1965 – Charlie Brown Christmas makes airs for the first time on television. The popular animated musical special about Christmas was based on Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip called Peanuts.
0536 – Byzantine General Belisarius enters in Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire.
0730 – Battle of Marj Ardabil, Turkic Khazar army led by Barjik defeats Umayyad force, with 20,000 killed including general al-Jarrah ibn Abdallah, whose head is mounted on a throne
1212 – Frederick II (later also Holy Roman Emperor) crowned King of Germany in Mainz
1531 – First supposed apparition of the Virgin Mary (Our Lady of Guadalupe) to Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin on Tepeyac Hill
1625 – The Treaty of the Hague was signed by England and the Netherlands. The agreement was to subsidize Christian IV of Denmark in his campaign in Germany.
1640 – Settler Hugh Bewitt banished from Mass colony when he declares himself to be free of original sin
1688 – King James II’s wife and son flee England for France
1775 – At Fort Ticonderoga, Henry Knox begins his historic transport of artillery to Boston, Massachusetts, later forces the British to evacuate Boston
1783 – The first executions at Newgate Prison took place.
1793 – Noah Webster establishes New York’s first daily newspaper, American Minerva
1803 – The 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed by the U.S. Congress. With the amendment Electors were directed to vote for a President and for a Vice-President rather than for two choices for President.
1824 – Battle of Ayacucho: Peruvian nationalists led by Antonio Jos de Sucre defeat Spanish colonial forces and secure the independence of Peru.
1835 – The Republic of Texas captures San Antonio.
1851 – First Young Men’s Christian Association in North America (Montreal)
1854 – Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” was published in England.
1893 – Auguste Vaillant bombs the French Chamber of Deputies
1905 – In France, the law separating church and state is passed.
1906 – NY American reports Belgian King Leopold II bribed US Senate commission on the Congo
1907 – Christmas Seals went on sale for the first time, in the Wilmington, DE, post office.
1914 – The Edison Phonograph Works was destroyed by fire.
1917 – Turkish troops surrendered Jerusalem to British troops led by Viscount Allenby.
1935 – Walter Liggett American newspaper editor and muckraker killed in gangland murder.
1937 – Second Sino-Japanese War: Battle of Nanjing – Japanese troops under the command of Lt. Gen. Asaka Yasuhiko launch an assault on the Chinese city of Nanjing.
1938 – State of California uses gas chamber instead of hanging for 2nd time in a week: Wesley Eudy and Fred Barnes executed for roles in Folsom Prison escape attempt resulting in murder of warden and guard (San Quentin State Prison, Marin County)
1940 – During World War II, British troops opened their first major offensive in North Africa.
1941 – China declared war on Japan, Germany and Italy.
1946 – The “Trials of War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals” began with the “Doctors’ Trial”, prosecuting doctors alleged to be involved in human experimentation.
1950 – Harry Gold is sentenced to thirty 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
1958 – In Indianapolis, IN, Robert H.W. Welch Jr. and 11 other men met to form the anti-Communist John Birch Society.
1960 – Sperry Rand Corporation unveiled a new computer known as “Univac 1107.”
1961 – The trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann in Israel ends with him being found guilty of 15 criminal charges, including charges of crimes against humanity, crimes against the Jewish people and membership of an outlawed organization
1965 – Charlie Brown Christmas makes airs for the first time on television. The popular animated musical special about Christmas was based on Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip called Peanuts.
1967 – Nicolea Ceausescu becomes president (dictator) of Romania
1968 – Doug Engelbart demonstrates first computer mouse at Stanford
1970 – OPEC meeting in Caracas establishes 55 percent as minimum tax rate and demands that posted prices be changed to reflect changes in foreign exchange rates
1974 – Johnson Grigsby freed after 66 years in jail
1975 – U.S. President Gerald R. Ford signed a $2.3 billion seasonal loan authorization to prevent New York City from having to default.
1978 – Pioneer Venus 2 drops 5 probes into atmosphere of Venus
1979 – Smallpox declared eradicated. The World Health Organization officially certified that after a number of concentrated vaccination campaigns around the world smallpox had been eradicated
1983 – Attorney General Edwin Meese says people go to soup kitchens “…because the food is free and that’s easier than paying for it”
1985 – In Argentina, five former military junta members received sentences in prison for their roles in the “dirty war” in which nearly 9,000 people had “disappeared.”
1987 – In the Gaza Strip, an Israeli patrol attacked the Jabliya refugee camp.
1990 – Slobodan Milosovic was elected president in Serbia’s first free elections in 50 years.
1991 – European Community leaders agreed to begin using a single currency in 1999.
1992 – Clair George, former CIA spy chief, was convicted of lying to the U.S. Congress about the Iran-Contra affair. U.S. President George H.W. Bush later pardoned George.
1992 – U.S. troops arrived in Mogadishu, Somalia, to oversee delivery of international food aid, in operation ‘Restore Hope’.
1993 – At Princeton University in New Jersey, scientists produced a controlled fusion reaction equivalent to 3 million watts.
1996 – UN Secretary General Boutros-Ghali approved a deal allowing Iraq to resume its exports of oil and easing the UN trade embargo imposed on Iraq in 1990.
1999 – The U.S. announced that it was expelling a Russian diplomat that had been caught gathering information with an eavesdropping device at the U.S. State Department.
2002 – United Airlines filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after losing $4 billion in the previous two years. It was the sixth largest bankruptcy filing.
2006 – Moscow suffers its worst fire since 1977, killing 45 women in a drug addict rehabitational center
2008 – Governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, is arrested by federal officials for a number of alleged crimes, including attempting to sell the United States Senate seat being vacated by President-elect Barack Obama
2013 – AMR Corporation and US Airways Group completed a merger and was listed on the NASDAQ as American Airlines Group, Inc.
2014 – CIA Torture Report released, detailing the CIA’s use of torture on detainees between 2001-2006
2015 – Attack on Kandahar airport by Taliban forces kills at least 37 before Afghan forces retake control
2017 – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declares victory over the Islamic State in Iraq, ending more than 3 years of conflict
2019 – US officials “deliberately misled” the public on progress of the Afghanistan war, hid that it was a lost cause, according to The Washington Post analysis of the “Afghanistan Papers”
2021 – More than 40 camels disqualified from the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival beauty contest after Botox injections and other cosmetic enhancements were discovered
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
