This date in history

[Jimbuna]

1913 Ford Motor Company institutes world's 1st moving assembly line for the Model T Ford.

1915 The US requests that Germany withdraw its military and naval attaches from the Embassy in Washington.

1919 Lady Nancy Astor sworn-in as 1st female member of British Parliament.

1934 Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov is assassinated, Joseph Stalin uses it as an excuse to begin his Great Purge of 1934-38

1939 SS-Fuhrer Himmler begins deportation of Polish Jews.

1941 British cruiser HMS Dorsetshire forces crew of German submarine supply ship MV Python to scuttle vessel in the South Atlantic 1,150 miles west of South Africa.

1941 Japanese Emperor Hirohito signs declaration of war.

1943 At the end of the Tehran Conference, the Big Three (Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt) agree that the invasion of Normandy should take place in May 1944

1955 Rosa Parks is arrested for refusing to move to the back of a bus and give her seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama.

1990 British and French workers meet in the middle of the Channel Tunnel under the English Channel.

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1938 The first 'Kindertransport' carrying Jewish refugee children from Nazi Germany arrives in Britain.

1941 Japanese Marshal Admiral Yamamoto sends his fleet to Pearl Harbour.

1941 US Naval Intelligence ceases bugging Japanese consul.

1976 Communist revolutionary Fidel Castro becomes President of Cuba, replacing Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado.

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1804 At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French.

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1917 The Supreme Allied War Council, meeting at Versailles to define war aim, fails to reach an agreement.

1943 World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino, Italy begins.

1944 Britain's Home Guard ('Dad's Army') is officially stood down at a special farewell parade in Hyde Park, London.

1948 Chinese refugee ship "Kiangya" explodes in East China Sea killing 1,100

1953 US President Dwight Eisenhower criticizes Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy for saying communists are in the Republican Party.

1967 First human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr. Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky.

1984 Bhopal disaster: A Union Carbide pesticide plant leaks 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, officially killing 2,259 - other estimates are as high as 16,000 (including later deaths) and over half a million injured.

1989 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and US President George H. W. Bush, declare the Cold War over.

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1619 38 colonists from Berkeley Parish, England disembark in Virginia and give thanks to God. Considered by many The First Thanksgiving in the Americas.

1791 Britain's "The Observer" is first published, the oldest Sunday newspaper in the world.

1918 US President Woodrow Wilson sails for Versailles Peace Conference in France.

1942 US bombers strike Italian mainland for first time in WW II

1948 SS Kiangya hits mine in Whangpoo River, China, sinks killing 2,750

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1848 US President James K. Polk triggers gold rush of 1849 by confirming a gold discovery in California.

1872 Ship the Mary Celeste is discovered mysteriously abandoned by her crew in the Atlantic Ocean.

1941 US aircraft carrier Lexington and 5 heavy cruisers leave Pearl Harbour.

1945 Flight 19 the "Lost Squadron" of 5 torpedo bombers and 14 airmen is lost east of Florida in the supposed Bermuda Triangle.

1958 Subscriber Trunk Dialling (STD) is inaugurated in the UK by Queen Elizabeth II when she speaks to the Lord Provost in a call from Bristol to Edinburgh.

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1998, Ukraine and the US signed an agreement to eliminate Ukraine's 44 heavy bombers and 1,068 X-55 cruise missiles.

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1240 Mongols led by Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kyiv after an 8 day siege; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive.

1917 French munition ship SS Mont Blanc collides with Norwegian SS Imo in Halifax harbour, Canada, resulting explosion kills at least 1,700 and injures more than 9,000 people - world’s largest pre-atomic explosion.

1941 Dutch & British pilots see Japanese invasion fleet at Singapore.

1973 Gerald Ford sworn-in as first unelected Vice President, succeeds Spiro Agnew who resigned over corruption allegations.

1975 Balcombe Street Siege: for 6 days, four Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteers hold two hostages at an apartment in London, England.

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1917 The USA's 42nd 'Rainbow' Division arrives in France (with Colonel Douglass MacArthur among its ranks)

1941 1st Japanese midget submarine (No. 20) attacked by a US ship (USS Ward)

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy attacks US Naval Air Station Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii; 18 sailors killed, 33 of 36 patrol planes destroyed or damaged, 1st Japanese aircraft shot down in action.

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack the US fleet at Pearl Harbour Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people.

1988 PLO delegation lead by Yasser Arafat proclaims the State of Palestine, recognizing the existence of the State of Israel for the first time.

2022 After widespread public protests China announces a major loosening of COVID-19 restrictions for the whole country, allowing home quarantine and scrapping QR codes, effectively ending China's zero-COVID policy.

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1915 John McCrae's poem "In Flanders Fields" appears anonymously in "Punch" magazine.

1941 US and Britain declare war on Japan, US enters World War II

1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his famous "Day of Infamy" speech to a joint session of Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbour.

1966 US and USSR sign treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space.

1987 US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign a treaty eliminating medium range nuclear missiles.

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1783 First execution at Newgate Jail in London (now the site of the Central Criminal Court aka the Old Bailey), relocated from Tyburn (now the site of Marble Arch)

1941 Adolf Hitler orders US ships and those loyal to her to be torpedoed - 3 days before declaring war on the US

1992 US Marines and allied nations launch an amphibious and airborne operation in Mogadishu, Somalia to restore order to the war-torn nation. Authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 794 passed on December 3.

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1926 2nd part of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf published.

1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1941 British battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse (Force Z) sunk following Japanese aerial attacks off Malaya. 840 men die.

1942 An early report of the Holocaust prepared by the Polish government-in-exile, using information obtained by Witold Pilecki, is addressed to UN member states.

1978 Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat accept the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo for negotiating peace between Egypt and Israel.

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1620 Mayflower Pilgrims come ashore in Plymouth Bay, traditionally thought to be at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts [NS: Dec 21]

1913 "Mona Lisa" recovered two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum.

1941 Japanese attack Wake Island (only failed WW II-landing)

1971 A bomb explodes outside a furniture showroom on the mainly-Protestant and loyalist Shankill Road, Belfast; four civilians (including two babies) were killed and nineteen wounded.

1997 Delegates from 150 industrial nations attending a UN climate conference in Kyoto, Japan, reach agreement to control heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

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1901 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first transatlantic radio signal, from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, Canada.

1915 1st all-metal aircraft (Junkers J-1) test flown at Dessau, Germany.

1945 Special Court of justice convicts Dutch Nazi leader Mussert to death.

1946 The United Nations accepts six Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D. Rockefeller Jr.

1961 Nazi German army officer Adolf Eichmann is found guilty of war crimes in Israel.

2000 US Supreme Court releases its 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, settling the recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election in George W. Bush's favor and thus handing him the presidency over Al Gore.

2019 British General Election won by Boris Johnson's Conservative Party in landslide win with 80 seat majority. Scottish National Party also wins 48 of 59 seats in Scotland.

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1577 Francis Drake sets sail from England on an epic three year circumnavigation of the world aboard the 'Pelican' (later renamed the 'Golden Hind')

1636 The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. Recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

1939 Battle of the River Plate - 3 British cruisers vs German pocket battleship Graf Spee.

1944 Japanese kamikaze crashes into US cruiser Nashville, kills 138

1961 Gideon Hausner in Jerusalem demands death penalty for Adolf Eichmann.

2003 Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured near his home town of Tikrit, during Operation Red Dawn by US forces.