1920 – Bloody Sunday – A key event in the Irish War of Independence, which was a conflict between the British government and Irish revolutionaries in Ireland, Bloody Sunday began with the killings of 14 people by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) under the leadership of Michael Collins. Two other violent incidents against civilian and IRA members during the day added to the death count, which was over 30 by the end of the day.
0164 BC – Judas Maccabaeus, son of Mattathias of the Hasmonean family, restores the Temple in Jerusalem. Events commemorated each year by the festival of Hanukkah.
0235 – St Anterus begins his reign as Catholic Pope, will only rule for 40 days
0533 – The Institutes published – an official textbook of Roman law, part of Roman Emperor Justinian’s program of legal reforms
1272 – Following Henry III of England’s death on November 16, his son Prince Edward becomes King of England.
1620 – The Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA. The ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620.
1654 – Richard Johnson, a free black, granted 550 acres in Virginia
1759 – Battle at Maxen: Prussian army surrenders to Austrians
1783 – The first successful flight was made in a hot air balloon. The pilots, Francois Pilatre de Rosier and Francois Laurent, Marquis d’Arlandes, flew for 25 minutes and 5½ miles over Paris.
1787 – Future US president Andrew Jackson admitted to the bar aged 20
1789 – North Carolina became the 12th state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1791 – Colonel Napolon Bonaparte is promoted to full general and appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the French Republic.
1806 – The Continental System declared in the Decree of Berlin: Emperor Napoleon I bans all trade with Britain
1817 – US soldiers attack Miccosukee Tribe village of Fowltown, Georgia, beginning what becomes known as the First Seminole War
1818 – Russia’s Czar Alexander I petitions for a Jewish state in Palestine
1871 – M.F. Galethe patented the cigar lighter.
1877 – Thomas A. Edison announced the invention of his phonograph.
1894 – Port Arthur massacre: Port Arthur, Manchuria falls to the Japanese, a decisive victory of the First Sino-Japanese War.
1905 – E=mc2 – Albert Einstein’s paper, “”Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?””, is published in the journal “”Annalen der Physik””. This paper reveals the relationship between energy and mass. This leads to the massenergy equivalence formula E = mc.
1917 – Maxim Gorky calls Vladimir Lenin a blind fanatic and unthinking adventurer
1920 – Bloody Sunday – A key event in the Irish War of Independence, which was a conflict between the British government and Irish revolutionaries in Ireland, Bloody Sunday began with the killings of 14 people by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) under the leadership of Michael Collins. Two other violent incidents against civilian and IRA members during the day added to the death count, which was over 30 by the end of the day.
1922 – Rebecca L. Felton of Georgia was sworn in as the first woman to serve as a member of the U.S. Senate.
1927 – Columbine Mine Massacre: Striking coal miners were allegedly attacked with machine guns by a detachment of state police dressed in civilian clothes.
1938 – Nazi forces occupy western Czechoslovakia and declare inhabitants to be German citizens
1941 – Juanita Spellini first woman executed in California
1945 – General Motors workers go on strike
1946 – Harry Truman becomes first US President to travel in a submerged sub
1953 – Authorities at the British Natural History Museum announce that the “”Piltdown Man”” skull, held to be one of the most famous fossil skulls in the world, was a hoax
1959 – Entertainer Jack Benny (violin) and US Vice-President Richard Nixon (piano) play their famed duet
1962 – U.S. President Kennedy terminated the quarantine measures against Cuba.
1963 – U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived in San Antonio, TX. They were beginning an ill-fated, two-day tour of Texas that would end in Dallas.
1964 – The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge opens to traffic (at the time it was the world’s longest suspension bridge)
1969 – The first ARPANET link was put into service on this day in 1969. The network connected a computer at the University of California at Los Angeles with one at the Stanford Research Institute.
1971 – Indian troops partly aided by Mukti Bahini (Bengali guerrillas) defeat the Pakistan army in the Battle of Garibpur.
1973 – U.S. President Richard M. Nixon’s attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, announced the presence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate case.
1974 – The Birmingham Pub Bombings by the IRA kill 21 people. The Birmingham Six were sentenced to life in prison for this but subsequently acquitted.
1979 – The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a mob that set the building afire and killed two Americans.
1980 – An estimated 83 million viewers tuned in to find out “who shot J.R.” on the CBS prime-time soap opera Dallas. Kristin was the character that fired the gun. (Texas)
1985 – Former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard was arrested after being accused of spying for Israel. He was later sentenced to life in prison.
1987 – An eight-day siege began at a detention center in Oakdale, LA, as Cuban detainees seized the facility and took hostages.
1989 – The proceedings of Britain’s House of Commons were televised live for the first time.
1990 – Michael Milken is sentenced to 10 years for security law violations
1992 – U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, issued an apology but refused to discuss allegations that he’d made unwelcome sexual advances toward 10 women in past years.
1993 – The U.S. House of Representatives voted against making the District of Columbia the 51st state.
1994 – NATO warplanes bombed an air base in Serb-held Croatia that was being used by Serb planes to raid the Bosnian “safe area” of Bihac.
1995 – The Dayton Peace Agreement is initialled at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base, near Dayton, Ohio, ending three and a half years of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The agreement was formally ratified in Paris, on December 14 that same year.
1999 – China announced that it had test-launched an unmanned space capsule that was designed for manned spaceflight.
2000 – The Florida Supreme Court granted Al Gore’s request to keep the presidential recounts going.
2001 – Microsoft Corp. proposed giving $1 billion in computers, software, training and cash to more than 12,500 of the poorest schools in the U.S. The offer was intended as part of a deal to settle most of the company’s private antitrust lawsuits.
2002 – NATO invited Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia to become members.
2004 – The second round of the Ukrainian presidential election is held, unleashing massive protests and controversy over the election’s integrity.
2006 – Anti-Syrian Lebanese Minister and MP Pierre Gemayel is assassinated in suburban Beirut.
2013 – The Alabama parole board grants posthumous pardons to three members of the Scottsboro boys
2017 – Robert Mugabe’s resignation after 37 years in power is read out in Zimbabwe’s parliaments during impeachment proceedings
2018 – Former Guatemalan soldier Santos López Alonzo sentenced to 5,160 years for killing 171 people in Dos Erres during the civil war
2019 – 44% of Americans work in low-wage jobs with medium annual wage of just $18,000, with most aged 25 – 54 according to analysis by Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program
2020 – Texas National Guard mobilized to help El Paso County, deal with a morgue crisis as COVID-19 cases and deaths surge
2022 – China reports new COVID-19 outbreaks, with 28,127 new cases, with half in Guangzhou and the municipality of Chongqing and public venues closed in Beijing and Shanghai
REFERENCE: history.net, onthisday.com, thepeopleshistory.com, timeanddate.com, scopesys.com, on-this-day.com
