1984 – New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot four black youths on a Manhattan subway. Goetz claimed they were about to rob him.
1135 – Norman nobles recognize Stefanus van Blois as English king
1590 – Army of Moroccan Pasha Ahmad al-Mansur begins its epic 135 day crossing of the Saharan desert on his way to defeat the Songhai Empire
1603 – Mehmed III Sultan of the Ottoman Empire dies and is succeeded by his son Ahmed I.
1666 – The French Academy of Sciences, founded by Louis XIV with Jean-Baptiste Colbert first meets in the Kings Library
1715 – James Stuart, the “Old Pretender”, landed at Petershead after his exile in France.
1772 – Moravian missionary constructs first schoolhouse west of Allegheny
1775 – A Continental naval fleet was organized in the rebellious American colonies under the command of Ezek Hopkins.
1790 – The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Suvorov and his Russian armies.
1807 – The U.S. Congress passed the Embargo Act, designed to force peace between Britain and France by cutting off all trade with Europe.
1809 – US passes Non-Intercourse Act; opens trade with all nations except Britain and France; to retaliate against Napoleon’s Decrees and British blockade; causes commercial depression in Canada.
1815 – Spaniards execute Mexican revolutionary priest Jose Maria Morelos
1864 – During the American Civil War, Union Gen. William T. Sherman sent a message to U.S. President Lincoln from Georgia. The message read, “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.”
1894 – French army officer Alfred Dreyfus was convicted of treason in a court-martial that triggered worldwide charges of anti-Semitism. Dreyfus was eventually vindicated.
1895 – German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen made the first X-ray, of his wife’s hand.
1897 – Bering Sea Claims Commission recommends US pay Canadian sealers $463,454; to compensate for seizure of vessels
1900 – A new 35-horsepower car built by Daimler from a design by Emil Jellinek was completed. The car was named for Jellinek’s daughter, Mercedes.
1905 – Arrest of St Petersburg Soviet members leads to an uprising of Moscow workers and fighting in the street
1910 – U.S. Postal savings stamps were issued for the first time. They were discontinued in 1914.
1930 – Convention of Economic Rapprochement/Oslo Agreesments signed between some European countries in response to the Great Depression
1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.
1941 – British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrived in Washington for a wartime conference with U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt.
1944 – Vietnam People’s Army is formed to resist Japanese occupation of Indo-China, now Vietnam.
1956 – Colo, the first gorilla to be born in captivity, was born at the Columbus, Ohio zoo.
1961 – James Davis became the first U.S. soldier to die in Vietnam, while U.S. involvement was still limited to the provision of military advisers.
1963 – Reginald Binette kills four parishioners of Christ the King Roman Catholic Church in Ottawa in robbery attempt
1964 – Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted of obscenity.
1967 – Then Justice Minister Pierre Trudeau tells the Commons that “”There is no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation
1969 – Montreal Quebec FLQ terrorists explode bomb in a post office truck.
1970 – SS Commander Franz Stangl of Treblinka, sentenced to life in prison
1977 – 36 die as grain elevator at Continental Grain Company plant explodes
1984 – New York City resident Bernhard Goetz shot four black youths on a Manhattan subway. Goetz claimed they were about to rob him.
1986 – Quebec Court of Appeal declares that Article 58 or Bill 101 making French the sole language authorized on commercial signs is unconstitutional.
1988 – Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, is assassinated
1989 – Romania’s hard-line Communist ruler, Nicolae Ceausescu, was overthrown in a popular uprising.
1990 – Lech Walesa was sworn in as Poland’s first popularly elected president.
1991 – The body of Lt. Col. William R. Higgins, an American hostage murdered by his captors, was found along a highway in Lebanon.
1996 – A car bomb exploded in Belfast, injuring a known IRA supporter. Police suspected that Protestant loyalists were responsible for the attack.
1998 – A unit of RJR Nabsico pled guilty to attempting to smuggle cigarettes into Canada.
2001 – Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.
2006 – Australian archaeologist Sue O’Connor finds first evidence of modern humans in Jerimalai cave, near Lene Hara cave in East Timor
2012 – 8 people are killed by a suicide bomber in Peshawar, Pakistan
2016 – Ebola vaccine VSV-EBOV is found to be 70-100% effective in a study published in The Lancet, becoming the world’s first proven vaccine against Ebola
2018 – Partial shutdown of US federal government begins
2022 – US Drug Enforcement Administration says it seized enough fentanyl in 2022 to kill every American, more than 379 million doses
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
