1776 – Thomas Paine publishes his 1st “American Crisis” essay beginning”These are the times that try men’s souls” (date disputed)
1783 – William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest ever British Prime Minister at age 24
1932 – British Broadcasting Corp begins transmitting overseas
1946 – The Viet Minh, founded by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, began the First Indochina War against France.
1950 – Chinese invasion of Tibet forces the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama to flee
1958 – 1st radio broadcast from space, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower Christmas message “to all mankind, America’s wish for peace on Earth and goodwill to men everywhere”
1966 – The United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Outer Space Treaty, an international treaty binding the parties to use outer space only for peaceful purposes.
1974 – Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States, succeeding Gerald Ford, who had been elevated to the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon.
1984 – Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration to transfer Hong Kong back to China in 1997
1998 – The U.S. House of Representatives impeached President Bill Clinton, charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice, though Clinton was acquitted by the Senate the following month.
2012 – Park Geun-Hye became the first female to be elected president of South Korea; she was sworn into office the following year; however, she also became the country’s first democratically elected president to be removed from office when she was impeached in 2017.
2014 – The Guardian newspaper calls 2014 ‘The year the people stood up’
2016 – At least 48 people die after drinking bath lotion in Irkutsk, Siberia, thinking it contained alcohol
2018 – First use of a drone to deliver vaccines – to island of Erromango, Vanuatu, by Unicef
2019 – Australian state of New South Wales announces 7-day state of emergency amid extreme heat and over 100 bushfires that have burnt for two months
2019 – Earliest fossilized trees, 386 million years old, found at a quarry in Cairo, New York, study published in “Current Biology”
Film & TV:
1960 – Frank Sinatra’s 1st session with Reprise Records (Ring-A-Ding-Ding)
1971 – Stanley Kubrick’s X-rated film “A Clockwork Orange” based on the book by Anthony Burgess and starring Malcolm McDowell premieres
1997 – James Cameron’s Titanic, a drama about the doomed ocean liner starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, premiered; it later became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
Sport:
2010 – “Miracle at the New Meadowlands”, Philadelphia Eagles trail New York Giants by 21 points with eight minutes to play, before scoring 4 touchdowns in final 7 minutes, including dramatic walk-off punt returned for a touchdown by DeSean Jackson
