History by month
December
31 days of history. Every date is an entry point to the events, births, and moments that shaped our world.
December 1
1955 A seamstress on a city bus became the catalyst for a revolution that dismantled
December 2
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte took the crown from the Pope's hands and placed it on his own
December 3
1967 Christiaan Barnard cut open a dying man's chest and replaced his heart with one
December 4
1783 George Washington wept as he raised a glass to the officers who had fought besid
December 5
1933 America's thirteen-year experiment with banning alcohol ended on December 5, 193
December 6
1240 Batu Khan's Mongol army breached the walls of Kiev on December 6, 1240, and eras
December 7
1941 Japanese aircraft struck the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in two dev
December 8
1980 Mark David Chapman fired five hollow-point bullets into John Lennon's back as th
December 9
1979 A global commission of scientists certified on December 9, 1979, that smallpox h
December 10
1948 The United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human R
December 11
1936 A king chose love over an empire. Edward VIII, barely eleven months into his rei
December 12
1901 Three dots of Morse code crossed the Atlantic Ocean and changed the world. On De
December 13
1636 Colonial militiamen assembled on the village green, organized into three regimen
December 14
1911 Five men on skis planted the Norwegian flag at the bottom of the world, ending o
December 15
1939 Atlanta shut down for a three-day celebration of a movie about its own destructi
December 16
1773 Colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians smashed open 342 chests of tea and dumped
December 17
1903 Twelve seconds of powered flight over a North Carolina sand dune ended humanity'
December 18
1271 A Mongol emperor gave his dynasty a Chinese name and claimed the Mandate of Heav
December 19
1776 "These are the times that try men's souls." With those words, Thomas Paine ralli
December 20
1192 The most famous warrior-king in Christendom was seized while traveling in disgui
December 21
1968 Three astronauts strapped into a Saturn V rocket were about to do something no h
December 22
1864 Savannah fell without a fight. On December 21, 1864, Confederate forces abandone
December 23
1947 A tiny germanium crystal with two gold contacts pressed against its surface chan
December 24
1906 Wireless operators on ships scattered across the Atlantic Ocean heard something
December 25
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev sat alone at his desk in the Kremlin on Christmas night 1991,
December 26
2004 The seafloor off the coast of Sumatra ruptured along a 900-mile fault line at 7:
December 27
1831 A 22-year-old Cambridge graduate with no formal scientific training boarded a te
December 28
1170 Four knights walked into Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of December 29, 117
December 29
1890 Soldiers of the U.S. 7th Cavalry opened fire on a camp of disarmed Lakota men, w
December 30
2006 Saddam Hussein dropped through the trapdoor of a makeshift gallows in a fortifie
December 31
1879 Thomas Edison invited reporters, investors, and the merely curious to his Menlo