2012 – Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting – Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
0644 – Uthman ibn Affan, companion of Muhammad, appointed 3rd Caliph of Islam
0835 – Chinese Emperor Wenzong conspires with chancellor Li Xun and general Zheng Zhu to kill all the eunuchs, but the plot is foiled. Also known as the Sweet Dew Incident
1124 – Theobald Buccapecus elected Pope Coelestinus II (he refuses)
1287 – St. Lucia’s flood: The Zuider Zee sea wall in the Netherlands collapses, killing over 50,000 people.
1542 – Princess Mary Stuart succeeds her father James V and becomes Queen Mary I of Scotland at 6 days old
1656 – Artificial pearls first manufactured by M Jacquin in Paris made of gypsum pellets covered with fish scales
1702 – The Forty-seven Ronin (leaderless samurai), under the command of Ōishi Kuranosuke, avenge the death of their master in Japan
1751 – The Theresian Military Academy is founded as the first Military Academy in the world.
1774 – 400 New Hampshire militiamen successfully attack Fort William and Mary
1793 – First state road authorized, Frankfort, Ky to Cincinnati
1798 – David Wilkinson of Rhode Island patented the nut and bolt machine.
1814 – The Battle of Lake Borgne in Louisiana: British victory over the United States
1819 – Alabama joined the Union as the 22nd state.
1825 – Advocates of Liberalism in Russia rise up against Tsar Nicholas I and are put down in the Decembrist Revolt in St. Petersburg.
1836 – The Toledo War unofficially ends, boundary dispute between Ohio state and territory of Michigan
1897 – Emilio Aguinaldo signs the Pact of Biak-na-Bato, to end hostilities and dissolve his government, in exchange for amnesty and “$800,000 (Mexican)” as an indemnity
1900 – Professor Max Planck of Berlin University revealed his revolutionary Quantum Theory.
1903 – Orville Wright made the first attempt at powered flight. The engine stalled during take-off and the plane was damaged in the attempt. Three days later, after repairs were made, the modern aviation age was born when the plane stayed aloft for 12 seconds and flew 102 feet.
1911 – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole. He reached the destination 35 days ahead of Captain Robert F. Scott.
1914 – US President Woodrow Wilson signs Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, to regulate and tax production, importation, and distribution of opiates and coca products
1918 – Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King Vin I, renounces the Finnish throne
1927 – Iraq gains independence from Britain, but British troops remain
1934 – Turkish women are given the right to vote.
1939 – The Soviet Union was dropped from the League of Nations.
1941 – German military commander of Kharkiv, Ukraine issues an order, under which the Jewish population was to move to the city periphery within 2 days, into the barracks of the works of a machine factory. In the next days 15,000 Jews are shot at Drobitsky Yar
1944 – Congress establishes rank of General of the Army (5-star general)
1945 – Josef Kramer, known as “the beast of Belsen,” and 10 others were executed in Hamelin for the crimes they committed at the Belsen and Auschwitz Nazi concentration camps.
1946 – The U.N. General Assembly voted to establish the United Nation’s headquarters in New York City.
1952 – UN Troops kill 82 North Korean POWs during a prison camp riot in Pongam-do, South Korea
1955 – Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Rumania, and Spain all join the United Nations.
1958 – Soviets Reach the Southern Pole of Inaccessibility – A Pole of Inaccessibility is a location on Earth that is extremely difficult to access. In the North, it is the point in the Arctic Ocean that is farthest from land, while in the Southern Hemisphere it is the point farthest from the Southern Ocean on Antarctica.
1961 – Tanzania joins the United Nations
1962 – The U.S. space probe Mariner II approached Venus. It transmitted information about the planet’s atmosphere and surface temperature.
1969 – One of the most catastrophic flops in the history of showbusiness – the musical “La Strada” opens and closes at Lunt Fontanne NYC after 1 performance
1971 – The Pakistan Army executes an estimated 1,111 of East Pakistan’s intellectuals during the Bangladesh Liberation War
1975 – Six South Moluccan terrorists surrendered to police after holding 23 people hostage for 12 days on a train near the Dutch town of Beilen.
1979 – Punk rock group The Clash release London Calling in the UK, a landmark album in rock music
1981 – Israel annexed the Golan Heights, seized from Syria in war in 1967.
1983 – The U.S. battleship New Jersey fired on Syrian positions in Lebanon for the first time after American F-14 reconnaissance flights were fired on.
1984 – Howard Cosell retired from the NFL’s Monday Night Football.
1985 – Wilma Mankiller became the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe as she formally took office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of OKlahoma.
1986 – The experimental aircraft Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, took off from California on the first non-stop, non-refueled flight around the world. The trip took nine days to complete.
1987 – Chrysler pled no contest to federal charges of selling several thousand vehicles as new when Chrysler employees had driven the vehicles with the odometer disconnected.
1990 – Right to Die case permits Nancy Cruzan to have her feeding tube removed, she dies 12 days later
1993 – A judge in Colorado struck down the state’s voter-approved Amendment Two prohibiting gay rights laws, calling it unconstitutional.
1995 – The presidents of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia signed the Dayton Accords to end fighting in Bosnia.
1997 – Iran’s newest president, Mohammad Khatami, called for a dialogue with the people of the United States. The preceding Iranian leaders had reviled the U.S. as “The Great Satan.”
1998 – Hundreds of Palestinian leaders renounced a call for the destruction of Israel.
1999 – U.S. and German negotiators agreed to establish a $5.2 billion fund for Nazi-era slave and forced laborers.
2000 – It was announced that American businessman Edmond Pope would be released from a Russian prison for humanitarian reasons. Pope had been sentenced to 20 years in prison after his conviction on espionage charges.
2001 – The first commercial export, since 1963, of U.S. food to Cuba began. The 24,000 metric tons for corn were being sent to replenish what was lost when Hurricane Michelle struck on November 4.
2003 – President of Pakistan Pervez Musharaf narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.
2008 – President George W. Bush make his fourth and final trip to Iraq as president and is almost struck by two shoes thrown at him by Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi during a farewell conference in Baghdad
2012 – Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting – Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 children and 6 adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
2013 – The Chinese spacecraft Chang’e 3 became the first spacecraft to “soft”-land on the Moon since 1976. It was only the third robotic rover to land on the moon.
2016 – University of Toronto scientists present findings of the world’s oldest water – 2 billion years old from a mine in Canada
2017 – Suicide bomber kills at least 18 police officers at a training centre parade in Mogadishu, Somalia, Islamic group al-Shabab claim responsibility
2018 – Report by Reuters US pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson knew for decades their talc was contaminated with asbestos
2020 – Russia revealed to have been behind massive cyberattack on US government agencies and private companies since the Spring
2022 – President Joe Biden vows to extend US involvement in Africa in address at US-Africa Leaders summit in Washington, amid competition from China on the continent
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
