09 December History
- 536 - Having captured Naples earlier in the year, Belisarius takes Rome.
- 1861 - The U.S. Senate approves establishment of a committee that would become the Joint Committee on the Conduct of War.
- 1863 - Major General John G. Foster replaces Maj. Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside as Commander of the Department of Ohio.
- 1867 - The capital of Colorado Territory is moved from Golden to Denver.
- 1872 - P.B.S. Pinchback becomes the first African-American governor of Louisiana.
- 1900 - The Russian czar rejects Boer Paul Kruger's pleas for aid in South Africa against the British.
- 1908 - A child labor bill passes in the German Reichstag, forbidding work for children under age 13.
- 1917 - The new Finnish Republic demands the withdrawal of Russian troops.
- 1940 - The British army seizes 1,000 Italians in a sudden thrust in Egypt.
- 1941 - Franklin D. Roosevelt tells Americans to plan for a long war.
- 1948 - The United States abandons a plan to de-concentrate industry in Japan.
- 1949 - The United Nations takes trusteeship over Jerusalem.
- 1950 - President Harry Truman bans U.S. exports to Communist China.
- 1950 - Harry Gold gets 30 years imprisonment for passing atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union during World War II.
- 1955 - Sugar Ray Robinson knocks out Carl Olson to regain the world middleweight boxing title.
- 1960 - The Laos government flees to Cambodia as the capital city of Vientiane is engulfed in war.
- 1990 - Lech Walesa is elected president of Poland.
- 1992 - U.S. Marines land in Somalia to ensure food and medicine reaches the deprived areas of that country.
09 December Birthdays
- 1608 - John Milton, British writer and poet (Paradise Lost).
- 1809 - William Barret Travis, commander of the Texas troops at the battle of the Alamo.
- 1848 - Joel Chandler Harris, writer, creator of the Uncle Remus tales.
- 1899 - Jean de Brunhoff, illustrator and author, creator of the Babar series of books.
- 1906 - Grace Hopper, mathematician and computer pioneer.
- 1912 - Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, speaker of the House of Representatives.
- 1918 - Kirk Douglas, American actor (Spartacus).