Today in History

Dec 16 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 16:

1921 – Camille Saint-Saens, French composer, died. Among his best-known works are his Symphony No 3 and the opera “Samson and Delilah”.

1960 – A United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA Super Constellation collided in mid-air over New York City; 128 people aboard the planes and eight on the ground were killed.

1965 – W. Somerset Maugham, English writer, died. Best known for his novels “Of Human Bondage” and “The Moon and Sixpence”.

1995 – Israel’s army pulled out of Qalqilya, the fourth of six West Bank towns being transferred to Palestinian self-rule by the end of that year under a peace deal.

1996 – A South Korean appeals court commuted the death sentence on ex-President Chun Doo Hwan to life imprisonment.

2000 – President-elect George W. Bush named retired General Colin Powell as his secretary of state, the first African-American to hold a top U.S. diplomatic post.

2002 – Former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic, once dubbed Bosnia’s “Iron Lady”, dramatically confessed to crimes against humanity at the start of a landmark hearing at The Hague to determine her sentence. She was the only woman publicly indicted in the tribunal’s nine-year history.

2011 – Jyoti Amge certified as the world’s shortest woman on her 18th birthday in the central Indian city of Nagpur.

2013 – Bus falls off an elevated expressway in Manila, killing at least 21 people.

2014 – Taliban gunmen attack Army Public School in Peshawar, Pakistan taking hundreds of students and teachers hostage.

Dec 15 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 15:

1939 – The film “Gone With the Wind” had its world premiere in Atlanta.

1943 – Fats Waller, U.S. jazz pianist and composer, died. His songs include “Ain’t Misbehavin” and “Honeysuckle Rose”.

1964 – Canada’s parliament adopted a new national flag with a red maple leaf on a white background.

1966 – Walt Disney, American animator who created Mickey Mouse, died.

1973 – J. Paul Getty III was found in southern Italy after being kidnapped for five months, during which his right ear was cut off and sent to a Rome newspaper.

1996 – Sir Laurens van der Post, the South African-born writer whose book “The Lost World of the Kalahari” became a bestseller, died.

1999 – Venezuelans voted for a new constitution, endorsing President Hugo Chavez’s plans to overhaul the political and economic system.

2000 – Ukraine’s President Leonid Kuchma ordered the closure of the Chernobyl nuclear power station, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident in 1986.

2001 – Italy’s Leaning Tower of Pisa opened to the public for the first time in almost 12 years after massive efforts to reduce its tilt.

2001 – Wrapping up a two-day summit, the 15 EU leaders agreed on a political convention to chart the course of the union, adopting the Laeken Declaration on the Future of Europe.

2006 – Swiss-born former Formula One driver Clay Regazzoni was killed in a road accident in Italy. He was 67.

Dec 14 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 14:

1911 – Roald Amundsen, Norwegian explorer, and four companions became the first men to reach the South Pole.

1918 – Women in Britain voted for the first time in a general election and were allowed to stand as candidates.

1918 – Portuguese President Sidonio Pais was fatally wounded as he entered Rossio station in Lisbon only weeks after an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

1939 – The League of Nations expelled the Soviet Union for aggression against Finland.

1947 – Stanley Baldwin, who served three terms as British prime minister, died.

1989 – Andrei Sakharov, the Soviet physicist who shunned official honour to fight the Kremlin for human rights and political freedom, died aged 68.

1995 – Leaders from former Yugoslavia signed a Bosnian peace treaty in Paris, ending Europe’s worst conflict since World War Two and opening the way for thousands of NATO troops to move into the shattered country.

2000 – Cuban President Fidel Castro met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Havana.

2004 – Inauguration of Millau viaduct, the world’s highest bridge.

2006 – A British police inquiry ruled that Princess Diana was not the victim of a murder plot when she died in a car accident in 1997.

2008 – U.S. President Bush makes an unannounced farewell visit to Baghdad, weeks before leaving office; an Iraqi reporter calls Bush a “dog” and throws his shoes at him.

Dec 13 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 13:

1937 – Japanese forces captured the Chinese city of Nanking (Nanjing).

1941 – British forces retreated to Hong Kong island as the invading Japanese army took Kowloon and the New Territories.

1949 – Israel declares Jerusalem as its capital.

1967 – King Constantine of Greece and his family fled the country after a counter-coup failed to topple the military-backed government.

1995 – Chinese dissident Wei Jingsheng, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, was imprisoned for 14 years for subversive acts. He was released and went into exile in the United States in 1997.

1996 – The U.N. Security Council made official its selection of Kofi Annan of Ghana as the U.N. secretary-general to succeed Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

1997 – Giovanni Agnelli, heir to the dynasty that controlled the Italian car giant Fiat, died from cancer at the age of 33.

2001 – A group of armed men opened fire in India’s parliament complex. Nine people were killed and the five gunmen also died in the unprecedented attack.

2002 – The Pope accepted the resignation of Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, who was under pressure to quit over a scandal involving sexual abuse by clergy.

2003 – U.S. troops found former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in a hole in the ground behind a shepherd’s hut near his home town of Tikrit.

2007 – EU treaty of Lisbon signed in the Jeronimos Monastery.

Dec 10 (Reuters) – Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 10:

1902 – The original Aswan Dam, built by the British to control the Nile flood, was completed in Egypt.

1936 – Britain’s King Edward VIII officially abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson. His brother succeeded him as George VI.

1960 – Sweden’s King Gustav presents Nobel prizes.

1989 – Czechoslovakia’s first government without a Communist majority since 1948 assumed power and President Gustav Husak resigned.

1995 – Israeli soldiers quit the West Bank town of Tulkarm and a first contingent of PLO police moved in to Hebron as part of a handover to Palestinian rule.

1996 – President Nelson Mandela signed into law a new constitution for South Africa, legally entrenching racial equality and consigning apartheid to history’s dustbin.

1998 – The International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia sentenced a former Bosnian Croat paramilitary commander to 10 years in prison, a judgment that was the first to deal exclusively with rape as a war crime.

2000 – Former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif arrived in Saudi Arabia for an indefinite exile after being released from prison by the army which overthrew him.

2002 – Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize.

2005 – U.S. comedian Richard Pryor, who helped transform comedy with biting commentary on race and often profane reflections on his own shortcomings, died. He was 65.

2013 – Uruguay became the first country to legalise the growing, sale and smoking of marijuana.