Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December
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December 1: Union Day in Romania (1918); World AIDS Day (awareness ribbon pictured)
- 1640 – John IV was declared King of Portugal, resulting in the Portuguese Restoration War with Spain.
- 1824 – The House of Representatives selected John Quincy Adams as the winner of the U.S. presidential election, after none of the candidates received a majority of the total electoral college votes, as dictated by the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
- 1955 – African-American Civil Rights Movement: Seamstress Rosa Parks was arrested for violating the racial segregation laws of Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing to give up her seat on a public bus to a white man, precipitating the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
- 1959 – Twelve countries signed the Antarctic Treaty, the first arms control agreement established during the Cold War, banning military activity in Antarctica and setting the continent aside as a scientific preserve.
- 1990 – Channel Tunnel workers from the United Kingdom and France met 40 metres (131 ft) beneath the English Channel seabed.
More events: November 30 – December 1 – December 2
December 2: National Day in the United Arab Emirates (1971) and Laos (1975)
- 1805 – Napoleonic Wars: French forces led by Emperor Napoleon I decisively defeated a Russo-Austrian army commanded by Czar Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz.
- 1823 – U.S. President James Monroe (pictured) issued the Monroe Doctrine, a proclamation of opposition to European colonialism in the New World.
- 1942 – The Manhattan Project: Scientists led by Enrico Fermi initiated the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction in the experimental nuclear reactor Chicago Pile-1.
- 1956 – Cuban Revolution: The yacht Granma, carrying Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and 80 other members of the 26th of July Movement, reached the shores of Cuba.
- 1975 – The Pathet Lao overthrew the royalist government in Vientiane, forcing King Savang Vatthana to abdicate, and established the Lao People's Democratic Republic.
More events: December 1 – December 2 – December 3
- 1854 – At least 22 people were killed and 35 others were injured when rebelling miners at the Eureka Stockade clashed violently with the police and the military in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.
- 1904 – The Jovian moon Himalia was discovered by astronomer Charles Dillon Perrine at the Lick Observatory in San Jose, California, USA.
- 1967 – Cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
- 1984 – Bhopal gas disaster: The accidental release of methyl isocyanate over Bhopal, India resulted in at least 20,000 total deaths and affected over 120,000 others in one of the world's worst industrial disasters.
- 1999 – NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander (pictured) moments before it reached the atmosphere of Mars and disappeared.
More events: December 2 – December 3 – December 4
December 4: Navy Day in India
- 1639 – English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks made the first observation of a transit of Venus (2004 picture shown).
- 1676 – Scanian War: Forces led by Swedish Field Marshal Simon Grundel-Helmfelt defeated the invading army of Denmark–Norway under the command of King Christian V at the Battle of Lund in an area north of Lund, Sweden.
- 1791 – The Observer, the world's first Sunday newspaper, was first published.
- 1991 – Pan American World Airways, which was the principal international airline of the United States and which was credited with many innovations, ended operations.
- 1992 – Operation Restore Hope: U.S. President George H. W. Bush ordered American troops into Somalia to help provide humanitarian aid and restore order after the dissolution of the country's central government during the ongoing Somali Civil War.
More events: December 3 – December 4 – December 5
December 5: Father's Day in Thailand; St Nicholas's Eve in various European countries
- 1492 – Christopher Columbus (pictured) became the first European to set foot on the island of Hispaniola (now Haiti and the Dominican Republic).
- 1590 – Niccolò Sfondrati became Pope Gregory XIV, succeeding Pope Urban VII who died two months earlier.
- 1766 – In London, James Christie opened what is today the world's leading art business and fine arts auction house.
- 1933 – Prohibition of alcoholic beverages in the United States officially ended when the Twenty-first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified.
- 1945 – Flight 19, a squadron of five Avenger TBM torpedo bombers of the U.S. Navy, disappeared in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle.
More events: December 4 – December 5 – December 6
December 6: Independence Day in Finland (1917); Constitution Day in Spain
- 1768 – The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica (title page pictured) was published.
- 1917 – Halifax Explosion: A ship in Halifax Harbour carrying trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid caught fire after a collision with another ship and exploded, devastating Halifax, Canada.
- 1922 – The Irish Free State, the first independent Irish state to be recognised by the British government, came into existence, one year to the day after the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.
- 1956 – The Blood in the Water match: At the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, the Hungarian water polo team defeat the USSR, 4–0, against the background of the Hungarian Revolution.
- 1957 – Project Vanguard: An attempt to launch the first American satellite failed with an explosion on the launch pad at Cape Canaveral.
- 1989 – The École Polytechnique massacre: Marc Lépine killed fourteen women and injured a further ten women and four men at the École Polytechnique in Montreal, Quebec.
More events: December 5 – December 6 – December 7
- 1724 – Tumult of Thorn (Toruń): Polish authorities executed the Mayor of Toruń, Royal Prussia and nine other Lutheran citizens following tensions between Protestants and Catholics.
- 1815 – Michel Ney, Marshal of France, was executed by a firing squad near Paris' Jardin du Luxembourg for supporting Napoleon Bonaparte.
- 1941 – World War II: The Imperial Japanese Navy made its attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii (pictured).
- 1949 – Chinese Civil War: The government of the Republic of China relocated from Mainland China to Taipei on the island of Taiwan.
- 1988 – An earthquake with a moment magnitude of 7.2 struck the Spitak region of Armenia, then part of the Soviet Union, killing at least 50,000 people.
- 1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrived at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.
More events: December 6 – December 7 – December 8
December 8: Eid al-Adha begins (Islam, 2008); Constitution Day in Romania (1991); Feast of the Immaculate Conception in Roman Catholicism
- 1854 – In his Apostolic constitution Ineffabilis Deus, Pope Pius IX (pictured) proclaimed the dogmatic definition of Immaculate Conception, which holds that the Virgin Mary was born free of original sin.
- 1941 – World War II: Takashi Sakai and the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Hong Kong and quickly achieved air superiority by bombing Kai Tak Airport.
- 1941 – The Holocaust: The Chełmno extermination camp in Poland, the first Nazi extermination camp to use poison gas, began operations.
- 1980 – Mark David Chapman fatally shot former Beatle John Lennon outside the Dakota apartments in New York City, USA.
- 1991 – Leaders of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine met to dissolve the Soviet Union and establish the Commonwealth of Independent States.
- 2004 – Nathan Gale fatally shot former Pantera and at the time Damageplan guitarist Dimebag Darrell and three others at a Damageplan concert in Columbus, Ohio, USA
More events: December 7 – December 8 – December 9
December 9: Independence Day in Tanzania (1961); Army Day in Peru
- 1856 – Anglo-Persian War: Bushehr, a city on the southwestern coast of the Persian Gulf in present-day Iran, surrendered to occupying British forces.
- 1905 – Legislation on the separation of church and state in France was adopted, triggering civil disobedience by French Catholics.
- 1946 – The Doctors' Trial, the trial for crimes committed in Nazi human experimentation during World War II, began in Nuremberg, Germany.
- 1961 – Tanganyika gained independence from Britain (Tanganyika would become part of Tanzania three years later).
- 1979 – A World Health Organization commission of eminent scientists certified the global eradication of smallpox (pictured), making it the only human infectious disease to have been completely eradicated from nature.
More events: December 8 – December 9 – December 10
December 10: Constitution Day in Thailand (1932); Human Rights Day (1948)
- 1508 – The Papal States, France, Aragon and the Holy Roman Empire formed the League of Cambrai, an alliance against the Republic of Venice.
- 1868 – The first traffic lights were installed outside the Houses of Parliament in London, resembling railway signals with semaphore arms and red and green gas lamps for night use.
- 1901 – The first Nobel Prizes were awarded, on the anniversary of the 1896 death of their founder, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel.
- 1936 – Edward VIII (pictured) signed his instrument of abdication, becoming the only British monarch to voluntarily relinquish the throne.
- 1948 – The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
More events: December 9 – December 10 – December 11
December 11: Republic Day in Burkina Faso (1958)
- 1282 – Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the last independent Prince of Wales to rule in Wales, was killed in an ambush.
- 1602 – Geneva successfully repelled a late night attack by the combined forces of Duke Charles Emmanuel of Savoy and King Philip III of Spain (pictured), an event commemorated annually during the Fête de l'Escalade.
- 1931 – The British Parliament enacted the Statute of Westminster, giving the option of complete legislative independence to the Irish Free State, Newfoundland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.
- 1946 – The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) was established to provide emergency food and health care to children in countries that had been devastated by World War II.
- 1994 – First Chechen War: Russian forces entered into the breakaway Russian republic of Chechnya to control the secessionist movement.
More events: December 10 – December 11 – December 12
December 12: Independence Day in Kenya (1963)
- 1531 – The Apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe: Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin saw a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary outside of modern-day Mexico City.
- 1897 – Belo Horizonte, the first planned city of Brazil, was inaugurated.
- 1901 – Guglielmo Marconi (pictured) received the first trans-Atlantic radio signal, from Poldhu Wireless Station in Cornwall, England to Signal Hill in St. John's, Newfoundland.
- 1915 – President Yuan Shikai of the Republic of China reinstated the monarchy and declared himself Emperor.
- 1964 – Jomo Kenyatta became the first President of the Republic of Kenya.
More events: December 11 – December 12 – December 13
December 13: Republic Day in Malta (1974); Saint Lucy's Day
- 1545 – Counter-Reformation: The Council of Trent, an ecumenical council convoked by Pope Paul III in response to the growth of Protestantism, opened in Trento, Italy.
- 1642 – Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European explorer to reach New Zealand.
- 1769 – Dartmouth College (pictured) in present-day Hanover, New Hampshire, USA was established by a Royal Charter from British King George III and became the last university founded in the Thirteen Colonies before the American Revolution.
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union forces under Maj. Gen. Ambrose Burnside suffered severe casualties against entrenched Confederate defenders at the Battle of Fredericksburg in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
- 1981 – Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law in Poland, suspended Solidarity and imprisoned many union leaders.
More events: December 12 – December 13 – December 14
- 1896 – Glasgow Subway (pictured), the third oldest below-ground metro system in the world after the London Underground and the Budapest Metro, began operations in Glasgow, Scotland.
- 1911 – Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his team became the first people to reach the South Pole.
- 1918 – The German Empire's defeat in World War I, and the stated fact that none of the Allies would ever accept a German-born prince as the King of Finland, led Frederick Charles to renounce the throne.
- 1962 – NASA's Mariner 2 became the world's first spacecraft to successfully fly by Venus.
- 1995 – The Dayton Agreement was signed in Paris, France to end the Bosnian War.
More events: December 13 – December 14 – December 15
- 1467 – Troops under Stephen III of Moldavia defeated the forces of Matthias Corvinus of Hungary at the Battle of Baia in Baia, present-day Romania.
- 1791 – The first ten amendments to the United States Constitution (pictured), collectively known as the United States Bill of Rights, were ratified.
- 1961 – Former Nazi leader Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death after being found guilty on fifteen criminal charges, including war crimes and crimes against humanity.
- 1964 – The six-month long Canadian Great Flag Debate ended when the Canadian House of Commons voted to replace the de facto national flag of Canada, the Canadian Red Ensign, with an official one, the current Maple Leaf Flag.
More events: December 14 – December 15 – December 16
December 16: National Day in Bahrain (1971); Victory Day in Bangladesh (1971); Independence Day in Kazakhstan (1991)
- 1653 – The Protectorate: Oliver Cromwell (pictured) became Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England.
- 1689 – The Parliament of England adopted the Bill of Rights, declaring that Englishmen possessed certain positive civil and political rights.
- 1850 – The Canterbury Pilgrims aboard Randolph and Charlotte-Jane arrived to settle Christchurch, New Zealand.
- 1944 – World War II: The Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany launched its final offensive in the western front, the Battle of the Bulge.
- 1971 – Pakistani forces in East Pakistan surrendered, ending the Indo-Pakistani War and the Bangladesh Liberation War.
More events: December 15 – December 16 – December 17
December 17: National Day in Bhutan (1907)
- 1862 – American Civil War: Union General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Order No. 11, expelling Jews from Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky.
- 1903 – In Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, USA, Orville and Wilbur Wright aboard the Wright Flyer (pictured) conducted the first successful flight of a powered fixed-wing aircraft.
- 1944 – Malmedy massacre: Nazi German troops under Joachim Peiper killed unarmed prisoners of war, captured during the Battle of the Bulge, with machine guns near Malmedy, Belgium.
- 1970 – Soldiers fired at workers emerging from trains in Gdynia, Poland, beginning the government's brutal crackdown on mass anti-communist protests across the country.
- 1983 – The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) detonated a car bomb just outside Harrods Department Store in London, killing six people and injuring about 90 others.
More events: December 16 – December 17 – December 18
December 18: Republic Day in Niger (1958)
- 218 BC – Second Punic War: Hannibal (pictured) had his first great victory over the Roman Republic at the Battle of the Trebia.
- 1865 – Slavery in the United States was abolished when the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution was adopted.
- 1892 – The first performance of Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's fairy tale-ballet The Nutcracker was held at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.
- 1966 – Epimetheus, one of the moons of Saturn, was discovered, but was mistaken as Janus. It took 12 years to determine that they are two distinct objects sharing the same orbit.
- 1987 – Programmer Larry Wall released the first version of the programming language Perl via the comp.sources.misc newsgroup.
More events: December 17 – December 18 – December 19
- 1843 – A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, a novella about Ebenezer Scrooge, was first published.
- 1972 – NASA astronauts Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt aboard Apollo 17 returned to Earth. No human has visited the Moon since.
- 1984 – The People's Republic of China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997.
More events: December 18 – December 19 – December 20
- 1803 – As part of the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans was transferred from France to the United States.
- 1917 – The Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, was founded. Felix Dzerzhinsky was appointed as its leader.
- 1951 – Experimental Breeder Reactor I near Arco, Idaho, USA became the world's first electricity-generating nuclear power plant when it produced sufficient electricity to illuminate four 200-watt light bulbs (pictured).
- 1995 – The NATO-led IFOR began peacekeeping in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- 1999 – Portugal transferred sovereignty of Macau to the People's Republic of China.
More events: December 19 – December 20 – December 21
December 21: December Solstice (12:04 UTC, 2008); Dongzhi, Yalda, Yule, and other winter solstice festivals (Northern Hemisphere, 2008); Midsummer festivities (Southern Hemisphere, 2008); Hanukkah begins at sunset (Judaism, 2008)
- 69 – Vespasian became the fourth Roman Emperor in the Year of the Four Emperors.
- 1844 – The Rochdale Pioneers, usually considered the first successful cooperative enterprise, opened their store in Rochdale, England, and formed the basis for the modern cooperative movement.
- 1937 – The animated feature film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based on the fairy tale Snow White by the Brothers Grimm, premiered to a widely receptive audience.
- 1962 – Rondane National Park (pictured), Norway's first national park, was established.
- 1988 – Pan Am Flight 103: A terrorist bomb exploded and destroyed a Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270, including 11 on the ground.
More events: December 20 – December 21 – December 22
- 1808 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven (pictured) premiered his Fifth Symphony, currently one of the most popular and well-known compositions in all of European classical music, at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman's March to the Sea ended with the capture of Savannah, Georgia.
- 1885 – Itō Hirobumi, a samurai from Chōshū, became the first Prime Minister of Japan.
- 1989 – Romanian Revolution: After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu took over as President of Romania, ending the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceauşescu.
- 2001 – Burhanuddin Rabbani of the Northern Alliance handed over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai.
More events: December 21 – December 22 – December 23
December 23: Festivus; The Emperor's Birthday in Japan
- 962 – Byzantine-Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops stormed the city of Aleppo, recovering the tattered tunic of John the Baptist.
- 1620 – Construction of the Plymouth Colony, an English colonial venture in what is today Plymouth, Massachusetts, USA, began two days after the first landing party arrived at the site.
- 1823 – A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, was first published (1912 book cover pictured). The poem was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.
- 1947 – The transistor, invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
- 1972 – The Nicaraguan capital of Managua was struck by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, killing more than 10,000.
- 1986 – Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager became the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, landing in California's Edwards Air Force Base after a nine-day trip.
More events: December 22 – December 23 – December 24
- 1777 – An expedition led by English explorer James Cook reached Christmas Island (pictured), the largest coral atoll in the world.
- 1814 – The Treaty of Ghent was signed in Ghent, present-day Belgium, ending the War of 1812 between the United Kingdom and the United States.
- 1865 – Six Confederate veterans of the American Civil War founded the Ku Klux Klan, which would later become a white supremacist group.
- 1906 – Canadian inventor Reginald Fessenden transmitted the first radio broadcast, which included his playing a song on the violin and reading a passage from the Bible.
- 1914 – British and German soldiers interrupted World War I to celebrate Christmas, beginning the Christmas truce.
- 1968 – The crew of the NASA spacecraft Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit the Moon.
- 1974 – Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin, Australia, eventually destroying more than 70 percent of the city.
More events: December 23 – December 24 – December 25
December 25: Christmas in Western Christianity
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- 800 – Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne emperor, a title that had been out of use in the West since the abdication of Romulus Augustus in 476.
- 1066 – William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy, was crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey, completing the Norman Conquest, the last successful foreign conquest of England.
- 1776 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington and his army crossed the Delaware River to launch a surprise attack on Hessian mercenaries at the Battle of Trenton.
- 1947 – The Constitution of the Republic of China went into effect, amid the ongoing Chinese Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists.
- 1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev (pictured) resigned as President of the Soviet Union.
More events: December 24 – December 25 – December 26
December 26: Boxing Day; Kwanzaa begins; St. Stephen's Day in Western Christianity
- 1606 – The first recorded performance of William Shakespeare's King Lear, based on the legend of King Lear of Britain, was held.
- 1790 – French Revolution: Louis XVI of France gave his Royal Assent to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, subordinating the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government.
- 1898 – Physicists Pierre and Marie Curie announced the discovery of a new element, naming it radium.
- 1908 – Boxer Jack Johnson became the first African American Heavyweight Champion of the World after defeating Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney.
- 2004 – An undersea earthquake in the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Sumatra, Indonesia generated a series of devastating tsunamis that killed more than 225,000 people in eleven countries (a tsunami in Ao Nang, Thailand pictured).
More events: December 25 – December 26 – December 27
December 27: St. Stephen's Day in Eastern Christianity
- 1831 – Aboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin left Plymouth, England on what became an historic expedition to South America that made his name as a naturalist.
- 1918 – A public speech by famed Polish pianist Ignacy Jan Paderewski (pictured) in Poznań sparked the Greater Poland Uprising against Germany and Prussia.
- 1945 – The international ratification of the Bretton Woods Agreement established the International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
- 1949 – Indonesian National Revolution: Queen Juliana of the Netherlands signed papers that relinquished sovereignty of most of the Dutch East Indies, officially recognising the independence of Indonesia.
- 1979 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: Soviet troops stormed Tajbeg Palace outside of Kabul and killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and his 300 elite guards.
More events: December 26 – December 27 – December 28
December 28: Proclamation Day in South Australia (1836); Day of the Holy Innocents in Western Christianity
- 1065 – London's Westminster Abbey, built by Edward the Confessor between 1045 and 1050, was consecrated.
- 1836 – At the Old Gum Tree (pictured in 2006) near present-day Adelaide, Royal Navy Rear–Admiral John Hindmarsh read a proclamation establishing the British province of South Australia.
- 1895 – History of film: Using their cinematograph in Paris, the Lumière brothers showed motion pictures to a paying audience for the first time.
- 1948 – The Douglas DC-3 airliner NC16002, en route from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida, USA, inexplicably disappeared in the area known as the Bermuda Triangle.
- 1999 – Saparmurat Niyazov, the first President of Turkmenistan, was proclaimed President for Life by the Assembly of Turkmenistan.
More events: December 27 – December 28 – December 29
December 29: Hanukkah ends at sunset (Judaism, 2008)
- 1170 – Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket was slain in his own cathedral by four knights of Henry II of England.
- 1860 – To counter the French Navy's La Gloire, the world's first ironclad warship, the British Royal Navy launched the world's first iron-hulled armoured battleship, HMS Warrior.
- 1911 – Sun Yat-sen (pictured) was elected as the provisional President of the Republic of China by representatives from provinces in Nanjing.
- 1937 – The Constitution of Ireland, the founding legal document of the state known today as the Republic of Ireland, came into force.
- 1993 – The Tian Tan Buddha, the world's tallest outdoor bronze statue of the seated Buddha, was completed.
More events: December 28 – December 29 – December 30
December 30: Rizal Day in the Philippines
- 1853 – Gadsden Purchase: The United States bought approximately 29,600 square miles (77,000 km²) of land south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande from Mexico for US$10 million.
- 1896 – Philippine Revolution: Nationalist José Rizal (pictured) was executed by a firing squad in Manila after Spanish authorities convicted him of rebellion, sedition, and conspiracy.
- 1922 – The Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, legalizing the creation of a union of several Soviet republics in the form of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was ratified.
- 1927 – The Ginza Line, the oldest underground subway line in the Far East, opened in Tokyo.
- 1947 – King Michael I was forced to abdicate as Romania became a People's Republic.
More events: December 29 – December 30 – December 31
December 31: New Year's Eve; Hogmanay in Scotland
- 1775 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Quebec, British forces repulsed an attack by the Continental Army to capture Quebec City and enlist French Canadian support.
- 1857 – Queen Victoria (pictured) selected Ottawa as the capital of the British colony of Canada.
- 1960 – The farthing, a British coin first minted in England in the 13th century, ceased to be legal tender.
- 1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapsed, eventually to become Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
- 1972 – American baseball player Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash en route to deliver aid to victims of the Nicaragua earthquake.
- 1999 – Boris Yeltsin, the first democratically elected President of Russia, resigned and named Vladimir Putin as Acting President.
More events: December 30 – December 31 – January 1
Selected anniversaries/On this day archive
January - February - March - April - May - June - July - August - September - October - November - December
Recent changes to Selected anniversaries - Selected anniversaries editing guidelines
It is now 07:59 on Monday, June 9, 2008 (UTC) - Purge cache for this page
