Today's 20 December Major Events in History

Photo for the article Today's 20 December Major Events

69 General Vespasian's troops occupy Rome after defeating the Emperor Vitellius
1046 Pope Gregory VI abdicates at the Council of Sutri, ending a conflict between himself, Benedict IX and Sylvester III; Clement II becomes the new Pope

Richard the Lionheart Captured

1192 Richard the Lionhearted captured near Vienna by Leopold of Austria on his way home from the Third Crusade (released 1194)

1448 Pope Nicholas V appoints Rudolf of Diepholt, Bishop of Utrecht, as cardinal

Knights of Rhodes Surrender

1522 Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate. They eventually settle in Malta and become known as the Knights of Malta.

1585 English fleet & Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, reach Vlissingen
1600 Ottario Rinuccini and Giulio Caccini's opera "Euridice" published
1606 The English colonial expedition to America, consisting of the ships Discovery, Godspeed and Susan Constant, departs Blackwall, London to found Jamestown, Virginia
1661 Corporation Act enforced in England
1669 1st jury trial in Delaware; Marcus Jacobson condemned for insurrection & sentenced to flogging, branding & slavery

Russian New Year Changed

1699 Russian Tsar Peter the Great orders the Russian New Year changed from September 1 to January 1

1780 Britain declares war on Holland

First US Cotton Mill

1790 First successful US cotton mill begins spinning yarn in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, built by Samuel Slater based on Richard Arkwright's design

1803 French flag lowered in New Orleans to signify the formal transfer of the Louisiana Purchase from France to the United States, purchased for $15 million

1812 "Grimm's Fairy Tales" or "Children's and Household Tales" by Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm is first published

1820 Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men aged 21 to 50

Rosamunde

1823 Play "Rosamunde, Princess of Cyprus" by Helmina von Chézy with incidental music by Franz Schubert premieres in Vienna

1830 Great Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia recognize Belgium
1850 Hawaiian post office established
1860 South Carolina General Assembly votes 169-0 to secede from the United States, declaring itself an "independent commonwealth" and is quickly followed by other Southern states, triggering the American Civil War
1861 Battle of Dranesville, VA
1862 -Dec 20th] Battle of Kelly's Ford, VA
1862 -Jan 3rd] Vicksburg campaign

Confederates Occupy Trenton

1862 Confederate Army Brigadier General Nathan Bedford Forrest occupies Trenton, Kentucky (US Civil War)

1862 Confederate raid on Union supplies at Holly Springs, Mississippi
1862 Holly Springs Raid: Earl Van Dorn leads Confederate cavalry against a Union supply depot in Mississippi
1864 -Dec 27th] Battle of Ft Fisher, NC
1865 De Clear-Alkmaar railway opens

Incandescent Light

1879 Thomas Edison privately demonstrates his incandescent light bulb at Menlo Park, New Jersey

1880 Battle at Bronker's Spruit, Transvaal: Farmers beat Britten
1880 NY's Broadway lit by electricity, becomes known as "Great White Way"
1883 International cantilever railway bridge opens at Niagara Falls between Canada and US
1891 Strongman Louis Cyr withstands pull of 4 horses
1892 Pneumatic automobile tire patented, Syracuse, NY
1893 1st state anti-lynching statute approved, in Georgia
1894 England beat Australia by 10 runs in the first six-day cricket Test, Australia needed 177 to win but were all out for 166
1900 Giacobini discovers a comet (will be 1st comet visited by spacecraft)

1906 Venezuela (under vice-pres Gomez) attacks Dutch fleet
1907 Explosion at Yolande Alabama, coal mine kills 91
1912 J Hartley Manners' "Peg O' My Heart" premieres in NYC
1912 Paul Claudels "L'Annonce Faite à Marie" premieres in Paris
1915 Russian troops overrun Qom, Persia

1915 WWI: ANZAC troops complete their withdrawal from Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula

1917 A second nationwide referendum on military conscription is rejected by the Australian public

Cheka Forms

1917 Improved event: Soviet state security force and forerunner to the KGB, the Cheka forms under Felix Dzerzhinsky after a decree by Vladimir Lenin

1918 Eugene O'Neill's play "Moon of the Caribees" premieres in NYC
1918 The Allies turn their attention to Bolshevik expansion in the East, landing troops in Crimea and Latvia
1919 Canadian National Railways established (N America's longest, 50,000 KM)
1919 US House of Representatives restricts immigration
1920 Bert Collins scores 104 on Test cricket debut against England at the SCG
1920 Bob Hope becomes an American citizen at age 17 after emigrating from England at four years old
1922 Draft declaration on creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) crafted by representatives from the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, Byelorussian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR
1922 Polish parliament selects Stanislaw Wojcieckowski as president

Hitler Freed from Prison

1924 Adolf Hitler is freed from jail early, having served only nine months of a five-year sentence for the "Beer Hall Putsch"

1926 Sidney Howard's "Silver Cord" premieres in NYC
1926 St. Louis Cardinals trade future Baseball Hall of Fame infielder Rogers Hornsby to NY Giants for Frankie Frisch & Jimmy Ring; concerns over Hornsby's gambling
1928 1st international dogsled mail leaves Minot, Maine for Montreal, Quebec
1928 Ethel Barrymore Theatre opens at 243 W 47th St NYC
1929 Heinie Wagner replaces Bill Carrigan as Red Sox manager
1929 Mount Davidson dedicated as a San Francisco city park
1930 Cricketer Learie Constantine scores 100 runs in 52 mins West Indies v Tasmania (10x4, 1x6, 1x5) [1]
1933 Bolivia & Paraguay sign cease fire

Ad Catholici Sacerdotii

1935 Pope Pius XI publishes encyclical Ad Catholici Sacerdotii on the importance of priestly celibacy

1935 The crystallization of the first virus, the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), by Wendell Stanley is announced in the journal Science, for which he is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry on December 10, 1946
1938 Boston Bruins rookie goalie Frankie Brimsek records his 3rd straight shutout with a 3-0 win over the New York Americans, making it his incredible sixth shutout in his first 8 NHL games
1939 Radio Australia begins overseas shortwave service

Connie Mack Acquires Athletics

1940 Connie Mack acquires controlling interest in the Athletics baseball club for $42,000

1941 Free France under adm Muselier occupies St-Pierre et Miquelon
1941 Japanese troops land on Mindanao, Philippines
1941 World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.
1942 1st Japanese bombing of Calcutta
1943 "Internationale" is no longer used as USSR National Anthem
1944 Archbishop De Young & bishop Huibers condemn black market
1944 Battle of Bastogne: Nazis surround 101st Airborne (NUTS!)
1944 Bishop forbids membership of non Catholic unions
1944 Terence Rattigan's comedic play "O Mistress Mine" premieres in London
1945 Rationing of auto tires ends in US

1946 Darius Milhaud's Symphony No. 2 premieres with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by the composer; the work is commissioned as a memorial to the wife of the group's music director, Serge Koussevitzky
1948 Second Chamber accept 2nd Police Action in Indonesia

Beauty And The Beast

1949 Maurice Ravel and John Cranko's ballet "Beauty And The Beast" premieres

1951 Walter Zinn's Experimental Breeder Reactor I, the first nuclear reactor to produce electric power, goes live at the Argonne National Laboratory, USA
1952 KHQ TV channel 6 in Spokane, WA (NBC) begins broadcasting
1953 KID (now KIDK) TV channel 3 in Idaho Falls, ID (CBS) 1st broadcasting
1953 KWTV TV channel 9 in Oklahoma City, OK (CBS) begins broadcasting
1953 WCSH TV Channel 6 in Portland, Maine (NBC) begins broadcasting
1955 Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales
1956 Military coup under colonel Simbolon in Sumatra
1956 Montgomery, Alabama removes race-based seat assignments on its buses

1957 Elvis Presley receives his draft notice to join the US Army for national service during the peacetime draft

1959 Indian cricket spin bowler Jasubhai Patel takes 9-69 in Australia's 1st innings 219 in 2nd Test at Kanpur
1960 Auschwitz commandant Richard Bar arrested in German FR
1960 The National Liberation Front, better known as the Viet Cong, is officially formed in South Vietnam

Osmond Brothers Debut

1962 American pop singing group the Osmond Brothers debut on "The Andy Williams Show"

1963 Berlin Wall opens for 1st time to West Berliners

1963 Massemba-Debate elected President of Congo-Brazzaville
1963 Trial against 21 camp guards of Auschwitz begins
1964 Levi Eshkol forms 12th Israeli government
1966 NBA awards Seattle Supersonics a franchise for 1967-68 season
1966 Nuclear Planning Group forms in Brussels
1966 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1967 474,300 US soldiers in Vietnam
1967 Ian Anderson and Glenn Cornick form rock group "Jethro Tull" in Blackpool, England
1968 Learie Constantine becomes UK's first person of African descent to be named a life peer (to sit in the House of Lords) in the Crown's New Year's Honours list
1968 The People's Democracy (PD) announce that its members will undertake a protest march from Belfast to Derry beginning 1 January 1969
1968 The Zodiac Killer murders teenagers Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday while on their first date together in Vallejo, California [1]

Leaving On A Jet Plane

1969 Peter, Paul and Mary's cover of John Denver's song "Leaving On A Jet Plane" reaches #1

1970 Edward Gierek succeeds Wladyslaw Gomulka as Poland's communist party leader

"Ms." Magazine

1971 First preview issue of "Ms." magazine is published in the US launched by Gloria Steinem

1971 Pakistan president Yahya Khan resigns

The Effect of Gamma Rays

1972 "The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds" film directed by Paul Newman and starring his wife Joanna Woodward, premieres in NYC

1972 Five civilians (four Catholics, one Protestant) killed in gun attack on the Top of the Hill Bar in Derry, North Ireland
1973 AL president Joe Cronin refuses to allow Dick Williams to manage Yankees
1973 Dutch Antillean government of Juancho Evertsz forms

Richard Scores #1,000

1973 Montreal Canadien Henri Richard scores his 1,000th NHL point

1974 Ethiopia becomes socialist one-party state

1975 Joe Walsh recruited to join Eagles
1975 Pope Paul VI names Johannes Willebrands Archbishop of Utrecht

1977 1st Space walk made by Soviet cosmonaut Georgy Grechko during Salyut 6 EO-1 mission
1977 RAF -terrorist Knut Folkerts sentenced to 20 years

Haldeman Released from Jail

1978 Nixon's White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman is released from jail after serving 18 months

1979 Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Behn Wilson scores with 4:08 remaining in regulation to earn a 1-1 tie with the Pittsburgh Penguins and equal NHL record for longest undefeated streak of 28 games; go on to break record and extend to 35 games

Ex-Premier Announced Dead

1980 Soviet Union formally announces the death of past Premier Alexei Kosygin

1981 Browns set team records for most fumbles (9) & most turnovers (10)
1981 Winnipeg left wing Doug Smail sets NHL record by scoring just 4 seconds into Jets' 5-4 win over the St Louis Blues; fastest goal from opening face-off to back of net in history; later tied by Bryan Trottier and Alex Mogilny
1983 El Salvador adopts constitution
1983 Guy Lafleur, Montreal Canadiens, becomes 10th NHLer to score 500 goals
1983 NY Islanders score their most goals (11) vs Pitts Penguins

PLO Evacuate Lebanon

1983 PLO chairman Yasser Arafat and 4,000 loyalists evacuate Lebanon

1984 US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1985 Denis Potvin passes Bobby Orr as NHL defenseman scorer (916 points)
1985 Position of American Poet Laureate established (Robert Warren is 1st)
1985 Sportscaster Howard Cosell retires from television sports after 20 years with ABC
1986 White teenagers beat Black individuals in New York City's Howard Beach
1987 Dona Paz ferry sinks after crash with oil tanker Vector in Philippine waters, 4,386 die in world's deadliest peacetime maritime disaster
1988 Animal rights terrorists fire-bomb Harrod's department store, London
1988 NBC signs lease to stay in NYC, 33 more years
1988 Premier Ranasinghe Premadasa elected President of Sri Lanka

Born on the Fourth of July

1989 Anti-war film "Born on the Fourth of July" premieres, directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Cruise

1989 Premier Lubbers sees CDA-party leader Elco Brinkman as successor

US Ousts Noriega

1989 US troops invade Panama and oust Manuel Noriega, but do not immediately capture him

1990 Pentagon warns Saddam that US air power is ready to attack on 1/15
1990 Robert F X Sillerman purchases WAFL NY-NJ Knights for $11 million

1990 The world's first website and server go live at CERN

1991 Missouri court sentences Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the "honor killing" of their teenaged daughter Palestina in St. Louis; he dies of diabetes complications before execution, she dies of natural causes while in prison
1991 NHL approves expansion teams Tampa Lightning & Ottawa Senators

PM Paul Keating

1991 Paul Keating becomes Prime Minister of Australia after rolling Bob Hawke for leadership of the Labor party

1992 Northwest & KLM introduce a new joint logo "Worldwide Reliability"

1994 Ballon d'Or: FC Barcelona's Bulgarian forward Hristo Stoichkov is named Europe's best football player ahead of Juventus striker Roberto Baggio and Milan defender Paolo Maldini

1995 American Flight 965 crashes into a mountain in Buga, Colombia, 159 die, 5 survive
1995 NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia
1996 First part of the new building for the National Library of France inaugurated in Paris, designed by Dominique Perrault [1]

1999 Portugal returns Macau to China
2001 Argentine economic crisis: President of Argentina Fernando de la Rúa is forced out of office.

2002 US Senator Trent Lott resigns as majority leader.

The Breakthrough

2005 Geffen Records releases "The Breakthrough," the seventh studio album by Mary J. Blige; it wins three Grammy Awards and sells over three million copies

2005 New York City's Transport Workers Union Local 100 goes on strike over pension and wage increases, shutting down all subway and bus services for three days
2005 The first same sex civil partnerships in Scotland are celebrated
2005 US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of "intelligent design" in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
2006 A judge rules against the death penalty in the case of Naveed Haq, a man convicted in the shooting death and injuries at the Jewish Federation in Seattle.

Oldest UK Monarch

2007 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.

Thieves Steal a Picasso

2007 Painting "Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904)", by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art, along with "O Lavrador de Café", by the major Brazilian modernist painter Candido Portinari

2007 Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque completed (begun 1994), becoming the largest mosque in Abu Dhabi

2012 Apple is denied a patent for mobile pinch-to-zoom gestures by the US patent authorities
2012 Intercontinental Exchange purchases the New York Stock Exchange, the largest in the world, for $8 billion
2014 Ismaaiyl Abdullah Brinsley kills 2 NYPD officers in Brooklyn, New York, supposedly in revenge for the killing of Eric Garner, before killing himself
2015 Landslide from construction waste in Shenzhen, China leaves 74 dead or missing and buries 30 buildings
2017 European Commission triggers first step of its article 7 procedure issuing Poland with formal warning of risk to voting rights
2017 Lady Gaga signs Las Vegas residency deal for $75m at MGM Park Theatre
2017 US House and Senate pass $1.5 trillion tax and jobs bill, the biggest tax overhaul for decades
2018 New figures show average US male weighs 198 pounds and stands 5 feet 9 inches, women 171 pounds and 5 feet 4 inches

Defense Secretary Mattis Resigns

2018 US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announces his resignation after disagreements with President Donald Trump

2019 Landmark climate justice case as Dutch Supreme Court upholds 2013 decision brought by Urgenda Foundation against Dutch government for not reducing carbon dioxide emissions
2019 Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians of Montana granted US federal recognition, providing the right to certain legal and government benefits
2019 United States Space Force founded, an armed forces branch dedicated to space warfare
2020 European countries begin closing their borders to the UK after news of a faster-spreading variant of COVID-19 across London and the south-east
2021 First Hong Kong legislative elections with only 'patriot' candidates allowed to stand has low turnout of 30%
2022 6.4-magnitude earthquake near Eureka, northern California kills at least two people [1]

2022 Multinational company 3M says it will stop making and using "forever chemicals", linked to health problems such as cancer [1]
2022 The ruling Taliban suspend university education for female students in Afghanistan, part of a wider crackdown on women's rights in the country [1]
2023 Gaza Health Authority says the death toll has reached nearly 20,000 from the war with Israel - higher than other Arab conflict with Israel in more than 40 years [1]
2024 A 50-year old psychiatrist from Saudi Arabia drives his car through an outdoor Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, killing at least five people