12 December History


Month:                           Date:     

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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).