536 – Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire
1212 – Frederick II (later also Holy Roman Emperor) crowned King of Germany in Mainz
1961 – Tanganyika became independent, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister, and in 1964 the territory united with the island of Zanzibar to form Tanzania.
1965 – The animated special A Charlie Brown Christmas, featuring characters from Charles Schulz’s popular Peanuts comic strip, first aired on American television, and it became a holiday classic.
1967 – Jim Morrison arrested on stage for disturbing the peace at the New Haven Arena, Connecticut, making him the 1st rock star to be taken into custody during a performance
1968 – NLS (a system for which hypertext and the computer mouse were developed) is publicly demonstrated for the first time in San Francisco.
1979 – Some 10 years after the World Health Organization began a global vaccination program against smallpox, the disease was officially declared eradicated.
1990 – Lech Wałęsa wins Poland’s 1st direct presidential election in Poland
1990 – Slobodan Milošević was reelected president of Serbia at the head of the Socialist Party, formerly the League of Communists of Serbia (LCS).
1992 – Operation Restore Hope: US Marines land in Somalia
1998 – The United Nations General Assembly declared anti-Semitism a form of racism.
2003 – A blast in the center of Moscow kills six people and wounds several more.
2004 – Mary-Kate Olsen pledges that woman sewing garments for her company in Bangladesh will be afforded legal maternity leave
2015 – German Chancellor Angela Merkel named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, for her handling of debt and refugee crises
2016 – South Korean President Park Geun-Hye was impeached by the National Assembly amid allegations of corruption; she left office the following year, after the country’s Constitutional Court upheld the parliamentary decision.
2017 – Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi declares victory over the Islamic State in Iraq, ending more than 3 years of convict
2017 – Same-sex marriage is legalized in Australia after being signed into law by the Governor General
2019 – Chilean Air Force plane lost on flight to Antarctica with presumed loss of 38 lives
2020 – United Arab Emirates is the first country to authorize China’s Sinopharm vaccine for COVID-19 saying it is 86% effective
Film & TV:
1960 – 1st broadcast of “Coronation Street” on British ITV
Music:
1964 – John Coltrane’s Quartet records their greatest work “A Love Supreme” at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
Sport:
1978 – 1st game of Women’s Pro Basketball League (WBL), Chicago Hustle vs Milwaukee Does
2019 – World Anti-Doping Agency bans Russia from all major sporting events including 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 football World Cup in Qatar for manipulating laboratory data
Via Britannica / On This Day
