12 December History
- 1753 - George Washington, the adjutant of Virginia, delivers an ultimatum to the French forces at Fort Le Boeuf, south of Lake Erie, reiterating Britain's claim to the entire Ohio River valley.
- 1770 - The British soldiers responsible for the "Boston Massacre" are acquitted on murder charges.
- 1862 - The Union loses its first ship to a torpedo, USS Cairo, in the Yazoo River.
- 1863 - Orders are given in Richmond, Virginia, that no more supplies from the Union should be received by Federal prisoners.
- 1901 - Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio transmission in St. John's Newfoundland.
- 1927 - Communists forces seize Canton, China.
- 1930 - The Spanish Civil War begins as rebels take a border town.
- 1930 - The last Allied troops withdraw from the Saar region in Germany.
- 1931 - Under pressure from the Communists in Canton, Chiang Kai-shek resigns as president of the Nanking Government but remains the head of the Nationalist government that holds nominal rule over most of China.
- 1943 - The German Army launches Operation Winter Tempest, the relief of the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad.
- 1943 - The exiled Czech government signs a treaty with the Soviet Union for postwar cooperation.
- 1956 - The United Nations calls for immediate Soviet withdrawal from Hungary.
- 1964 - Kenya becomes a republic.
- 1964 - Three Buddhist leaders begin a hunger strike to protest the government in Saigon.
- 1967 - The United States ends the airlift of 6,500 men in Vietnam.
- 1995 - Willie Brown beats incumbent mayor Frank Jordon to become the first African-American mayor of San Francisco.
12 December Birthdays
- 1745 - John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who negotiated treaties for the United States.
- 1805 - William Lloyd Garrison, American abolitionist who published The Liberator.
- 1821 - Gustave Flaubert, French novelist (Madame Bovary, A Simple Heart).
- 1863 - Edvard Munch, Norwegian artist (The Scream).
- 1893 - Edward G. Robinson, actor famous for gangster roles.
- 1897 - Lillian Smith, Southern writer and civil rights activist.
- 1915 - Frank Sinatra, American pop singer and actor.
- 1927 - Robert Norton Noyce, co-inventor of the integrated circuit.
- 1928 - Helen Frankenthaler, abstract painter.
- 1929 - John Osbourne, playwright and film producer (Look Back in Anger).