December 31

1229 – James I, King of Aragon, enters Palma, Spain, completing the retaking of Majorca island during the Reconquista.

1744 – English astronomer James Bradley announces discovery of Earth’s nutation motion or wobble in its rotation.

1775 – During the Revolutionary War, British forces repulse an attack on Quebec by the Continental Army forces under General Richard Montgomery.

1796 – Baltimore, Maryland is incorporated.

1862 – President Lincoln signs an act enabling the admission of West Virginia as a state in the Union, partitioning Virginia.

1878 – Karl Benz, in Mannheim, Germany, files a patent on his 2 stroke internal combustion engine

1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

1907 – The first New Year’s Eve celebration is held in Times Square,  Manhattan.

1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.

1955 – General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over $1 billion in a year.

1959 – AK Church is born somewhere in eastern Oklahoma.

1983 – The federal consent decree for divestiture into regional independent operating companies of the AT&T Bell System comes into effect.

1991 – All official Soviet institutions are confirmed to have ceased operations in the former Soviet Union

1992 – Czechoslovakia is dissolved into the Czech and the Slovak Republics.

1999 –  Under terms of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaty, the U.S. cedes control of the Panama Canal and Canal Zone to Panama.

2000 – The last day of the 20th Century and 2nd Millennium.

2010 –  A total of 36 tornadoes touch down in Arkansas, Illinois, and Oklahoma, killing 9 people and causing $113 million in damages.

2019 – The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan, China, later classified as SARS COVID-19

2020 – The World Health Organization issues its first emergency use authorization – EUA – for a COVID-19 vaxx.

December 30

534 – The second and final edition of the Code of Justinian comes into effect in the Byzantine Empire

1066 –  A moslem mob storms the royal palace in Granada, crucifies Jewish vizier Joseph ibn Naghrela and massacres most of the Jewish population of the city.

1813 – British soldiers burn Buffalo New York  during the War of 1812

1816 – The Treaty of St. Louis between the United States and the united Ottawa, Ojibwa, and Potawatomi Indian tribes is ratified, ceding land between Lake Michigan and the Illinois river.

1825 – The Treaty of St. Louis between the United States and the Shawnee Nation is ratified, ceding land around Cape Girardeau Missouri

1853 – The United States completes the Gadsden Purchase, buying land from Mexico to facilitate railroad building in the Southwest.

1890 – Following the Wounded Knee Massacre, Lakota warriors engage U.S. Army troops near White Clay Creek approximately 15 miles  north of Pine Ridge where it was reported that the Lakota had burned the Drexel Mission Church.

1903 – A fire at the Iroquois Theater in Chicago, Illinois kills at least 605 people.

1922 – The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.

1972 – The United States halts mission Linebacker II, the heavy bombing of North Vietnam when Hanoi agrees to return to peace negotiations

1990 – Chief Warrant 4, Gene E, Barner, Missouri National Guard dies, age 51, at home, of cancer.

2006 – Former President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein is executed by hanging

2009 – A suicide bomber kills 9 people at Forward Operating Base Chapman, in Afghanistan.

December 29

1170 – Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, is assassinated inside Canterbury Cathedral by followers of King Henry II

1607 – According to John Smith, Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan leader Wahunsenacawh, successfully pleads for his life after tribal leaders attempt to kill him.

1778 – During the Revolutionary War, 3000 British soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell capture Savannah, Georgia.

1812 – The USS Constitution, under the command of Captain William Bainbridge, captures HMS Java off the coast of Brazil

1835 – The Treaty of New Echota is signed, ceding all the lands of the Cherokee tribe east of the Mississippi River to the United States.

1845 – In accordance with the International Boundary Delimitation, the United States annexes the Republic of Texas, following the manifest destiny doctrine and is admitted as the 28th state.

1876 – A railroad bridge over the Ashtabula River northeast of Cleveland collapses while the Pacific Express of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railway passes over it, killing 92 of the 160 passengers and crew aboard.

1890 – On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, 300 Lakota and 31 Army soldiers are killed in battle near Wounded Knee creek when the U.S. troops attempt to disarm the camp.

1934 – Japan renounces the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930 which limited construction of warships and begins to rearm.

1939 – The  prototype of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber makes its first flight.

1949 – KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut becomes the first Ultra High Frequency television station to operate a daily schedule on UHF channel 24.

1970- The Occupational Safety and Health Act is signed into law by President Nixon, creating bureaucrapacy OSHA

1972 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 401, a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, crashes in the Florida Everglades on approach to Miami International Airport, Florida, killing 101 of the 176 passengers and crew aboard.

1975 – A bomb placed by unknown terrorists explodes at LaGuardia Airport in New York City, killing 11 people and injuring 74.

2018 – The lowest recorded temperature of -111C (-167F) is registered by the NOAA-20 satellite in the western Pacific at top of a large storm system.

December 28

1612- Galileo observes and records a “fixed star” without realizing it is planet Neptune

1732 – Benjamin Franklin under the pseudonym Richard Saunders begins publication of “Poor Richard’s Almanack

1832 – After being elected Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun becomes the 1st Vice President of the United States to resign.

1835 – Osceola leads the Seminoles into the 2nd Seminole War against the United States.

1846 – Iowa is admitted as the 29th U.S. state.

1895 – Wilhelm Röntgen publishes a paper in the journal of the Würzburg Physical Medical Society, about his discovery in November of a new type of radiation. Since it was of a type unknown to him, he refers to it as X radiation, which radiated X-rays.

1902 – The Syracuse Athletic Club defeat the New York Philadelphians, 5–0, in the first indoor professional football game, held at Madison Square Garden.

1912 – San Francisco starts the first municipal owned streetcar service

1967 – American businesswoman Muriel Siebert becomes the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange.

1948 – The Airborne Transport Airlines DC-3 NC16002 enroute from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida, with 32 passengers and crew aboard disappears after the pilot’s last radio contact, some 50 mi south of Miami within the ‘Bermuda Triangle’

1973 – The Endangered Species Act is signed into law by President Nixon.

1978 – United Airlines Flight 173, a McDonnell Douglas DC, runs out of fuel on final approach to landing and crashes in a residential neighborhood near Portland International Airport, killing 10 of the 189 passengers and crew aboard.

1987 – After earlier shooting, strangling and drowning 14 relatives at his home near Dover, Arkansas, Ronald Gene Simmons, shoots and kills 2 and wounds 4 more people at former places of employment before surrendering to police. Later he is sentenced to death and executed in 1990.

1999 – Clayton “The Lone Ranger” Moore, dies, age 85 at West Hills Hospital, California.

2021 – Former Senator Harry Reid, dies, age 82, at his home in Henderson, Nevada.

December 27

537 – The construction of the second Hagia Sophia Church, the first being destroyed 5 years earlier, in Constantinople is completed.

1512 – The Spanish Crown issues the Laws of Burgos, governing the conduct of settlers with regard to native Indians in the New World.

1657 – The residents (none of them Quakers but conscientious of tolerance) of the small settlement of Flushing, (now the Flushing neighborhood in Queens, New York) petition Director-General of New Netherland, Peter Stuyvesant, for an exemption to his ban on Quaker worship, which is considered as the first time in North American history that freedom of religion is put forth as a fundamental right.

1845 – Ether anesthetic is used for childbirth for the first time by Dr. Crawford Long in Jefferson, Georgia.
Journalist John L. O’Sullivan, writing in his newspaper the New York Morning News, argues that the United States had the right to claim the entire Oregon Country “by the right of our manifest destiny”.

1929 – Soviet General Secretary Stalin orders the “liquidation of the kulaks as a class” in Russia, and beginning the ‘Holodomor‘ in Ukraine.

1932 – Radio City Music Hall opens in New York City.

1968 – Apollo 8 splashes down in the Pacific Ocean, ending the first orbital manned mission to the Moon.

1979 – The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. Interesting that the cost of the invasion and occupation and later retreat is considered a prime cause of the Soviet collapse a decade later.

1985 – Moslem terrorists kill 18 people inside the airports of Rome and Vienna.

2004 – Radiation from an explosion on the magnetar neutron star SGR 1806-20 in the constellation of Sagittarius, reaches Earth. It is the brightest extrasolar event known to have been witnessed on the planet.

2012 – General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr. dies, age 78, at Tampa, Florida.

2016 – Actress Carrie Fishe dies, age 60, at the UCLA Medical Center, after suffering from a cardiac arrest while flying from London to Los Angeles, 4 days earlier.

December 26

1723 – Johann Sebastian Bach leads the first performances of his first Christmas Cantata; Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes,  – For this the Son of God appeared – in the 2 main churches in Leipzig; Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche

1776 – Successfully crossing the Delaware river under cover of darkness during Christmas night, troops of the Continental Army under General Washington attack and defeat a garrison of Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey.

1799 – Representative Henry “Light Horse Harry” Lee III’s Eulogy to George Washington in Congress Assembled, declares him as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen

1811 – A theater fire in Richmond, Virginia kills 72 people among them, the Governor of Virginia George William Smith and former Senator, Abraham B. Venable.

1862 – Four nuns serving as volunteer nurses on board USS Red Rover are the first female nurses on a U.S. Navy hospital ship.

1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.

1941 – President Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

1944 – The U.S. 3rd Army’s 4th Armored Division, under General George Patton breaks the encirclement of surrounded U.S. forces at Bastogne, Belgium.

1972 – During Operation Linebacker II, 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attack Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam, the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.

1989 – United Express Flight 2415, a BAe Jetstream 31, crashes on approach to the Tri-Cities Airport in Pasco, Washington, killing all 6 passengers and crew on board.

1991 – The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union

1994 – Four armed moslem hijackers seize control of Air France Flight 8969. When the plane lands at Marseille, a French Gendarmerie assault team boards the aircraft and kills them.

1996 – JonBenét Ramsey is found murdered in the basement of her home in Boulder Colorado.

2004 – A 9.3 Mw  earthquake in the Indian Ocean hits northern Sumatra and causes one of the largest observed tsunamis, affecting coastal Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, the Maldives, Malaysia, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and Indonesia, killing over 227,000 people.

2015 – A tornado outbreak strikes the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex, with multiple tornadoes from EF2 to EF4 power, killing 12 people and causing heavy damage to the suburb of Rowlett.

 

December 25

~4BC – Forced to stay in the equivalent of a modern stable due to all the inns in the city of Bethlehem being full up because of a census and taxing ordered by the Romans, Mariam, the wife of Yosef ben Yakov gives birth to a son they name Yeshua.

336 – Christmas is  celebrated in Rome for the first time.

508 – Clovis I, King of the Franks, is baptized at Reims, France by Bishop Remigius.

597 – Augustine of Canterbury baptizes more than 10,000 Anglo Saxons at Kent, England.

800 – Charlemagne is crowned Holy Roman Emperor at the ‘Old’ St. Peter’s Basilica in  Rome

1000 – Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by King Stephen I

1025 – Mieszko II Lambert is crowned king of Poland at the Gniezno Cathedral

1046 – Henry III is crowned Holy Roman Emperor at ‘Old’ St. Peter’s Basilica in  Rome

1066 – William the Conqueror is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey

1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem.

1130 – Count Roger II is crowned the first King of Sicily at Palermo.

1758 – Halley’s Comet is sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley’s prediction of its passage, the first passage of a comet predicted ahead of time.

1776 – George Washington leads 2400 members of the Continental Army across the Delaware River, Christmas night to attack Hessian mercenary forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.

1814 – Rev. Samuel Marsden holds the first Christian service on land in New Zealand at Rangihoua Bay.

1868 – President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans.

1941 – Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command as Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet.

1968 – Apollo 8 performs the first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

1989 – Deposed Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, are arrested, condemned to death after a summary trial, and executed by firing squad.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union.

2020 – Anthony Quinn Warner blows himself and his RV to bits in downtown Nashville, Tennessee injuring 8 more people.

2021 – NASA launches thehe James Webb Space Telescope

December 24

1144 – The capital of the crusader County of Edessa, in modern southeastern Turkey, falls to Imad ad-Din Zengi, the atabeg of Mosul and Aleppo.

1777 – Christmas Island in the Gilbert archipelago – Kiritimati, as pronounced by the native populace – is named such by James Cook during his 3rd voyage

1814 – Representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States sign the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812.

1818 – The first performance of “Silent Night” composed by Franz Xaver Gruber takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

1877  – Thomas Edison files for a patent for the cylinder phonograph.

1914 – During the first winter of World War I, the “Christmas Truce” begins.

1942 –  The first V-1 ‘buzz bomb’, is launched at Peenemunde, Germany

1943 – U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower is named Supreme Allied Commander for the Invasion of Normandy.

1968 – Firing the Apollo 8 Service Module main engine, the crew becomes the first humans to reach the moon and enter into Lunar orbit.

1973 – The District of Columbia Home Rule Act is passed, allowing residents of Washington, D.C. to elect their own local government.

1996 – A Learjet 35 crashes into Smarts Mountain near Dorchester, New Hampshire, killing both pilots on board and resulting in the longest missing aircraft search in the state’s history, lasting almost three years.

 

December 23

1688 – During the ‘Glorious Revolution’, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, after being deposed in favor of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.

1783 – After the end the War of Independence, and his victory/farewell dinner in New York, General George Washington resigns as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis.

1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

1936 – Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1941 – After 15 days of fighting, the U.S. garrison on Wake Island is finally forced to surrender to the Japanese Army

1947 – The properties of the transistor are first demonstrated by its inventors at Bell Laboratories.

1948 – Convicted of war crimes during World War 2 by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East; Akira Mutō, Hideki Tojo, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Iwane Matsui, Kenji Doihara and Kōki Hirota are executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Japan.

1954 – The first successful kidney transplant is performed by J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray between the identical twins, Ronald and Richard Herrick, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

1968 – The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after 11 months of captivity in North Korea.

1970 – The North Tower (Tower 1) of the World Trade Center in Manhattan is topped out at 1,368 feet, making it the tallest building in the world at the time.

1979 – Invading Soviet Union forces occupy the Afghanistan capital, Kabul.

1986 – Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, piloting Voyager, land at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first to fly an aircraft non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

2002 – A U.S. MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the first combat engagement between a drone and conventional aircraft.

2013 – Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, inventor of the Soviet AK-47 rifle, dies, age 94, in hospital at the Udmurtian medical facility in Izhevsk, Russia

December 22

1489 – Nearing the finish of the Reconquista , the forces of King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castille, seize the port city of Almería from the Nasrid ruler of Granada, Muhammad XIII.

1807 – Replacing the 1806 Non importation Act, the 1807 Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by Congress

1891 – Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered using astrophotography by Max Wolf, at the Heidelberg University Observatory.

1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel,  connecting Weehawken, New Jersey, to  Manhattan opens to traffic.

1944 – German troops surrounding U.S. troops in and around Bastogne, Belgium, receive a one word reply to their surrender demand from the American commander, Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe; “Nuts!”
Elsewhere; Supported by the American OSS, the People’s Army of Vietnam is formed by Hồ Chí Minh and Võ Nguyên Giáp to resist Japanese occupation of Indochina.

1964 – The SR-71 Blackbird makes its first test flight at Air Force Plant 42 in Palmdale, California.

1975 – President Ford creates the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in response to the 1973 oil embargo by the arabian members of  OPEC.

1984 – Bernhard Goetz shoots four muggers on an express train in Manhattan.

1989 – The Brandenburg Gate reopens, ending the division of East and West Berlin.

1996 – Airborne Express Flight 827, a Douglas DC-8, crashes near Narrows, Virginia, killing all 6 passengers and crew on board.

2001 – Aboard American Airlines Flight 63, Richard Reid attempts to destroy the airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes and is ‘subdued’ by passengers when the bomb fails to go off.

2008 – An ash dike ruptures at a waste retaining pond at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Kingston Fossil Plant in Roane County, Tennessee, releasing over 1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry into the Emory and Clinch Rivers.

2010 – The repeal of the ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell‘ policy, the 17 year old policy banning homosexuals serving openly in the United States military, enacted by President Bill Clinton, is signed into law by President Barack Hussein Obama.
Just me, but I see a connection here. Could it be demoncraps?

2018 – A tsunami caused by an eruption of Anak Krakatau, part of the remains of Krakatoa, kills 430 people and injures many more

December 21

69 – The Roman Senate declares Vespasian emperor of Rome, the last in the Year of the Four Emperors where the preceding 3 were either murdered or committed suicide during a civil war among themselves after they had deposed Emperor Nero.

1361 – During the Spanish Reconquista, the combined army of the Kingdom of Castile and of the Bishop of Jaén defeat the forces of the Emirate of Granada in battle at the city of Huesa.

1605 – The Spanish Queirós Expedition departs Callao, Peru, led by Pedro Fernandes de Queirós in attempt to find the legendary continent Terra Australis but instead reaching Espíritu Santo and other Vanuatu islands.

1620 – William Bradford and the Mayflower Pilgrims land on what is now known as Plymouth Rock in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

1784 – In office as Chief Justice of the U.S. for only the past 2 months,  John Jay is also appointed U.S. Secretary of State.

1826 – American settlers in Nacogdoches, Mexican Texas, declare their independence, starting the Fredonian Rebellion.

1861 – Public Resolution 82, containing a provision for a Navy Medal of Valor, is signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln.

1872 –  The crew of HMS Challenger sails from Portsmouth, England on their voyage of exploration.

1913 – Arthur Wynne’s “word-cross”, is the first crossword puzzle published in the New York World newspaper.

1937 – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full length animated feature, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Hollywood.

1945 – General George S. Patton dies in Heidelberg, Germany, age 60, 12 days after being injured in an automobile accident.

1949 – The movie, Samson and Delilah, directed and produced by Cecil B. DeMille, starring Hedy Lamarr and Victor Mature, premieres in New York

1967 – Louis Washkansky, the first man to undergo a human to human heart transplant, dies in Cape Town, South Africa, having lived for 18 days after the operation

1968 – Apollo 8 is launched from the Kennedy Space Center, on a lunar trajectory for the first visit to the Moon.

1970 – The first flight of Grumman F-14 Tomcat Navy fighter

1988 – A bomb placed by Libyan moslem terrorists explodes on board Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 passengers and crew aboard and 11 more on the ground.

2004 – A suicide bomber kills 14 U.S. soldiers, 4 U.S. citizen Halliburton employees, 4  allied Iraqi soldiers and wounds 72 more at Forward Operating Base Marez in Mosul, Iraq.

December 20

1192 – Richard the Lionheart of England is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after the Third Crusade.

1522 – After 6 months of siege by the fleet and army of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman I, the Hospitaller Knights of Rhodes are forced to surrender, and are allowed to evacuate. They eventually settle in Malta and become known as the Knights of Malta.

1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.

1812 –  Sacagawea of the Shoshone tribe dies, age about 24, at the Fort Manuel Lisa Trading Post in North Dakota.

1820 – Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men aged between 21 & 50, which is only paid for 1 year before being repealed in January 1822.

1860 – South Carolina – of course, Fort Sumter being in Charleston harbor – becomes the first state to secede from the United States.

1915 – The last Australian troops are evacuated from Gallipoli during World War 1

1924 – Sentenced to 5 years in prison for being convicted of Treason for the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ in Munich, Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison, after serving only 264 days.

1941 – The American Volunteer Group, better known as the “Flying Tigers” has their first engagement against Japanese forces in Kunming, China.

1951 – The EBR-1 reactor at the Argonnne West National Laboratory site near Arco, Idaho, becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity, powering four (4!) light bulbs before finally producing enough electricity to power the entire building.

1952 – A U.S. Air Force C-124 Globemaster, enroute from Larson Air Force Base, near Moses Lake, Washington to Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas as part of Operation Sleigh Ride, bringing servicemen fighting in the Korean War home for Christmas, crashes just after takeoff, killing 87 of the 115 passengers and crew aboard.

1957 – The first Boeing 707 production passenger jet rolls off the line.

1968 – The Zodiac Killer murders his first victims, Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.

1971 – The international aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières -Doctors Without Borders – is founded by Bernard Kouchner in Paris, France.

1989 – Beginning with troops of the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the U.S. Army Ranger Regiment performing Combat Parachute Assaults at 01:00 hrs EST to capture the Rio Hato and Torrijos International Airports, U.S forces begin Operation Just Cause, invading Panama to depose Manuel Noriega.

1991 – A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the ‘honor killing’ of their daughter Palestina but both murderous parents later die in prison before execution of sentences.

1995 – American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia killing 159 of the 163 passengers and crew aboard.

2005 – The New York City’s Transport Workers Union Local 100 goes on strike over pension and wage increases, shutting down all subway and bus services for 3 days

2014  – Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley kills 2 NYPD officers in Brooklyn, New York, supposedly in revenge for the killing of Eric Garner, before killing himself

2019 – The United States Space Force becomes the first new branch of the United States Armed Forces since 1947.

2022 – A 6.4-magnitude earthquake near Eureka, northern California kills 2 people.

 

 

December 19

1606 – The ships Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found Jamestown, Virginia Colony

1675 – The militia of the English settlers of the villages of Kingston and West Kingston in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations are victorious against warriors of the Narragansett tribe during King Philip’s (Chief Metacomet ‘s Christian name) War in New England.

1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled “The American Crisis”.

1777 – The U.S. Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1828 – Vice President John Calhoun sparks political crisis when he anonymously publishes the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828,  stating his view that a state has the right to reject federal law.

1871  – Albert L Jones of New York City patents corrugated paper

1907 – 239 coal miners die in the Darr Mine Disaster in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

1932 – The BBC Empire Service, now called the World Service begins international broadcasting.

1946 – The First Indochina War between France and the Vietnamese National Army against the Việt Minh and the People’s Army of Vietnam begins

1950 – A Chinese invasion of Tibet forces the Tibetan spiritual leader Tenzin Gyatso, Gyalwa Rinpoche, the 14th Dalai Lama, to flee Lhasa for Yadong on the Tibetan-India border

1972 – Apollo 17, the last manned Moon landing mission to date, returns to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean, 4 miles from the recovery ship, USS Ticonderoga

1974 – Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States

1984 – The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997 at the end of a 99 year lease, is signed in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.

1995 – Having not been included under the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, Congress finally passes legislation recognizing the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi tribe in Athens Michigan.

1998 –The House of Representatives votes to impeach President Bill Clinton

2016 –Murdering the original driver, a moslem from Tunisia deliberately drives a truck  into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring 56 more.

December 18

1118 – During the Reconquista, the city of Zaragoza is retaken by the army of King Alfonso I of Aragon.

1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire of Mongolia and China “Yuan” starting the Yuan dynasty .

1777 – The U.S. celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by Americans over British troops commanded by General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October.

1787 – New Jersey becomes the 3rd state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.

1799 – George Washington is buried at Mount Vernon

1865 – Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the 13th  Amendment to the Constitution.

1892 –  Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker opens in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1917 – The 18th amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by Congress and sent to the states for ratification.

1932 – The Chicago Bears defeat the Portsmouth Spartans in the first NFL playoff game held to break a tie in the season’s final standings to win the NFL Championship at Chicago.

1944 – In the case of Korematsu v. United States, the Supreme Court rules that President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 authorizing the forced removal and internment of Japanese Americans is constitutional and is not reversed as unconstitutional until 2018, in the case of Trump v. Hawaii.

1958 – Designed and built by  U.S. Army Signal Research and Development Laboratory,  the SCORE satelliteSignal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment the world’s first purpose built communications satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral’s launch complex  LC-11

1966 – The Saturn moon Epimetheus is discovered by astronomer Richard Walker using the U.S. Naval Observatory – Flagstaff Station’s 61-inch Kaj Strand Astrometric Reflector telescope.

1972 –  President Nixon announces that the U.S. will begin Operation Linebacker II, bombing North Vietnam after peace talks collapse.

1977 – United Airlines Cargo Flight 2860,  a Douglas DC-8, enroute from San Francisco to Chicago, crashes near Kaysville, Utah, killing all 3 crew members on board.

1999 – NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying 5 Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.

2016 – Zsa Zsa Gabor dies, age 99, from cardiac arrest at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center.

2017 – Amtrak Cascades passenger train 501 derails near DuPont, Washington, killing 6 people, and injuring 70 others.

2019 – The House of Representatives votes to impeach President Donald Trump

December 17

546 – The Siege of Rome by the Ostrogoths under King Totila ends by bribing the Byzantine garrison and sacking the city.

1538 – After separating from the Church of Rome and appointing himself Supreme Head of the Church of England, King Henry VIII of England is excommunicated by Pope Paul III.

1777 – France formally recognizes the United States as an independent nation.

1790 – The Aztec Sun Stone calendar is discovered at El Zócalo, Mexico City during repairs to the city cathedral.

1819 – Simón Bolívar, who later dies on this date in 1830, declares the independence of Gran Colombia during the Congress of Angostura.

1835 – The second Great Fire of New York destroys 13 acres of New York City’s Financial District.

1862 – General Ulysses S. Grant issues General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky due to his belief they were engaged in unlicensed trade.

1892 – First issue of Vogue magazine is published.

1903 – Orville Wright, piloting the Wright Flyer, makes the first controlled powered flight of a heavier than air craft flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1933 – The first NFL Championship Game is played at Wrigley Field between the New York Giants and Chicago Bears.

1935 – The Douglas DC-3 make its first flight

1938 – While working as the head of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry in Berlin, Otto Hahn discovers the nuclear fission of uranium releasing large amounts of energy.

1944 –  During the Battle of the Bulge, in areas around Malmedy, Belgium, a total of 373 known U.S. soldiers, held as Prisoners of War, are shot by Waffen-SS Kampfgruppe troops under the command of Obersturmbannführer Joachim Peiper.

1947 – The Boeing B-47 Stratojet makes its first flight

1950 – The 94th Fighter Interceptor Squadron of the U.S. Air Force 1st Fighter Wing flies its first combat sortie in Korea in F-86 Sabres.

1957 – The U.S. successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.

1960 – Troops loyal to Emperor Haile Selassie in Ethiopia crush the coup that began December 13, returning power to their leader upon his return from Brazil.

1969 – The U.S. Air Force officially closes its Project Blue Book study of UFOs.

1973 – Thirty travelers are killed in an attack by Palestinian terrorists at Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport.

1981 – American Brigadier General James L. Dozier is abducted by the Red Brigades in Verona, Italy.

1989 – Fernando Collor de Mello defeats Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in the second round of the Brazilian presidential election, becoming the first democratically elected President in almost 30 years.

2003 –Mojave Aerospace Ventures’ SpaceShipOne, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first powered flight reaching supersonic speed.

2014 – The United States and Cuba re-establish diplomatic relations

December 16

1497 – During his voyage to discover a ocean route to India, Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama passes the Great Fish River at the southern tip of Africa, where Bartolomeu Dias had previously turned back to Portugal.

1620 – While exploring around Cape Cod, Myles Standish and a group of 18 settlers of the Plymouth colony, are confronted by 30 Nauset Indians – which became known as the “First Encounter: – resulting in a brief exchange of hostilities with no casualties on either side.

1689 – The co-reigning English King and Queen William and Mary give the royal ascent to the English Bill of Rights.

1773 – Members of the Sons of Liberty disguised as Mohawk Indians dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.

1777 – Virginia becomes the first state to ratify the Articles of Confederation.

1811 – The first 2 in a series of 4 severe earthquakes occur in the vicinity of New Madrid, Missouri.

1863 – Joseph E. Johnston replaces Braxton Bragg as commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee.

1880 – The Boers of South Africa declare their independence and war breaks out between their South African Republic and the British Empire.

1907 – The U.S. Navy’s Great White Fleet begins its cruise of circumnavigation.

1912 – During the First Balkan War, the Royal Hellenic Navy defeats the Ottoman Navy near the mouth of the Dardanelles causing the Turks to  retreat within the Straits and leaving the Aegean Sea open to the Greeks.

1930 – Bank robber Herman Lamm commits suicide and all but 2 members of his gang are killed when surrounded by a 200 member strong posse, in Sidell, Illinois, following a car chase after a botched robbery of the Citizens State Bank in Clinton, Indiana.

1944 – The German Army initiates the Ardennes Offensive – The Battle of the Bulge – beginning with the surprise attack of 3 German armies through the Ardennes forest.

1947 – At Bell Telephone Laboratories, William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain build the first practical point-contact transistor.

1960 – United Airlines Flight 826, a Douglas DC-8 and TWA Flight 266, a Lockheed Super Constellation, collide over Staten Island, New York and crash, killing all 128 passengers and crews aboard both aircraft and 6 more on the ground.

1978 – Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first major American city to default on its financial obligations since the Great Depression.

1989 – U.S. Appeals Court Judge Robert Smith Vance is assassinated by a mail bomb sent by Walter Leroy Moody, Jr.

1991 – The Major League Baseball expansion club Florida Marlins sign their 1st player, 16 year old pitcher Clemente Nunez

2016 – The State Department increases the reward for information on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to $25 million

2020 – A major winter storm hits the U.S. Northeast, resulting in at least 7 deaths and Binghamton, New York, receiving a record 41 inches of snowfall.

December 15

530 – Eastern Roman Emperor Justinian appoints a commission to compile a code of Roman jurisprudence.

1256 – The Nizari Ismaili (Assassin) stronghold at Alamut Castle near Masoudabad Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1270 – The Assassin stronghold at Gerdkuh, Persia surrenders to the Mongol forces under Hulagu Khan

1275 – The Mongol stronghold at Alamut Castle is retaken by Nizari Ismaili forces under Shams al-Dīn Muḥammad.

1791 – The United States Bill of Rights becomes law when ratified by the Virginia General Assembly.

1836 – A fire that  nearly burns the U.S. Patent Office building in Washington, D.C. to the ground, destroys all 9,957 patents issued by the federal government to that date.

1864 – The Battle of Nashville during the war between the states begins and ends the following day with the defeat in detail of the Confederate Army of Tennessee, by the Union Army of the Cumberland.

1890 – After leaving Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show, Chief Sitting Bull returns to the Standing Rock Reservation and is killed during a gunfight between agency police and the Chief’s followers resisting his arrest because of fears he might support the Ghost Dance movement.

1903 – Italian American food cart vendor Italo Marchiony receives a U.S. patent for inventing a machine that makes ice cream cones.

1933 – The 21st Amendment to the United States Constitution officially becomes effective, repealing the 18th Amendment

1939 – Gone with the Wind premieres at Loew’s Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia

1941 – German troops murder over 15,000 Jews at Drobytsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv in Ukraine.

1942 –During World War II, on Guadalcanal, the Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse between U.S. forces under the command of Alexander Patch and Japanese forces under the command of Harukichi Hyakutake begins in the named hills near the Mantanikau river.

1944 – During World War II, a single engine UC-64A Norseman aircraft carrying U.S. Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller is lost in a flight over the English Channel and never recovered.

1961 – Adolf Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty by an Israeli court of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people, and membership of an outlawed organization. He is hanged on June 1 the following year.

1965 – The Gemini 6A mission, with crew members Wally Schirra and Thomas Stafford, launches to rendezvous with Gemini 7.

1978 – President Jimmy Carter announces that the United States will recognize the People’s Republic of China and sever diplomatic relations with the Republic of China on Taiwan.

2005 – The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor enters service in the U.S. Air Force.

2006 – The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II makes its first flight.

2009 – Oral Roberts dies of complications from pneumonia at the age of 91 at Newport Beach, California

2013 – China successfully lands a rover explorer on the moon

2015 -The Mayor of Flint, Michigan declares a state of emergency over contaminated water supplies.

 

December 14

557 – A severe earthquake in Constantinople damages the dome of Hagia Sophia.

1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Queen of Scots at the age of one week on the death of her father, James V of Scotland.

1782 – The Montgolfier brothers test fly an unmanned hot air balloon in France; it floats over a mile and a half.

1799 – Former President and General of The Armies, George Washington dies, age 67, at his home, Mt. Vernon, Virginia.

1814 – During the War of 1812, the Royal Navy seizes control of Lake Borgne, Louisiana.

1819 – Alabama becomes the 22nd U.S. state.

1836 – The boundary dispute between Ohio and Michigan of the control of the mouth of the Maumee River into Lake Erie is resolved with both parties accepting Congress’ terms for admitting Michigan as a state.

1900 – Max Planck presents a theoretical derivation of his Black-body Radiation law within Quantum Mechanics to the German Physical Society in Berlin.

1902 – The Commercial Pacific Cable Company lays the first Pacific telegraph cable, from San Francisco to Honolulu.

1903 – The Wright brothers make a first unsuccessful attempt to fly the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

1907 – The Thomas W. Lawson, the largest sailing ship ever built, which was named after the American owner, runs aground and founders near the Hellweather’s Reef within the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall England, with the loss of the pilot and 15 seamen.

1911 – Roald Amundsen and his team of Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first men to reach the South Pole.

1940 –The Pu-238 isotope of Plutonium is first synthesized by physicist Glenn Seaborg at the Lawrence Radiation Laboratory,  University of California, Berkeley.

1962 – NASA’s Mariner 2 probe becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

1964 – In the case of Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States, the Supreme Court of the United States expands the definition of ‘Commerce between the States” ruling that Congress can use the Constitution’s clause to fight discrimination.

1972 –At 00:40 hrs EST, Apollo 17 Mission Commander Eugene Cernan enters the Lunar Module Challenger after the last of 3 lunar surface activities, becoming the last man to walk on the Moon.
At 17:55 hrs, EST, Challenger launches from the Moon to rendezvous with the orbiting Command/Service Module America.

1985 – Wilma Mankiller takes office as the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

2012 – After murdering his mother at their home, a lone gunman murders 26 students and faculty at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown Connecticut before committing suicide a minute after Police arrive at the school.

2017 – The Walt Disney Company announces that acquires 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4 billion.

2020 -The Electoral College votes 306-232 to elect Joe Biden as President.