Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December

Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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December 1: World AIDS Day; Great Union Day in Romania; Rosa Parks Day in some states and cities in the United States

Pedro I of Brazil, later also Pedro IV of Portugal

1800 – French Revolutionary Wars: Austrian forces, led by Archduke John of Austria, defeated two divisions of the French First Republic, led by Paul Grenier, at the Battle of Ampfing.
1822 – Pedro I was crowned the first emperor of Brazil, seven weeks after his reign began on his 24th birthday.
1955 – Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man in Montgomery, Alabama, United States, sparking the Montgomery bus boycott.
1974 – Two Boeing 727s, TWA Flight 514 and Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, crashed in the eastern United States in unrelated circumstances, killing 95 people on board both aircraft.
2019 – Vivianne Miedema scored six goals and had four assists for Arsenal W.F.C. in their 11–1 victory over Bristol City W.F.C., which broke the record for the most goals scored in a FA Women's Super League match.

Giovanni Morone (d. 1580)
Ardina Moore (b. 1930)
Ueli Maurer (b. 1950)
Kenshiro Abbe (d. 1985)

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December 2

1928 Ford Model A

1823 – U.S. president James Monroe issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
1927 – The Ford Motor Company introduced the second version of the Model A (pictured), its first new model in 18 years.
1950 – Korean War: UN forces began a retreat from North Korea following defeat at the Battle of the Ch'ongch'on River.
1989 – The Malayan Communist Party and the Malaysian government signed a peace accord to end a 21-year communist insurgency.
2015 – In San Bernardino, California, a married couple carried out a mass shooting at a Christmas party before fleeing and dying in a shootout with police.

Irene Vanbrugh (b. 1872)
Allen Wright (d. 1885)
Austen Deans (b. 1915)
Inori Minase (b. 1995)

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December 3

Coat of arms of Singapore

1800 – War of the Second Coalition: French forces defeated Austrian and Bavarian troops at the Battle of Hohenlinden, eventually resulting in the Austrians signing the Treaty of Lunéville.
1910 – Freda Du Faur became the first woman to climb Aoraki / Mount Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand.
1959 – The current flag and coat of arms of Singapore (pictured) were adopted, six months after the island became self-governing within the British Empire.
1979 – Eleven people were crushed in a human stampede at a concert by British rock band the Who in Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S.
2009 – A suicide bombing in Mogadishu, Somalia, killed 25 people, including three ministers of the Transitional Federal Government.

Gilbert Stuart (b. 1755)
Mary Baker Eddy (d. 1910)
Paul J. Crutzen (b. 1933)
Prince Sverre Magnus of Norway (b. 2005)

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December 4: Navy Day in India

The Battle of Pontvallain

1370 – Hundred Years' War: In two separate engagements in the Battle of Pontvallain (depicted), French forces wiped out an English army which had split up because of a dispute between the commanders.
1905 – The Great Seimas of Vilnius met to discuss national concerns within Lithuania: they decided to demand wide political autonomy within the Russian Empire.
1915 – World War I: Senior British and French figures, including prime ministers H. H. Asquith and Aristide Briand, met at Calais to discuss the future of the Salonika Front.
1992 – U.S. president George H. W. Bush ordered American troops into Somalia to help provide humanitarian aid and restore order during the ongoing Somali Civil War.

John Cotton (b. 1585)
Gregor MacGregor (d. 1845)
Gabriel Dessauer (b. 1955)
Hannah Arendt (d. 1975)

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December 5: Krampusnacht in parts of Central Europe

Nelson's Column during the Great Smog of London

1484 – Pope Innocent VIII issued the papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus, which gave the Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer the explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
1952 – The "Great Smog of London" (pictured) began and lasted for five days, causing 12,000 deaths and leading to the Clean Air Act 1956.
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.
1972 – Gough Whitlam took office as the 21st Prime Minister of Australia and formed a duumvirate with his deputy Lance Barnard, ending 23 years of Liberal–Country Party government.

Phillis Wheatley (d. 1784)
Arthur Currie (b. 1875)
Louise Bryant (b. 1885)
Latifa bint Mohammed Al Maktoum (b. 1985)

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December 6: Saint Nicholas's Day (Western Christianity); White Ribbon Day in Canada; Independence Day in Finland (1917)

Béla I of Hungary

1060 – Béla I (pictured) was crowned King of Hungary in Székesfehérvár.
1865 – Slavery in the United States was officially abolished with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
1942 – The Holocaust: Members of the German Ordnungspolizei massacred 31 people in Stary Ciepielów and Rekówka within occupied Poland for helping Jews.
1975 – Four members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army took two people hostage in a house on Balcombe Street in London, surrendering six days later.
1990 – An Italian Air Force military jet, abandoned by its pilot after an on-board fire, crashed into a high school near Bologna, killing 12 students and injuring 88 other people.

Maria de Dominici (b. 1645)
Marie Adélaïde of Savoy (b. 1685)
Winifred Hoernlé (b. 1885)
Devan Nair (d. 2005)

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

Solidus of Tiberius

574 – Suffering from mental illness, Eastern Roman emperor Justin II had his general Tiberius proclaimed Caesar, adopting him as his own son.
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Prairie Grove ended a Confederate attempt to regain control of northwestern Arkansas.
1972 – Construction workers found the remains of Martin Bormann near Lehrter Station in Berlin, ending a decades-long search after his conviction in absentia at the Nuremberg trials.
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.
2014 - The annual furry convention Midwest FurFest was targeted in an unsolved chlorine gas attack.

Charles Garnier (d. 1649)
Theodor Schwann (b. 1810)
Joseph Cook (b. 1860)
Nicholas Hoult (b. 1989)

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December 8: Rōhatsu in Japan; Nations, Nationalities and Peoples' Day in Ethiopia; Liberation Day in Syria

Portrait of Margaret Hughes by Peter Lely, 1672

1660 – Margaret Hughes (pictured) appeared professionally on the English stage; she is thought to have been the first woman to do so.
1880 – At an assembly of 10,000 Boers, Paul Kruger announced the fulfilment of the decision to restore the government and volksraad of the South African Republic.
1987 – A man shot and killed eight people at the Australia Post building in Melbourne, before jumping to his death.
2010 – The Japanese experimental spacecraft IKAROS flew by Venus at a distance of 80,800 km (50,200 mi), completing its planned mission to demonstrate solar-sail technology.
2024 – The Syrian civil war ends when Bashar al-Assads' party, the Syrian Ba'ath Party, surrenders to the Syrian opposition.

Adolph Menzel (b. 1815)
Georges Feydeau (b. 1862)
Ann T. Bowling (d. 2000)
Robert Austin Markus (d. 2010)

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December 9: International Anti-Corruption Day

Electron microscope picture of smallpox

1775 – American Revolutionary War: After their loss in the Battle of Great Bridge, British authorities were forced to evacuate from the Colony of Virginia.
1940 – Second World War: British and Commonwealth forces began Operation Compass, the first major Allied military operation of the Western Desert campaign.
1965 – A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in midwestern North America before crash landing in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
1979 – A World Health Organization commission of scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox (pictured), making it the only human infectious disease to date to have been completely eradicated.
1990 – In Serbia's first multi-party election, Slobodan Milošević won the presidential election and the Socialist Party of Serbia won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.

Nasr ibn Sayyar (d. 748)
Isabelle Urquhart (b. 1865)
Grete Wiesenthal (b. 1885)
McKayla Maroney (b. 1995)

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

Huckleberry Finn depicted by E. W. Kemble

1884 – Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Finn depicted) by American author Mark Twain was first published in the United Kingdom and Canada, two months earlier than in the US.
1890 – The New York World Building , the then-tallest building in the United States at a height of 110 meters, is completed in New York City.
1907 – During the Brown Dog affair, protesters marched through London and clashed with police officers in Trafalgar Square over the existence of a memorial for animals that had been vivisected.
1942 – Edward Raczyński of the Polish government-in-exile issued a note that was the first official report on the Holocaust.
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.

Margaret Eliza Maltby (b. 1860)
Giosue Gallucci (b. 1864)
Pío Romero Bosque (d. 1935)
Sultan Kösen (b. 1982)

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December 11

Lunar Roving Vehicle, driven by Gene Cernan

1899 – Second Boer War: In the Battle of Magersfontein, Boers defeated British forces trying to relieve the Siege of Kimberley.
1925 – Pope Pius XI promulgated the encyclical Quas primas, establishing the Feast of Christ the King.
1972 – Apollo 17 (Lunar Roving Vehicle pictured), the last Apollo mission, landed on the Moon.
1998 – With its pilot believed to have been suffering from spatial disorientation, Thai Airways Flight 261 crashed in a swamp on approach to Surat Thani Airport, resulting in 101 deaths.
2005 – Demonstrations in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, against recent violence towards locals turned into a series of race riots.

Pieter Nuyts (d. 1655)
Isaac Shelby (b. 1750)
Max Born (b. 1882)
Emmanuelle Charpentier (b. 1968)

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

HMS Duchess

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 collided with HMS Barham, the battleship she was escorting, sinking with heavy loss of life.
1942 – World War II: German troops began Operation Winter Storm, an attempt to relieve encircled Axis forces during the Battle of Stalingrad.
1964 – Jomo Kenyatta became the first president of the Republic of Kenya.
1979 – A M_w8.2 earthquake struck just offshore of Tumaco, Colombia, causing at least 300 deaths, mostly by the resulting tsunami.

John Boydell (d. 1804)
Anne Liburd (b. 1920)
Doris Blackburn (d. 1970)
Evelyn S. Lieberman (d. 2015)

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

Jo Swinson

1294 – Saint Celestine V resigns the papacy after only five months to return to his previous life as an ascetic hermit.
1577 – Francis Drake sets sail from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.
1862 – American Civil War: Union forces under Ambrose Burnside suffered severe casualties against entrenched Confederate defenders at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Virginia.
1957 – A 6.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Iranian Hamadan province, killing at least 1,130 people.
1960 – With Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia, out of the country, four conspirators staged a coup attempt to install Crown Prince Asfaw Wossen on the throne.

Paul Speratus (b. 1484)
Hans-Joachim Marseille (b. 1919)
Dora Marsden (d. 1960)
Addie Viola Smith (d. 1975)

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December 14: Martyred Intellectuals Day in Bangladesh (1971), Monkey Day

1925 Wozzeck poster

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".
1925 – Wozzeck, Alban Berg's first opera, was premiered at the Berlin State Opera, conducted by Erich Kleiber (poster pictured).
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".

John III of the Sedre (d. 648)
Al-Ashraf Khalil (d. 1293)
Helle Thorning-Schmidt (b. 1966)

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December 15: First Day of Hanukkah (Judaism, 2025)

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.

Izaak Walton (d. 1683)
Arthur Dehon Little (b. 1863)
John Meurig Thomas (b. 1932)
León Febres Cordero (d. 2008)

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December 16: Day of Reconciliation in South Africa

Boston Tea Party

1598 – Led by Admiral Yi Sun-sin, the Korean navy were victorious at Battle of Noryang, ending the Japanese invasions of Korea.
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, 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.

Elizabeth Carter (b. 1717)
James Murrell (d. 1860)
Camille Saint-Saëns (d. 1921)
Taliep Petersen (d. 2006)

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December 17: International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers

Memorial to victims of the 1970 Polish protests

942 – William Longsword of Normandy was ambushed and assassinated by supporters of Arnulf I, Count of Flanders, while both 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, the 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 street vendor in Sidi Bouzid, set himself on fire in protest against police harassment, triggering the Tunisian revolution.

Rumi (d. 1273)
Émile Roux (b. 1853)
Willard Libby (b. 1908)
Alicia Boole Stott (d. 1940)

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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.

Yaonian Yanmujin (d. 933)
Edith of Wessex (d. 1075)
Ty Cobb (b. 1886)
Keith Richards (b. 1943)

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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.

Adelaide of Susa (d. 1091)
Sakakibara Kenkichi (b. 1830)
Kristina Keneally (b. 1968)
Ahmet Emin Yalman (d. 1972)

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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.

Ambroise Paré (d. 1590)
Jean Jannon (d. 1658)
Bill O'Reilly (b. 1905)
Elizabeth Kekaʻaniau (d. 1928)

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December 21: December solstice (15:03 UTC, 2025); Dongzhi Festival in China (2025)

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.

Sun Sheng (d. 956)
Ali ibn Muhammad ibn al-Walid (d. 1215)
Luang Por Dattajivo (b. 1940)
Hu Jintao (b. 1942)

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December 22

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

856 – An earthquake with an estimated magnitude of 7.9 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.

Carl Friedrich Abel (b. 1723)
William Hyde Wollaston (d. 1828)
Meghan Trainor (b. 1993)
Dina Belenkaya (b. 1993)

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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.

Carl Gustaf Wrangel (b. 1613)
Dost Mohammad Khan (b. 1792)
Carla Bruni (b. 1967)
Bea Szenfeld (b. 1972)

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December 24

Christmas Island (Kiritimati)

759 – The Tang-dynasty poet Du Fu departed for Chengdu, where he lived for the next five years and composed poems about life in his thatched cottage.
1777 – An expedition led by English explorer James Cook reached Christmas Island (pictured), the largest coral atoll in the world.
1814 – The United Kingdom and the United States signed a peace treaty in Ghent, present-day Belgium, ending the War of 1812.
1979 – The Soviet government deployed troops in Afghanistan, starting the Soviet–Afghan War.
1999 – Jihadists linked to al-Qaeda hijacked Indian Airlines Flight 814 to force the release of Islamist figures held in prison in India.

Maslama ibn Abd al-Malik (d. 738)
George Crabbe (b. 1754)
Adam Exner (b. 1928)
Turid Birkeland (d. 2015)

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

Baldwin 1

1100 – Baldwin I was crowned the first king of Jerusalem (depicted) in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
1725 – J. S. Bach led the first performance of the Christmas cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, BWV 110, making laughter audible in singing.
1831 – A Baptist preacher named Samuel Sharpe began an unsuccessful eleven-day slave revolt in Jamaica.
1991 – In a nationally televised speech, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union.
2009 – A fire destroyed Longford's 19th-century St Mel's Cathedral, considered the "flagship cathedral" of the Irish midlands.

Humphrey Bogart (b. 1899)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (b. 1924)
Billy Martin (d. 1989)
Zail Singh (d. 1994)

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December 26: Saint Stephen's Day (Western Christianity); Boxing Day in the Commonwealth; Wren Day in Ireland and the Isle of Man; Kwanzaa begins (African diaspora in the Americas)

Flannan Isles Lighthouse

1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou began with Confederate defenders engaging Union forces who were attempting to capture the city of Vicksburg, Mississippi.
1871 – Thespis, the first comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, premiered at the Gaiety Theatre in London.
1943 – Second World War: The German battleship Scharnhorst was sunk at the Battle of the North Cape during an attempt to attack Arctic convoys.
2004 – A major earthquake and tsunami devastated communities around the Indian Ocean, killing an estimated 227,898 people in 14 countries.
2015 – A violent tornado moves through several suburbs of Dallas, Texas, killing ten and injuring almost 500 others. It was the deadliest tornado to ever hit Texas during the month of December.

Willy Corsari (b. 1897)
Elizabeth David (b. 1913)
Milagros Benet de Mewton (d. 1948)
Stanisław Kot (d. 1975)

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December 27

Charles Darwin

537 – The reconstructed Hagia Sophia in Constantinople was inaugurated; built as a church, it later became a mosque and a museum.
1831 – HMS Beagle departed Plymouth, England, on a voyage to South America that established Charles Darwin (pictured) as a naturalist.
1939 – A magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck central Turkey, destroying 90 per cent of the buildings in the area, and causing over 32,000 deaths.
1979 – Soviet–Afghan War: Soviet troops stormed Tajbeg Palace outside Kabul and killed Afghan president Hafizullah Amin and his 100–150 elite guards.
2007 – Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated while leaving a Pakistan People's Party political rally at Liaqat National Bagh in Rawalpindi.

Prince Rupert of the Rhine (b. 1619)
Agda Meyerson (d. 1924)
Amy Vanderbilt (d. 1974)
Timothée Chalamet (b. 1995)

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December 28

Depiction of Alaric II

484 – Alaric II (depicted) succeeded his father Euric as King of the Visigoths.
1916 – Up to 1,000 lumber workers initiated a labor strike against the Virginia and Rainy Lake Lumber Company in Minnesota, United States, which lasted over a month.
1925 – The Tokyo Grand Sumo Association becomes the All Japan Sumo Association at the instigation of Prince-Regent Hirohito, laying the foundations for the world's sole professional sumo association.
1964 – Vietnam War: Viet Cong regiments penetrated the eastern perimeters of the village of Bình Giã, beginning the Battle of Binh Gia.
2009 – Tibetan dissident filmmaker Dhondup Wangchen was imprisoned for subversion by Chinese authorities after a secret trial.
2014 – The passenger ferry Norman Atlantic caught fire in the Adriatic Sea, killing an estimated 28 people.

Antoine Furetière (b. 1619)
Arthur Hunter Palmer (b. 1819)
Barbara Judge (b. 1946)
Susan Sontag (d. 2004)

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December 29

Capture of HMS Java by USS Constitution

1812 – War of 1812: In a three-hour single-ship action, HMS Java (drawing shown) was captured by USS Constitution off the coast of Brazil.
1876 – A railway bridge collapsed over the Ashtabula River in Ohio, killing 92 people and injuring 64 others on a Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway train.
1928 – The Northern Expedition, a military campaign by the National Revolutionary Army of the Kuomintang, ended with the complete control of the Republic of China.
1959 – American physicist Richard Feynman gave a speech entitled "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" at Caltech, anticipating the field of nanotechnology.
1994 – Turkish Airlines Flight 278 crashed on approach to Van Ferit Melen Airport in Van, Turkey, killing 57 of the 76 people on board.

Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee (b. 1844)
Jürgen Ehlers (b. 1929)
Ann Demeulemeester (b. 1959)
Twinkle Khanna (b. 1973)

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December 30: Tenth of Tevet (Judaism, 2025); Rizal Day in the Philippines (1896)

Pro-government rally in Tehran, Iran

999 – In Ireland, the combined forces of Munster and Meath crushed a rebellion by Leinster and Dublin.
1940 – The Arroyo Seco Parkway, one of the first freeways built in the U.S., connecting downtown Los Angeles with Pasadena, California, was officially dedicated.
1954 – The Finnish National Bureau of Investigation was established to consolidate criminal investigation and intelligence into a single agency.
2006 – Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq, was executed after being found guilty of crimes against humanity by the Iraqi High Tribunal.
2009 – Pro-government counter-demonstrators held rallies (pictured) in several Iranian cities in response to recent anti-government protests on the holy day of Ashura.

Bernard Gui (d. 1331)
LeBron James (b. 1984)
Joshua (b. 1995)
Erica Garner (d. 2017)

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December 31: Dissolution of Czechoslovakia (1992); Saint Sylvester's Day (Western Christianity)

Taipei 101

1909 – The Manhattan Bridge, connecting Lower Manhattan to Downtown Brooklyn and considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges, opened to traffic.
1983 – Two Australian biologists published an article titled "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", initiating the Wells and Wellington affair.
1986 – Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others, making it the second-deadliest hotel fire in American history.
1999 – In accordance with the Torrijos–Carter Treaties, Panama assumed full control of the Panama Canal Zone from the United States.
2004 – Taipei 101 (pictured) in Taipei, Taiwan, opened to the public as the world's tallest building.

Ibn Hawshab (d. 914)
Richard Montgomery (d. 1775)
Cornelius Gallagher (b. 1854)
Siw Malmkvist (b. 1936)

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Selected anniversaries / On this day archive

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An archive of historical anniversaries that appeared on the Main Page 2025 day arrangement