Today in History

Today in History – 28 December

Today in History / December 28, 2021

Dec 28 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 28:

1923 – Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, the French engineer who built the tower in Paris that bears his name, died aged 91.

1937 – The French composer Maurice Ravel died aged 62; his works included “Bolero”, which won popular fame.

1968 – Israeli commandos bombed Beirut airport, destroying 13 planes, after attacks on Israeli aircraft.

1974 – An earthquake of magnitude 5.5 destroyed villages in the Karakoram mountains in Pakistan, leaving 5,200 dead and more than 16,000 injured.

1993 – The Russian ultra-nationalist leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky was ordered to leave Bulgaria within 24 hours for insulting President Zhelyu Zhelev.

2003 – The conservative businessman Oscar Berger won a presidential election in Guatemala, returning power to the landed elite.

2004 – Ukrainian liberal challenger Viktor Yushchenko won a re-run of a fraudulent presidential election with 52 percent of the vote, defeating Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich.

2005 – The European Union launched its first Galileo navigation satellite, moving to challenge the United States’ Global Positioning System (GPS).

2008 – Fruit and cream cake in Bucharest sets world record for world’s heaviest cake.

2011 – Funeral procession for late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

2014 – Car ferry Norman Atlantic catches fire in waters off Greece.

Today in History – 24 December

Today in History / December 24, 2021

Dec 24 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 24:

1942 – An assassin killed Admiral Francois Darlan, a senior figure in France’s collaborationist Vichy government.

1989 – Deposed Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega turned himself in to the papal envoy and asked for political asylum.

1994 – Fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas hijacked a French airliner at Algiers airport, killing two people.

1995 – An Islamic party, Welfare, won a general election for the first time in Turkey’s 72-year secular history.

1997 – A Paris court jailed guerrilla mastermind Carlos “The Jackal” for life for killing two French secret agents.

1999 – Maurice Couve de Murville, longest-serving French foreign minister who later became prime minister, died at 92.

1999 – Ivory Coast’s army overthrew elected President Henri Konan Bedie in a coup.

2000 – Mini-Cooper creator John Cooper dies.

2001 – Israel barred Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from making his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem, insisting he crack down on Palestinian militants.

2003 – The Italian food giant Parmalat, embroiled in one of Europe’s biggest corporate scandals, filed for bankruptcy protection after the discovery of a 7 billion euro hole in its accounts.

2008 – Harold Pinter, the British playwright and Nobel laureate famous for his brooding portrayals of domestic life and barbed politics, died aged 78.

Today in History – 23 December

Today in History / December 23, 2021

Dec 23 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 23:

1948 – Hideki Tojo, the Japanese general who was prime minister when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor to begin its war against the United States, was hanged as a war criminal.

1950 – Pope Pius XII announced that Saint Peter’s tomb had been found under the Vatican.

1989 – Foreign Ministers Hans-Dietrich Genscher of West Germany and Jiri Dienstbier of Czechoslovakia, cut the fence between their nations as a symbol of European liberation.

2002 – Members of Italy’s royal family, reviled by many Italians after World War Two for collaborating with Benito Mussolini, returned home for a visit after 56 years in exile.

2003 – The first U.S. case of the deadly mad cow disease was detected in a Holstein dairy cow in Washington state.

2007 – Oscar Peterson, the Canadian who sat atop the world of jazz piano for decades with his driving two-handed swing, technical wizardry and rapid-fire solos, died aged 82.

2007 – World’s first twin panda birth in winter season.

2007 – Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant becomes youngest player in NBA history to score 20,000 career points.

2014 – Gabriel Medina becomes first ever Brazilian World Champion in history of professional surfing.

2014 – Dow Jones climbed above 18,000 mark for the first time in history.

2016 – United Nations Security Council adopts Resolution 2334 condemning Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories.

Today in History – 22 December

Today in History / December 22, 2021

Dec 22 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 22:

1917 – In World War One, peace negotiations opened between the new Russian government and Germany at Brest-Litovsk.

1989 – Samuel Beckett, reclusive Irish writer whose works shaped contemporary theatre, died. He wrote “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame” and won the Nobel Prize in 1986.

1989 – Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, with crowds flooding across the former border point between East and West Germany.

1989 – Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a revolution after 24 years of hardline rule. He escaped by helicopter but was recaptured and later executed.

1993 – South Africa’s white parliament buried apartheid, voting 237 to 45 to adopt an interim constitution leading to majority rule and the country’s first all-race election.

2000 – Russia acknowledged that Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps, had fallen victim to “Soviet repression” after being seized by Soviet forces in Hungary and brought to Moscow.

2002 – Joe Strummer, frontman for British punk band the Clash whose 1979 track “London Calling” exploded as one of punk’s biggest anthems, died. He was 50.

2008 – Russia’s upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly to give a final nod to a constitutional amendment extending the presidential term from four to six years.

2010 – U.S. President Obama signs the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 into law.

2014 – Vietnam marks 70th anniversary of People’s Army.

2017 – The United Nations Security Council votes to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

Today in History for December 21st

Associated Press, Today in History / December 21, 2021

Today in History – 21 December

Today in History / December 21, 2021

Dec 21 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 21:

1907 – Strikers shot at mine in Chile.

1937 – Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, the first full-length feature cartoon in colour, premiered in Los Angeles.

1940 – F. Scott Fitzgerald, U.S. short story writer and novelist, died. His works included “The Great Gatsby”.

1945 – General George Patton, U.S. tank commander in World War Two, died after a car accident in Germany. His men called him “Old Blood and Guts”.

1973 – The first peace conference between Israel and her Arab neighbours opened in Geneva. Jordan, Israel, Egypt, the United States, the Soviet Union and the U.N. took part.

1988 – A bomb destroyed a Pan Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing all 259 aboard and 11 people on the ground.

1994 – Smallest robot in the world debuts in Japan.

2004 – French journalist and former hostage in Iraq Georges Malbrunot returns to Paris following release.

2004 – U.S. Army seals off parts of Mosul following attack on base.

2005 – British pop star Elton John tied the knot with long-term partner David Furnish, joining hundreds of gay couples across England taking advantage of a new law to formalise their relationships.

2006 – Turkmenistan’s President-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov died after 21 years of iron rule.

Today in History for December 20th

Associated Press, Today in History / December 20, 2021

Today in History – 20 December

Today in History / December 20, 2021

Dec 20 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 20:

1922 – Poland names politician, scholar and activist Stanislaw Wojoichewski as new president.

1968 – The American novelist John Steinbeck died; he achieved fame in the 1930s with powerful novels about agricultural workers, notably “The Grapes of Wrath”.

1973 – In Spain, General Franco’s prime minister and right-hand man, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, was assassinated by a bomb as his car drove through Madrid.

1989 – The United States invaded Panama and installed a new government, but initially failed in its key objective of seizing the country’s leader, General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1993 – Property developer Donald Trump marries Marla Maples at the Plaza Hotel in New York.

1996 – Japanese carmaker Honda announces it has developed the first human-shaped robot which can move independently and do basic tasks.

1998 – China freed the prominent labour activist Liu Nianchun and sent him and his family into exile in the United States.

1999 – International peacekeepers arrested General Stanislav Galic, commander of the Bosnian Serb unit that laid siege to Sarajevo during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

2001 – Argentine Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo quit after 27 people died in the worst civil unrest in a decade, triggered by the austerity measures he had introduced.

2002 – A Paris court found U.S. billionaire George Soros guilty of using inside information to make money on shares in the bank Societe Generale, fining him 2.2 million euros ($2.9 million).

2004 – Thieves steal an estimated 30 million pounds ($58 million) from Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

This Day in History: Slavery Is Abolished in America

Today in History, Wibbitz / December 17, 2021

Today in History for December 17th

Associated Press, Today in History / December 17, 2021
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