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- 0359 The first known Prefect of the City of Constantinople, Honoratus, took office.
- 0384 St Damasus I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
- 1282 Llywelyn ap Gruffydd or Gruffudd (b. c. 1228) the last native Prince of Wales, was killed at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales. He was the last prince of an independent Wales before its conquest by King Edward I of England. Some would say he was the penultimate, but in effect he was the last ruler. In Welsh, he is remembered by the alliterative soubriquet Llywelyn Ein Llyw Olaf (Llywelyn, Our Last Leader).
- 1602 A surprise attack by forces under the command of the Duke of Savoy and his brother-in-law, Philip III of Spain, is repelled by the citizens of Geneva. (This actually takes place after midnight, in the early morning of December 12, but commemorations/celebrations on Fte de l'Escalade are usually held on December 11 or the closest weekend.)
- 1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock (12/21 NS)
- 1719 First recorded display of Aurora Borealis in US (New England)
- 1792 France's King Louis XVI went on trial, accused of treason
- 1792 French Revolution: King Louis XVI of France is put on trial for treason by the National Convention.
- 1816 Citizens of Geneva thwarted Savoyard invaders
- 1816 Indiana becomes 19th state
- 1816 Indiana becomes the 19th U.S. state.
- 1844 First dental use of nitrous oxide, Hartford, Ct
- 1866 First yacht race across the Atlantic Ocean
- 1872 First black US gov took office, Pinckney Benton Stewart Pinchback (La)
- 1872 P.B.S. Pinchback is sworn in as the first black member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
- 1882 Boston's Bijou Theatre, first American playhouse lit exclusively by electricity, first performance, Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe"
- 1886 Dial Square FC, a football club from Woolwich, London that will eventually become known as Arsenal FC, play their first match, a 6-0 win over Eastern Wanderers.
- 1888 French Panama Canal company fails
- 1901 Marconi sends first transatlantic radio signal, Cornwall to Nfld
- 1905 120ø F (49ø C), Rivadavia, Argentina (South American record)
- 1909 Colored moving pictures demonstrated at Madison Square Garden, NYC
- 1914 Stockton Street Tunnel (San Francisco) completed
- 1917 13 black soldiers hanged for alleged participation in Houston riot
- 1917 British troops take Jerusalem from the troops of the Ottoman Empire
- 1917 German-occupied Lithuania proclaims independence from Russia
- 1918 Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn dissident Russian writer, was born
- 1919 Boll weevil monument dedicated in Enterprise, Ala
- 1927 Guangzhou Uprising: Communist militia and worker red guards launch an uprising in the Chinese city of Guangzhou, taking over most of the city and announcing the formation of a Guangzhou Soviet.
- 1928 Buenos Aires police thwart an attempt on Pres-elect Herbert Hoover
- 1930 New York's branch of Bank of the United States announced that it had gone belly-up
- 1931 British Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland, Newfndlnd
- 1931 Pierre Pilote Hockey Hall of Famer: NHL: Chicago Black Hawks defenseman was born
- 1932 San Francisco's coldest day (27øF).
- 1932 Snow falls in San Francisco
- 1934 A fire at the Hotel Kerns in Lansing, Michigan, kills 34 people.
- 1936 King Edward VIII of England abdicates for woman he loves
- 1937 Italy withdraws from League of Nations
- 1937 Second Italo-Abyssinian War: Italy leaves the League of Nations
- 1939 Betty Grable and her famous legs were featured on the cover of LIFE magazine
- 1941 Buick lowered its prices to reflect the absence of spare tires or inner tubes from its new cars. Widespread shortages caused by World War II had led to many quotas and laws designed to conserve America's resources
- 1941 Germany and Italy declare war on US
- 1941 Japanese occupy Guam
- 1946 The United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established.
- 1946 UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) established (Nobel 1965)
- 1947 Visitor posting - Viviana Hudson - Born December 11, 1947
- 1951 Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball.
- 1951 Joe Dimaggio announces his baseball retirement
- 1952 Visitor posting - Betty Turner was born! - USA
- 1953 KTVA, Anchorage becomes Alaska's first TV station
- 1954 USS Forrestal christened in Newport News, Va
- 1957 Jerry Lee Lewis weds Myra
- 1958 Upper Volta (now Bourkina Fasso) gains autonomy from France
- 1958 Upper Volta declares its independence from France, and becomes an autonomous republic in the French Community.
- 1961 Adolf Eichman is found guilty of war crimes, in Israel
- 1961 Elvis Presley's "Blue Hawaii," album goes to #1 and stays #1 for 20 wks
- 1961 JFK provides US military helicopters and crews to South Vietnam
- 1961 Melvin Calvin Awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry for process of photosynthesis.
- 1964 Che Guevara speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. An unknown terrorist fired a mortar shell at the building during the speech.
- 1967 Beatles' Apple Music signs its first group-Grapefruit
- 1967 SST prototype "Concorde" first shown (France)
- 1968 Number one hit on UK music charts - The Scaffold - Lily The Pink
- 1968 The Labor Department announced that the nation's unemployment rate had dwindled to 3.3%, the lowest mark in 15 years.
- 1969 The secretary of the Moscow writer's union declares that nudity as displayed in the popular play "Oh! Calcutta!" is a sign of decadence in Western culture
- 1971 Number one hit on UK music charts - Benny Hill - Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)
- 1971 The Libertarian Party of the United States is formed.
- 1972 Apollo 17 becomes the sixth mission to land on the Moon.
- 1972 Astronauts Cernan and Harrison become 11th and 12th on the Moon
- 1973 Karen and Richard Carpenter received a gold record for their single, Top of the World.
- 1975 First class postage rises from $0.10 to $0.13
- 1978 6 masked men bound 10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at New York Kennedy Airport and made off with $5.8 M in cash and jewelry
- 1980 The Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (known as either CERCLA or Superfund) is enacted by the U.S. Congress.
- 1981 El Mozote massacre: Salvadoran armed forces kill an estimated 900 civilians in an anti-guerrilla campaign during the country's civil war.
- 1981 In his last fight, Muhammad Ali is defeated by Trevor Berbick.
- 1981 Javier Prez de Cullar becomes UN Secretary-General
- 1981 Muhammad Ali's 61st and last fight, losing to Trevor Berbick
- 1981 Spacelab I arrives at Kennedy Space Center
- 1981 UN Sec Council chose Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru as 5th Secretary-General
- 1983 First visit to Lutheran church by a pope (John Paul II in Rome)
- 1985 General Electric acquires RCA Corp and its subsidiary, NBC
- 1985 The most expensive non-oil acquisition in U.S. history took place. General Electric Company agreed to buy RCA Corporation for $6.3 billion.
- 1986 Visitor posting - Brittney Anne Bergman was born in Great Falls, Montana - USA
- 1990 13 die in 83 vehicle accident in Chattanooga TN, due to fog
- 1991 William Kennedy Smith found not guilty of rape
- 1992 Visitor posting - Nate Perez is born
- 1992 Visitor posting - Mateja Jelicic born - Slovenia [email protected]
- 1993 Forty-eight people are killed when a block of the Highland Towers collapses near Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
- 1993 Visitor posting - "The day the Earth receives a gift" Felicia Weaver was born - USA
- 1994 A bomb assembled by Ramzi Yousef explodes on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, killing a Japanese businessman.
- 1994 First Chechen War: Russian President Boris Yeltsin orders Russian troops into Chechnya
- 1995 Visitor posting - Kati's 14th birthday - USA
- 1997 Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson of federal district court issues preliminary injunction forcing Microsoft to stop, at least temporarily, requiring manufacturers to install its Internet Explorer on PCs.
- 1997 The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change opens for signature.
- 1998 A Thai Airways Airbus A310-200 crashes near Surat Thani Airport, killing 101.
- 1999 Visitor posting - stephanie born - USA
- 2005 Cronulla riots: Thousands of White Australians demonstrate against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese (and many who were not) in Cronulla Sydney. These are followed up by ethnic attacks on Cronulla.
- 2005 Law enforcement raids suspected software pirates in Operation Buccaneer.
- 2005 The Buncefield Oil Depot in Hemel Hempstead is rocked by explosions, causing a huge oil fire.
- 2006 The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust is opened in Tehran, Iran by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
- 2008 Visitor posting - Reyna Knutson, the most amazing baby in the whole world was born - USA
- 2009 Former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mohamed ElBaradei says that if he decides to run in the presidential election in Egypt in 2011, he will run as an independent candidate instead of running as a candidate of any of the political parties in Egypt.
- 2009 Judges in the Constitutional Court of Turkey vote unanimously to ban the country's Democratic Society Party because of its alleged links to Kurdish terrorists.
- 2009 North Korea acknowledges "the need to resume" the stalled six-party talks on its nuclear program, after talks with U.S. envoy Stephen Bosworth.
- 2009 Oil company Royal Dutch Shell wins the right to develop Iraq's Majnoon oil field in a joint venture with Petronas after the first such auction since the 2003 invasion. The field is expected to generate $900 million a year.
- 2009 Papua New Guinea's chief Ombudsman Chronox Manek is wounded in an apparent assassination attempt.
- 2009 Pope Benedict XVI releases a statement stating that he shares the "outrage, betrayal and shame" felt by the Irish people over the findings of the Murphy Report into sexual abuse by the Catholic clergy in Dublin.
- 2009 The Airbus A400M from Airbus Military performs its maiden flight in Seville, Spain.
- 2009 The USA threatens Iran with "significant new sanctions" over the country's nuclear programme according to US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
- 2009 The body of the former President of Cyprus Tassos Papadopoulos is stolen from the grave, a day before the first anniversary of his death.
- 2009 Visitor posting - Jacob Seibel's 16th birthday - USA
- 2009 The discovery of the Triassic theropod dinosaur genus Tawa is announced.
- 2009 Vasily Khristoforov, the head archivist for Russia's Federal Security Service confirms for the first time that the Soviet Union's KGB cremated Adolf Hitler's body in 1970 and scattered his ashes in the Biederitz River.
- 2009 Visitor posting - Caden Ryan King turns 2 years old. Congratulations! - USA
- 2009 Visitor posting - December 11 2009 Courtney's 16th Birthday
- 2009 Visitor posting - Felicia Weaver's 16th birthday - USA
- 2009 Visitor posting - Georgias 14th Birthday
- 2009 Visitor posting - Kabani Monroe's 16th Birthday!! - USA
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