On December 22nd...

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1135 Norman nobles recognized Stefanus van Blois as King of England.

1465 Louis van Bourbon became Bishop of Liège.

1596 The ferryboat Meuniers crashed in Paris, France, killing about 150 people.

1696 James Edward Oglethorpe, founder of Georgia, was born.

1715 The pretender to the English throne, James III, landed at Peterhead.

1731 Dutch citizens revolted against a tax on meat.

1775 The Continental Navy was organized.

1789 American politician Levi Woodbury was born.

1790 The Turkish fortress of Izmail was stormed and captured by a Russian army.

1807 The U. S. Congress passed the Embargo Act, prohibiting American ships from trading in all foreign ports.

1810 The British frigate HMS Minotaur sank, killing 480 persons.

1814 Samuel Marsden of the Church Missionary Society established the first mission in New Zealand.

1828 Rachel Jackson, wife of president-elect Andrew Jackson, died.

1856 American politician Frank B. Kellogg was born.

1858 Opera composer Giacomo Puccini was born.

1862 Connie Mack, professional baseball player/manager/team owner, was born.

1869 Poet Edwin Arlington Robinson was born.

1870 Jules Janssen flew in a balloon in order to study a solar eclipse.

1877 American Bicycling Journal began publishing, in Boston, Massachusetts.

1880 Author George Eliot died.

1885 Ito Hirobumi became the first Prime Minister of Japan.

1886 The first national accountants' society in the United States was formed in New York City, New York.

1894 French officer Alfred Dreyfus was court-martialed for treason.
1894 The United States Golf Association was formed.

1899 Evangelist Dwight L. Moody died.

1910 The first U. S. Postal Savings Stamps were issued.

1912 Claudia Alta Taylor, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, was born.

1915 The Federal Baseball League was dissolved.
1915 Actress Barbara Billingsley was born.

1917 Flanders declared its independence.
1917 Corb Denney, Reg Noble, and Harry Meeking each scored 3 goals for the Toronto Arenas in an 11-4 win over the Ottawa Senators.
1917 Game show host Gene Rayburn was born.

1930 The Convention of Economic Rapprochement (aka Oslo Agreements) was signed.

1932 The Mummy, starring Boris Karloff, was released in the United States.

1937 Lincoln Tunnel, in New York City, New York, opened to traffic.

1939 A train wreck at Magdeburg, Germany, killed 125 persons.
1939 A train wreck at Friedrichshafen, Germany, killed 99 persons.

1941 Josip Broz Tito established the 1st Proletarian Brigade in Yugoslavia.

1942 Anthropologist Franz Boas died.

1943 Artist/author Beatrix Potter died.

1944 Baseball player Steve Carlton was born.

1945 Television news reporter Diane Sawyer was born.

1947 The Italian Constituent Assembly adopted a new constitution.

1948 Baseball player Steve Garvey was born.

1949 Musicians Maurice and Robin Gibb were born.

1950 Two self-propelled Long Island Rail Road trains collided, killing 77 persons.

1956 The last British and French troops left Egypt.
1956 Colo, the first gorilla to be bred in captivity, was born at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Columbus, Ohio.

1959 A Brazilian airliner collided with a military plane and crashed into several homes in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, killing at least 39 persons.
1959 New York Ranger Marcel Paille became the first professional hockey player to wear a goalie mask.

1962 Harris County, Texas, voters approved the building of all-weather stadium for the Houston Colt .45's.

1963 The cruise ship Lakonia burned at sea north of Madeira, killing 128 persons.

1964 The SR-71 "Blackbird" was flown for the first time.

1965 General Christophe Soglo took control of the government of Dahomey.
1965 England set a nation-wide maximum road speed limit of 70 miles per hour.
1965 The film Doctor Zhivago premiered in New York City, New York.

1967 The film The Graduate was released.

1970 American politician Ted Cruz was born.

1972 A magnitude 6.25 earthquake struck Managua, Nicaragua, killing over 12,000 people.

1974 Three of the four Comoros islands voted for independence from France.

1977 An explosion at the Continental Grain Company elevator in Westwego, Louisiana, killed 36 persons.

1978 Thailand adopted a new constitution.

1979 Film and television producer Darryl F. Zanuck died.

1983 Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met with PLO leader Yasser Arafat.

1984 Bernhard Goetz shot four black men he said were trying to mug him on a New York City, New York, subway train.

1985 Sweden defeated Germany for the Davis Cup.

1988 South Africa signed an accord granting independence to South West Africa.
1988 A tug boat hit an oil barge, causing a 231,000-gallon oil spill along 300 miles of Washington and British Columbia coastline.

1989 The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, was officially reopened.
1989 Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted in a coup.
1989 Chad adopted a new constitution.
1989 Playwright Samuel Beckett died.

1990 Lech Walesa was sworn in as the first popularly elected President of Poland.

1992 A Libyan MiG jet shot down a Boeing 727 over Souk al-Sabt, killing all 158 persons aboard.

1994 The government of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi resigned.

1996 Steeler Kordell Stewart ran a quarterback record 80 yards for a touchdown.

1997 The U. S. Food and Drug Administration approved Merck's baldness pill for men.
1997 Scotty Bowman became the first NHL coach to record 200 wins with 3 different teams -- Detroit, Montreal, and Buffalo.

2001 Richard Reid attempted to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.
2001 Afghan Northern Alliance leader Burhanuddin Rabbani turned control of Afghanistan over to an interim government headed by Hamid Karzai.

2003 A magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck near San Simeon, California.

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This page was last updated on December 22, 2018.