This Month in History DECEMBER

December 1, 1988

 Benazir Bhutto was nominated to become prime minister of Pakistan, the first woman to govern a Muslim nation.

December 1, 1994 – The head of the U.N. Commission on Rwanda estimated 500,000 deaths had resulted from genocide.

December 2, 1804 – Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France by Pope Pius VII in Paris.

December 2, 1805 – Napoleon defeated Russia and Austria in the Battle of Austerlitz.

December 2, 1942 – Physicists led by Enrico Fermi carried out the world’s first successful nuclear chain reaction at the University of Chicago.

December 2, 1979 – Electors in Iran voted overwhelmingly in favor of a new constitution granting absolute power to Ayatollah Khomeini.

December 2, 1982 – The first permanent artificial heart was implanted in 61-year-old Barney C. Clark by Dr. William De Vries at the University of Utah Medical Center in Salt Lake City. Clark, who was near death at the time of the operation, survived 112 days after the implantation.

December 3, 1962 – Edith Sampson was sworn in as the first African American female judge, after she was elected associate judge of the Municipal Court in Chicago.

December 3, 1967 – The first successful heart transplant was performed by Dr. Christiaan Barnard at Cape Town, South African, on Louis Washkansky, who lived for 18 days.

December 3, 1984 – A deadly gas leak (of methyl isocyanate) at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killed at least 3,000 persons and injured more than 200,000.

December 4, 1991 – The last American hostage held in Lebanon was released. Journalist Terry Anderson of the Associated Press had been kidnapped on March 16, 1985 and held for 2,454 days by Islamic Jihad (Holy War) captors. He was one of 15 Americans held hostage for periods ranging from two months to more than six years.

December 5, 1492 – Haiti was discovered by Christopher Columbus.

December 5, 1955 – In Alabama, the Montgomery bus boycott began in response to the arrest of Rosa Parks for refusing to give up her seat on a municipal bus to a white man. Organized by the African American community, the boycott lasted until December 20, 1956, when a U.S. Supreme Court ruling integrated the public transportation system.

December 6, 1492 – The island of Hispaniola was discovered by Christopher Columbus. Today the island is divided between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

December 6, 1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, abolishing slavery.

December 6, 1971 – The Democratic Republic of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, was recognized by India. Pakistan then broke off diplomatic relations with India.

December 7, 1941 – The U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked by nearly 200 Japanese aircraft in a raid that lasted just over one hour and left nearly 3,000 Americans dead.

December 8, 1941 – A day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan.

December 8, 1991 – The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) ceased to exist, as the leaders of Russia, Byelorussia and the Ukraine signed an agreement creating the Commonwealth of Independent States. The remaining republics of the former USSR, with the exception of Georgia, joined the new Commonwealth.

December 9, 1608  – British poet John Milton was born in London.

December 9, 1990 – Lech Walesa won a landslide victory in the Polish presidential election.

December 10, 1896 – Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel died at San Remo, Italy. His will stipulated that income from his $9 million estate be used for awards recognizing persons who have made valuable contributions to humanity.

December 10, 1948 – The General Assembly of the United Nations adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

December 10, 1950 – Dr. Ralph Bunche became the first African American man awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts in mediation between Israel and nearby Arab states the previous year.

December 11, 1901 – The first transatlantic radio signal was transmitted by Guglielmo Marconi from Cornwall, England, to St. John’s, Newfoundland.

December 12, 1998 – The House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, charging him with making false statements in his answers to written questions from Congress.

December 13, 1937 – The beginning of one of the worst atrocities of World War II as the Chinese city of Nanking (Nanjing) was captured by the Japanese. Over the next six weeks, the Rape of Nanking occurred in which Japanese soldiers randomly attacked, raped and indiscriminately killed an estimated 200,000 Chinese persons.

December 14, 1918 – British women voted for the first time in a general election and were allowed to run for office.

December 14, 1939 – The League of Nations expelled Soviet Russia for its aggression against Finland.

December 14, 1995 – A Bosnian peace treaty was signed in Paris by leaders from the former Yugoslavia. The treaty ended Europe’s worst conflict since World War II.

December 15, 1840 – Napoleon was buried in Les Invalides in Paris. He had died in exile on the island of Saint Helena after his fall from power.

December 15, 1989 – The dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet ended in Chile. Pinochet had come to power in 1973 after a military overthrow of the democratically elected government.

December 15, 1993 – The GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) Treaty was approved by delegations from 117 countries. The treaty was designed to reduce international tariffs, eliminate trade quotas, and protect intellectual property.

December 15, 1995 – European Union leaders announced their new currency would be known as the Euro.

December 16, 1969 – The British House of Commons voted 343-185 to abolish the death penalty in England.

December 16, 1991 – The United Nations voted to revoke Resolution 3379, originally approved on November 10, 1975, which had equated Zionism (a movement supporting the Jewish national state of Israel) with racism.

December 17, 1971 – The war between India and Pakistan over East Pakistan (later Bangladesh) ended as 90,000 Pakistani troops surrendered.

December 18, 1865 – The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified abolishing slavery.

December 18, 1956 – Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

December 19, 1732 – Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard’s Almanac containing weather predictions, humor, proverbs and epigrams, eventually selling nearly 10,000 copies per year.

December 19, 1946 – War broke out in French Indochina as Ho Chi Minh attacked the French seeking to oust them from Vietnam.

December 19, 1998 – The House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton, approving two out of four Articles of Impeachment, charging Clinton with lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice.

December 20, 1989 – The U.S. invaded Panama attempting to capture Manuel Noriega on charges of narcotics trafficking. Operation Just Cause occurred seven months after Noriega had declared unfavorable election results in his country to be null and void.

December 21, 1846 – Anesthesia was used for the first time in Britain during an operation at University College Hospital in London performed by Robert Liston who amputated the leg of a servant.

December 21, 1972 – East and West Germany established diplomatic ties, ending nearly two decades of Cold War hostility and paving the way for international recognition of East Germany.

December 21, 1988 – Pan American Flight 103 exploded in midair as the result of a terrorist bomb and crashed into Lockerbie, Scotland. All 259 passengers and crew members along with 11 persons on the ground were killed.

December 22, 1783 – Following a triumphant journey from New York to Annapolis, Maryland, George Washington, victorious Commander-in-Chief of the American Revolutionary Army, appeared before Congress and voluntarily resigned his commission.

December 23, 1805  – Mormon prophet Joseph Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. He founded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

December 23, 1888 – Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh cut off his left ear during a fit of depression.

December 23, 1901  – Japanese Emperor Hirohito was born in Tokyo. He was Japan’s wartime Emperor and was allowed to remain in his position after the war.

December 23, 1947 – The transistor was invented at Bell Laboratories by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, who shared the Nobel Prize for their invention which sparked a worldwide revolution in electronics.

December 24, 1814 – The Treaty of Ghent between America and Britain was signed, officially ending the War of 1812.

December 25, 1642 – Isaac Newton was born in Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. He was a mathematician, scientist and author, best known for his work Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica on the theory of gravitation. He died in London and was the first scientist to be honored with burial in Westminster Abbey.

December 25, 1876 – The founder of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah was born in Karachi.

December 25, 1926 – Hirohito became Emperor of Japan.

December 25, 1989 – In Romania, a television broadcast of a Christmas symphony was interrupted with the announcement that Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife had been executed following a popular uprising. A pro-democracy coalition then took control. Ceausescu, a hard-line Communist, had been ousted from power after ordering his black-shirted state police to suppress a disturbance in the town of Timisorara, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 4,500 persons.

December 26, 1893 – Mao Tse-Tung was born in Hunan Province, China. He was a Chinese librarian, teacher, communist revolutionist, considered the “founding father” of the People’s Republic of China.

December 26, 2004 – An estimated 230,000 persons were killed and 1.5 million left homeless when a magnitude 9.3 earthquake on the seafloor of the Indian Ocean set off a series of giant tsunami waves that smashed into the shorelines of a dozen countries including Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India and Somalia.

December 27, 1927 – Josef Stalin consolidated his power in Soviet Russia by expelling rival Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Communist Party.

December 27, 1822 – French chemist-bacteriologist Louis Pasteur was born in Dole, France. He developed the pasteurization process to kill harmful bacteria with heat and found ways of preventing silkworm disease, anthrax, chicken cholera, and rabies.

December 27, 1945 – The International Monetary Fund was established in Washington, D.C.

December 27, 1996 – A genocide trial began concerning the killing of an estimated 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda. In 1994, a bloody civil war had broken out between the two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and the Tutsi. After the Hutu army seized power it had waged a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Tutsi population.

December 28, 1947 – Victor Emmanuel III, the last King of Italy, died while in exile in Alexandria, Egypt. He had become king upon the assassination of his father in 1900. Following World War I, he named Benito Mussolini to form a cabinet and then failed to prevent Mussolini’s Fascists from seizing power. In 1946, he abdicated and went into exile.

December 29, 1940 – During the Blitz, German aircraft dropped thousands of incendiary bombs on the center of London, causing the worst fire damage since the great fire of 1666. St. Paul’s Cathedral survived but eight other Wren churches along with the Guildhall and Old Bailey were badly damaged.

December 30, 1922 – The USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics) was established through the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation.

December 31, 1879 – Thomas Edison provided the first public demonstration of his electric incandescent lamp at his laboratory in Menlo Park, New Jersey.

December 31, 1971 – Austrian Kurt Waldheim became U.N. Secretary-General following the retirement of U Thant. Waldheim served until 1981 then resumed his career in Austrian politics.