01 December History
- 1135 - Henry I of England dies and the crown is passed to his nephew Stephen of Bloise.
- 1581 - Edmund Champion and other Jesuit martyrs are hanged at Tyburn, England, for sedition, after being tortured.
- 1861 - The U.S. gunboat Penguin seizes the Confederate blockade runner Albion carrying supplies worth almost $100,000.
- 1862 - President Abraham Lincoln gives the State of the Union address to the 37th Congress.
- 1863 - Belle Boyd, a Confederate spy, is released from prison in Washington.
- 1881 - Virgil, Wyatt and Morgan Earp are exonerated in court for their action in the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Ariz.
- 1900 - Kaiser Wilhelm II refuses to meet with Boer leader Paul Kruger in Berlin.
- 1905 - Twenty officers and 230 guards are arrested in St. Petersburg, Russia, for the revolt at the Winter Palace.
- 1908 - The Italian Parliament debates the future of the Triple Alliance and asks for compensation for Austria's action in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
- 1909 - President William Howard Taft severs official relations with Nicaragua's Zelaya government and declares support for the revolutionaries.
- 1916 - King Constantine of Greece refuses to surrender to the Allies.
- 1918 - An American army of occupation enters Germany.
- 1925 - After a seven-year occupation, 7,000 British troops evacuate Cologne, Germany.
- 1933 - Nazi storm troops become an official organ of the Reich.
- 1934 - Josef Stalin's aide, Sergei Kirov, is assassinated in Leningrad.
- 1941 - Japan's Tojo rejects U.S. proposals for a Pacific settlement as fantastic and unrealistic.
- 1941 - Great Britain declares a state of emergency in Malaya following reports of Japanese attacks.
- 1941 - The first Civil Air Patrol is organized in the United States.
- 1942 - National gasoline rationing goes into effect in the United States.
- 1955 - Rosa Parks refuses to sit in the back of a Montgomery, Alabama, bus, defying the South's segregationist laws.
- 1969 - America's first draft lottery since 1942 is held.
- 1986 - Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North pleads the 5th Amendment before a Senate panel investigating the Iran-Contra arms sale.
01 December Birthdays
- 1761 - Madame Tussaud, Swiss-born modeller in wax who founded the world-famous exhibition on London's Baker Street.
- 1847 - Julia Moore, poet.
- 1863 - Oliver Herford, American humorist and poet.
- 1886 - Rex Stout, writer, creator of detective character Nero Wolfe.
- 1913 - Mary Martin, American actress.
- 1925 - Martin Rodbell, Nobel Prize-winning biochemist.
- 1935 - Woody Allen [Allen Stewart Konigsberg], American actor, writer and director.