Events Pre-1600 655 – Battle of the Winwaed: Penda of Mercia is defeated by Oswiu of Northumbria.D. P. Kirby, "Bede and Northumbrian Chronology", The English Historical Review, Vol. 78, No. 308, July 1963, pp. 514–27 1315 – Growth of the Old Swiss Confederacy: The Schweizer Eidgenossenschaft ambushes the army of Leopold I in the Battle of Morgarten. 1532 – Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire: Commanded by Francisco Pizarro, Spanish conquistadors under Hernando de Soto meet Incan Emperor Atahualpa for the first time outside Cajamarca, arranging for a meeting in the city plaza the following day. 1533 – Francisco Pizarro arrives in Cuzco, the capital of the Inca Empire.
1601–1900 1705 – Rákóczi's War of Independence: The Habsburg Empire and Denmark win a military victory over the Kurucs from Hungary in the Battle of Zsibó. 1760 – The secondly-built Castellania in Valletta is officially inaugurated with the blessing of the interior Chapel of Sorrows. 1777 – American Revolutionary War: After 16 months of debate the Continental Congress approves the Articles of Confederation. 1806 – Pike Expedition: Lieutenant Zebulon Pike spots a mountain peak while near the Colorado foothills of the Rocky Mountains. It is later named Pikes Peak in his honor. 1842 – A slave revolt in the Cherokee Nation commences. 1849 – Boilers of the steamboat Louisiana explode as she pulls back from the dock in New Orleans, killing more than 150 people. 1864 – American Civil War: Union General William Tecumseh Sherman begins his March to the Sea through Georgia towards the city of Savannah. 1884 – The Berlin Conference of 1884–1885 met on 15 November 1884, and after an adjournment concluded on 26 February 1885, with the signature of a General Act, regulating the European colonisation and trade in Africa during the New Imperialism period. 1889 – Brazil is declared a republic by Marshal Deodoro da Fonseca as Emperor Pedro II is deposed in a military coup. 1899 – Second Boer War: Battle of Chieveley, a British armored train is ambushed and partially derailed. British lose the battle, with 80 soldiers captured, along with war correspondent Winston Churchill.
1901–present 1917 – Eduskunta declares itself the supreme state power of Finland, prompting its declaration of independence and secession from Russia. 1920 – The first assembly of the League of Nations is held in Geneva, Switzerland. 1920 – The Free City of Danzig is established. 1922 – At least 300 are massacred during a general strike in Guayaquil, Ecuador. 1928 – The RNLI lifeboat Mary Stanford capsizes in Rye Harbour with the loss of the entire 17-man crew. 1933 – Thailand holds its first election. 1938 – Nazi Germany bans Jewish children from public schools in the aftermath of Kristallnacht. 1942 – World War II: The Battle of Guadalcanal ends in a decisive Allied victory. 1943 – The Holocaust: German SS leader Heinrich Himmler orders that Gypsies are to be put "on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps". 1951 – Nikos Beloyannis, along with 11 comrades, is sentenced to death for attempting to reestablish the Communist Party of Greece. 1955 – The first part of the Saint Petersburg Metro is opened. 1957 – Short Solent 3 crashes near Chessell. 1959 – Four members of the Clutter family are murdered near Holcomb, Kansas, by Perry Smith and Richard Hickock, a crime later detailed by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood."Anatomy of a Murder". Time. December 22, 1967. 1965 – Craig Breedlove sets a land speed record of 600.601 mph (966.574 km/h) in his car, the Spirit of America, at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah. 1966 – Project Gemini: Gemini 12 completes the program's final mission, when it splashes down safely in the Atlantic Ocean. 1967 – The only fatality of the North American X-15 program occurs during the 191st flight when Air Force test pilot Michael J. Adams loses control of his aircraft which is destroyed mid-air over the Mojave Desert. 1968 – The Cleveland Transit System becomes the first transit system in the western hemisphere to provide direct rapid transit service from a city's downtown to its major airport. 1969 – Cold War: The Soviet submarine K-19 collides with the American submarine USS Gato in the Barents Sea. 1969 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 250,000–500,000 protesters staged a peaceful demonstration against the war, including a symbolic "March Against Death". 1971 – Intel releases the world's first commercial single-chip microprocessor, the 4004. 1976 – René Lévesque and the Parti Québécois take power to become the first Quebec government of the 20th century clearly in favor of independence. 1978 – A chartered Douglas DC-8 crashes near Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 183. 1979 – A package from Unabomber Ted Kaczynski begins smoking in the cargo hold of a flight from Chicago to Washington, D.C., forcing the plane to make an emergency landing. 1983 – Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declares independence; it is only recognized by Turkey. 1985 – A research assistant is injured when a package from the Unabomber addressed to a University of Michigan professor explodes. 1985 – The Anglo-Irish Agreement is signed at Hillsborough Castle by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Irish Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald. 1987 – In Brașov, Romania, workers rebel against the communist regime of Nicolae Ceaușescu. 1987 – Continental Airlines Flight 1713 crashes during takeoff from Stapleton International Airport in Denver, Colorado, killing 25. – Copy at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (note the ERAU copy does not include the errata sheet, and may be older than the one on the NTSB website). 1988 – In the Soviet Union, the uncrewed Shuttle Buran makes its only space flight. 1988 – Israeli–Palestinian conflict: An independent State of Palestine is proclaimed by the Palestinian National Council. 1988 – The first Fairtrade label, Max Havelaar, is launched in the Netherlands. 1990 – The Communist People's Republic of Bulgaria is disestablished and a new republican government is instituted. 1990 – Space Shuttle Atlantis is launched on STS-38, a classified mission for the Department of Defense. 1994 – A magnitude 7.1 earthquake hits the central Philippine island of Mindoro, killing 78 people, injuring 430 and triggering a tsunami up to high. 2000 – A chartered Antonov An-24 crashes after takeoff from Luanda, Angola, killing more than 40 people. 2000 – Jharkhand officially becomes the 28th state of India, formed from eighteen districts of southern Bihar. 2001 – Microsoft launches the Xbox game console in North America. 2002 – Hu Jintao becomes General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a new nine-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated. 2003 – The first day of the 2003 Istanbul bombings, in which two car bombs, targeting two synagogues, explode, kill 25 people and wound 300 more. 2006 – Al Jazeera English launches worldwide. 2007 – Cyclone Sidr hits Bangladesh, killing an estimated 5,000 people and destroying parts of the world's largest mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. 2010 – A fire in a high-rise apartment building in Shanghai, China kills 58 people. 2012 – Xi Jinping becomes General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party and a new seven-member Politburo Standing Committee is inaugurated. 2016 – Hong Kong's High Court bans elected politicians Yau Wai-ching and Baggio Leung from the city's Parliament. 2017 – A flood a few miles outside of Athens results in the death of 25 people. 2020 – Lewis Hamilton wins the Turkish Grand Prix and secures his seventh drivers' title, equalling the all-time record held by Michael Schumacher. 2022 – The world population reached eight billion. 2025 Anti-government demonstrations are held across Mexico following the assassination of Carlos Manzo earlier that month.
Births
Pre-1600 459 – Bʼutz Aj Sak Chiik, Mayan king (died 501) 1316 – John I, king of France and Navarre (died 1316) 1397 – Nicholas V, pope of the Catholic Church (died 1455) 1498 – Eleanor of Austria, queen of Portugal and France (died 1558) 1511 – Johannes Secundus, Dutch poet and author (died 1536) 1556 – Jacques Davy Duperron, French cardinal (died 1618)
1601–1900 1607 – Madeleine de Scudéry, French author (died 1701) 1660 – Hermann von der Hardt, German historian and orientalist (died 1746) 1661 – Christoph von Graffenried, Swiss-American settler and author (died 1743) 1692 – Eusebius Amort, German poet and theologian (died 1775) 1708 – William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham, English politician, Prime Minister of Great Britain (died 1778) 1738 – William Herschel, German-English astronomer and composer (died 1822) 1741 – Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss poet and physiognomist (died 1801) 1746 – Joseph Quesnel, French-Canadian poet, playwright, and composer (died 1809) 1757 – Heinrich Christian Friedrich Schumacher, Danish surgeon, botanist, and academic (died 1830) 1776 – José Joaquín Fernández de Lizardi, Mexican journalist and author (died 1827) 1784 – Jérôme Bonaparte, French husband of Catharina of Württemberg (died 1860) 1791 – Friedrich Ernst Scheller, German lawyer, jurist, and politician (died 1869) 1793 – Michel Chasles, French mathematician and academic (died 1880) 1849 – Mary E. Byrd, American astronomer and educator (died 1934) 1852 – Tewfik Pasha, Egyptian ruler (died 1892) 1859 – Christopher Hornsrud, Norwegian businessman and politician, 11th Prime Minister of Norway (died 1960) 1862 – Gerhart Hauptmann, German novelist, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1946) 1865 – John Earle, Australian politician, 22nd Premier of Tasmania (died 1932) 1866 – Cornelia Sorabji, Indian lawyer, social reformer and writer (died 1954) 1867 – Emil Krebs, German polyglot (died 1930) 1868 – Emil Racoviță, Romanian biologist, zoologist, and explorer (died 1947) 1873 – Sara Josephine Baker, American physician and academic (died 1945) 1874 – Dimitrios Golemis, Greek runner (died 1941) 1874 – August Krogh, Danish zoologist and physiologist, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1949) 1879 – Lewis Stone, American actor (died 1953) 1881 – Franklin Pierce Adams, American journalist and author (died 1960) 1882 – Felix Frankfurter, Austrian-American lawyer and jurist (died 1965) 1886 – René Guénon, French-Egyptian philosopher and author (died 1951) 1887 – Marianne Moore, American poet, critic, and translator (died 1972) 1887 – Georgia O'Keeffe, American painter and educator (died 1986) 1888 – Artie Matthews, American pianist and composer (died 1958) 1890 – Richmal Crompton, English author and educator (died 1969) 1891 – W. Averell Harriman, American businessman and politician, 11th United States Secretary of Commerce (died 1986) 1891 – Erwin Rommel, German field marshal (died 1944) 1892 – Naomi Childers, American actress (died 1964) 1895 – Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia (died 1918) 1895 – Antoni Słonimski, Polish journalist, poet, and playwright (died 1976) 1896 – Leonard Lord, English businessman (died 1967) 1897 – Aneurin Bevan, Welsh journalist and politician, Secretary of State for Health (died 1960) 1897 – Sacheverell Sitwell, English author and critic (died 1988) 1899 – Avdy Andresson, Estonian-American soldier and diplomat, Estonian Minister of War (died 1990)
1901–present 1903 – Stewie Dempster, New Zealand cricketer and coach (died 1974) 1905 – Mantovani, Italian conductor and composer (died 1980) 1906 – Curtis LeMay, American general and politician (died 1990) 1907 – Claus von Stauffenberg, German colonel (died 1944) 1908 – Carlo Abarth, Italian engineer and businessman, founded Abarth (died 1979) 1912 – Harald Keres, Estonian physicist and academic (died 2010) 1912 – Yi Wu, Japanese-Korean colonel (died 1945) 1913 – Jack Dyer, Australian footballer and coach (died 2003) 1913 – Arthur Haulot, Belgian journalist and poet (died 2005) 1914 – V. R. Krishna Iyer, Indian lawyer and judge (died 2014)