480 – Odoacer, first King of Italy, occupies Dalmatia. He later establishes his political power with the co-operation of the Roman Senate.
536 – Gothic War: The Byzantine general Belisarius enters Rome unopposed; the Gothic garrison flee the capital.
730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil: The Khazars annihilate an Umayyad army and kill its commander, Al-Jarrah Ibn Abdallah Al-Hakami.
1425 – The Catholic University of Leuven is founded.
1531 – The Virgin of Guadalupe first appears to Juan Diego at Tepeyac, Mexico City.
1688 – Glorious Revolution: Williamite forces defeat Jacobites at Battle of Reading, forcing flight of James II from the country.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: British troops lose the Battle of Great Bridge, and leave Virginia soon afterward.
1793 – New York City's first daily newspaper, the American Minerva, is established by Noah Webster.
1824 – Patriot forces led by General Antonio José de Sucre defeat a Royalist army in the Battle of Ayacucho, putting an end to the Peruvian War of Independence.
1835 – Texas Revolution: The Texian Army captures San Antonio, Texas.
1851 – The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
1856 – The Iranian city of Bushehr surrenders to occupying British forces.
1861 – American Civil War: The Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War is established by the U.S. Congress.
1868 – The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
1872 – In Louisiana, P. B. S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of a U.S. state.
1892 – English football club Newcastle United is founded.
1897 – Activist Marguerite Durand founds the feminist daily newspaper La Fronde in Paris.
1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
1911 – A mine explosion near Briceville, Tennessee, kills 84 miners despite rescue efforts led by the United States Bureau of Mines.
1917 – World War I: Field Marshal Allenby captures Jerusalem, Palestine.
1922 – Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
1931 – The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
1935 – Student protests in Beiping (now Beijing)'s Tiananmen Square, dispersed by government.
1935 – Walter Liggett, American newspaper editor and muckraker, is killed in a gangland murder.
1935 – The Downtown Athletic Club Trophy, later renamed the Heisman Trophy, is awarded for the first time. The winner is halfback Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago.
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanking: Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing (Nanking).
1940 – World War II: Operation Compass: British and Indian troops under the command of Major-General Richard O'ConnorattackItalian forces near Sidi Barrani in Egypt.
1941 – World War II: China, Cuba, Guatemala, and the Philippine Commonwealth declare war on Germany and Japan.
1941 – World War II: The American 19th Bombardment Group attacks Japanese ships off the coast of Vigan, Luzon.
1946 – The "Subsequent Nuremberg trials" begin with the "Doctors' trial", prosecuting physicians and officers alleged to be involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
1946 – The Constituent Assembly of India meets for the first time to write the Constitution of India.
1950 – Cold War: Harry Gold is sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping Klaus Fuchs pass information about the Manhattan Project to the Soviet Union. His testimony is later instrumental in the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
1953 – Red Scare: General Electric announces that all communist employees will be discharged from the company.
1956 – Trans-Canada Air Lines Flight 810, a Canadair North Star, crashes near Hope, British Columbia, Canada, killing all 62 people on board.
1958 – The John Birch Society is founded in the United States.
1960 – The first episode of Coronation Street, the world's longest-running television soap opera, is broadcast in the United Kingdom.
1961 – Tanganyika becomes independent from Britain.
1962 – The Petrified Forest National Park is established in Arizona.
1965 – Kecksburg UFO incident: A fireball is seen from Michigan to Pennsylvania; witnesses report something crashing in the woods near Pittsburgh.
1968 – Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the oN-Line System (NLS).
1969 – U.S. Secretary of State William P. Rogers proposes his plan for a ceasefire in the War of Attrition; Egypt and Jordan accept it over the objections of the PLO, which leads to civil war in Jordan in September 1970.
1971 – Indo-Pakistani War: The Indian Air Force executes an airdrop of Indian Army units, bypassing Pakistani defences.
1973 – British and Irish authorities sign the Sunningdale Agreement in an attempt to establish a power-sharing Northern Ireland Executive and a cross-border Council of Ireland.
1979 – The eradication of the smallpoxvirus is certified, making smallpox the first of only two diseases that have been driven to extinction (rinderpest in 2011 being the other).
1987 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: The First Intifada begins in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
1988 – The Michael Hughes Bridge in Sligo, Ireland, is officially opened.
1992 – American troops land in Somalia for Operation Restore Hope.
1996 – Gwen Jacob is acquitted of committing an indecent act, giving women the right to be topfree in Ontario, Canada.
2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
2008 – The Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for crimes including attempting to sell the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by President-electBarack Obama.
2012 – A plane crash in Mexico kills seven people.[1]
2013 – At least seven are dead and 63 are injured following a train accident near Bintaro, Indonesia.
2015 – The start of the thirty-sixth GCC summit in Riyadh business.
2016 – PresidentPark Geun-hye of South Korea is impeached by the country's National Assembly in response to a major political scandal. Prime MinisterHwang Kyo-ahn becomes Acting President, later declining to run for a full term.
2016 – At least 57 people are killed and a further 177 injured when two schoolgirl suicide bombers attack a market area in Madagali, Northeastern Nigeria in the Madagali suicide bombings.
2017 – The Marriage Amendment Bill receives royal assent and comes into effect, making Australia the 26th country to legalize same-sex marriage.
2019 – A volcano on White Island, New Zealand, kills at least 18 people after it erupts.[2]
Births[]
1392 – Peter, Duke of Coimbra (d. 1449)
1447 – Chenghua Emperor of China (d. 1487)
1482 – Frederick II, Elector Palatine (d. 1556)
1493 – Íñigo López de Mendoza, 4th Duke of the Infantado (d. 1566)
1508 – Gemma Frisius, Dutch mathematician and cartographer (d. 1555)
1561 – Edwin Sandys, English lawyer and politician (d. 1629)
1571 – Metius, Dutch mathematician and astronomer (d. 1635)
1579 – Martin de Porres, Peruvian saint (d. 1639)
1594 – Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden (d. 1632)
1608 – John Milton, English poet and philosopher (d. 1674)
1610 – Baldassare Ferri, Italian singer and actor (d. 1680)
1617 – Richard Lovelace, English poet (d. 1657)
1652 – Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician and botanist (d. 1723)
1667 – William Whiston, English mathematician, historian, and theologian (d. 1752)
1717 – Johann Joachim Winckelmann, German archaeologist and historian (d. 1768)
1721 – Peter Pelham, English-American organist and composer (d. 1805)
1728 – Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi, Italian composer (d. 1804)
1742 – Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish Pomeranian and German pharmaceutical chemist (d. 1786)
1745 – Maddalena Laura Sirmen, Italian violinist and composer (d. 1818)
1748 – Claude Louis Berthollet, French chemist and academic (d. 1822)
1752 – Antoine Étienne de Tousard, French general and engineer (d. 1813)
1787 – John Dobson, English architect, designed Eldon Square and Lilburn Tower (d. 1865)
1779 – Tabitha Babbitt, American tool maker and inventor (d. 1853)
1806 – Jean-Olivier Chénier, Canadian physician (d. 1838)
1813 – Thomas Andrews, Irish chemist and physicist (d. 1885)
1837 – Émile Waldteufel, French pianist, composer, and conductor (d. 1915)
1842 – Peter Kropotkin, Russian zoologist, economist, geographer, and philosopher (d. 1921)
1845 – Joel Chandler Harris, American journalist and author (d. 1908)
1850 – Emma Abbott, American soprano and actress (d. 1891)
1861 – Hélène Smith, French psychic and occultist (d. 1929)
1867 – Gregorios Xenopoulos, Greek journalist and author (d. 1951)
1868 – Fritz Haber, Polish-German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1934)
1870 – Ida S. Scudder, Indian physician and missionary (d. 1960)
1870 – Francisco S. Carvajal, Mexican lawyer and politician, president 1914 (d. 1932)[3]
1871 – Joe Kelley, American baseball player and manager (d. 1943)
1873 – George Blewett, Canadian philosopher, author, and academic (d. 1912)
2015 – Norman Breslow, American statistician and academic (b. 1941)
2015 – Juvenal Juvêncio, Brazilian lawyer and politician (b. 1934)
2015 – Julio Terrazas Sandoval, Bolivian cardinal (b. 1936)
2019 – Marie Fredriksson, Swedish singer (b. 1958)
Holidays and observances[]
Anna's Day, marks the day to start the preparation process of the lutefisk to be consumed on Christmas Eve, as well as a Swedish name day, celebrating all people named Anna. (Sweden and Finland)
Armed Forces Day (Peru)
Christian feast day:
Feast of the Conception of the Most Holy Theotokos by St. Anne (Orthodox Church)
Juan Diego
Leocadia
Nectarius of Auvergne
Peter Fourier
December 9 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
Fatherland's Heroes Day (Russia)
Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Tanganyika from Britain in 1961. (Tanzania)
↑Fisher, Catherine Horne. "Greenwood, Irene Adelaide (1898–1992)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. Retrieved 9 January 2020.