occupied by British war graves as "the free gift of the French people".
• 1975 – Planted by unknown perpetrators, a bomb exploded at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and seriously injuring 74 others.

December 30: Rizal Day in the Philippines (1896)

Arroyo Seco Parkway

• 1702 – Queen Anne's War: James Moore, the British colonial governor of Carolina, abandoned a siege against St. Augustine in Spanish Florida and retreated to Charles Town in disgrace.
• 1813 – War of 1812: British forces captured Buffalo, New York, and burned down nearly all its buildings.
• 1940 – The Arroyo Seco Parkway (pictured), one of the first freeways built in the U.S., connecting downtown Los Angeles with Pasadena, California, was officially dedicated.
• 1958 – The Guatemalan Air Force fired on Mexican fishing boats that had strayed into Guatemalan territory, triggering an eight-month conflict.
• 2013 – Supporters of Congolese religious leader Paul-Joseph Mukungubila carried out a series of attacks on television studios, the airport and a military base in Kinshasa.

December 31: Saint Sylvester's Day (Western Christianity)

Parliament Hill, Ottawa

• 1857 – Queen Victoria announced the choice of Ottawa (pictured), then a small logging town, to be the capital of the British colony of Canada.
• 1950 – Korean War: North Korean troops attacked United Nations forces in the first of two battles at Wonju.
• 1993 – Brandon Teena, an American trans man, was raped and murdered in Humboldt, Nebraska; his death led to increased lobbying for hate crime laws in the United States.
• 1998 – The European Exchange Rate Mechanism froze the exchange rates of the legacy currencies in the eurozone, establishing the value of the euro.
• 2006 – War in Somalia: Transitional Federal Government forces attacked the last stronghold of the Islamic Courts Union in the town of Jilib.