Today in History
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1 December |
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| 1167 Northern Italian towns form Lombardi League | ||
| 1566 Spanish king Philip II names Fernando Alvarez, duke of Alva | ||
| 1640 Portugal regains independence after 60 years of Spanish rule | ||
| 1641 Mass becomes 1st colony to give statutory recognition to slavery | ||
| 1653 An athlete from Croydon is reported to have run 20 miles from | ||
| 1656 Germany promises Poland aid against Sweden | ||
| 1708 Great Alliance occupies Brussels | ||
| 1742 Empress Elisabeth orders expulsion of all Jews from Russia | ||
| 1821 Santo Domingo (Dominican Rep) proclaims independence from Spain | ||
| 1822 Dom Pedro crowned emperor of Brazil | ||
| 1835 Hans Christian Andersen published his 1st book of fairy tales | ||
| 1843 1st chartered mutual life insurance company opens | ||
| 1852 Telegraph company opens throughout Netherlands | ||
| 1868 John D Rockefeller begins anti oil war | ||
| 1900 South African president Paul Kruger visits Flanders | ||
| 1918 Danish parliament passed an act to grant Iceland independence | ||
| 1918 Iceland becomes independent state under Danish crown | ||
| 1918 Serbian-Croatian-Slovic kingdom proclaimed in Belgrade | ||
| 1918 Yugoslavia declares independence; monarchy established | ||
| 1919 Lady Nancy Astor became the first woman to take a seat in the British House of Commons. | ||
| 1921 1st US helium-filled dirigible makes 1st flight | ||
| 1921 US Post Office establishes philatelic agency | ||
| 1925 Treaty of Locarno signed | ||
| 1928 Railroad museum opens in Utrecht Neth | ||
| 1930 Ruth Nichols becomes 1st woman pilot to cross continent | ||
| 1931 Ottawa branch of Royal Mint begins operation as Royal Canadian Mint | ||
| 1933 Rudolf Hess & Earnest R”hm become a minister in Hitler govt | ||
| 1935 Austria has world's 1st Day of Postage Stamp | ||
| 1936 Bell Labs tests coaxial cable for TV use | ||
| 1941 Japanese emperor Hirohito signs declaration of war | ||
| 1941 Last day of first-class cricket in Australia for 4 years | ||
| 1941 US Civil Air Patrol (CAP) organizes | ||
| 1948 Arabic Congress names Abdullah of Trans Jordan, King of Palestine | ||
| 1951 Golden Gate Bridge closes due to high winds | ||
| 1954 Nationalist China & US sign dike agreement | ||
| 1958 Central African Rep made autonomous member of Fr Comm (Natl Day) | ||
| 1958 Our Lady of Angels School burns, killing 92 students & 3 nuns (Chic) | ||
| 1959 12 nations sign treaty for scientific peaceful use of Antarctica | ||
| 1959 1st color photograph of Earth from outer space | ||
| 1959 The 1st color photograph of Earth received from outer space | ||
| 1960 Patrice Lumumba caught in the Congo | ||
| 1963 Nagaland becomes a state of Indian union | ||
| 1965 Airlift of refugees from Cuba to US began | ||
| 1965 South Africa govt says children of white fathers are white | ||
| 1966 Georg Kiesinger elected West German chancellor | ||
| 1968 Gonzalo Barrios elected pres of Venezuela | ||
| 1969 US govt holds its 1st draft lottery since WW II | ||
| 1970 Democratic Republic of Yemen | ||
| 1970 In Italy, parliament gave final approval to a law granting divorce in certain circumstances. | ||
| 1970 Luis Echeverria Alvarez sworn in as president of Mexico | ||
| 1973 Australia grants self-government to Papua New Guinea | ||
| 1973 David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, died. He was prime minister from 1948-1953 and again from 1955-1963. | ||
| 1974 Boeing 727 crashes in Upperville Virginia, 92 died | ||
| 1976 Angola admitted to UN | ||
| 1976 Bangladesh General Ziaur Rahman declares himself president | ||
| 1981 180 dies as Yugoslav DC-9 jetliner slams into a mountain | ||
| 1982 Dentist Barney B Clark gets 1st artificial heart | ||
| 1985 South Africa's Cosatu union centre forms | ||
| 1986 Museum d'Orsay opens in Paris | ||
| 1988 Benazir Bhutto named 1st female PM of a Moslem country (Pakistan) | ||
| 1989 East Germany drops communist monopoly from its constitution | ||
| 1989 Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope | ||
| 1990 Engineers digging a railway tunnel under the English Channel broke through the last dividing rock and joined Britain to mainland Europe for the first time since the Ice Age. | ||
| 1991 Colorado party wins Paraguay parliamentary election | ||
| 1991 Nursultan Nazarbayev sworn in as president of Kazakhstan | ||
| 1991 A referendum took place in Ukraine and voters backed independence from Russia by 9 to 1. The result confirmed parliament's earlier declaration of independence. | ||
| 1994 The head of the U.N. commission on Rwanda concluded that genocide in the country in that year cost 500,000 lives and that murdered President Juvenal Habyarimana and his entourage were behind the slaughter | ||
| 1995 NATO ambassadors unanimously picked Spanish Foreign Minister Javier Solana as the new head of the alliance. | ||
| 1997 Westinghouse formally changes its name to CBS | ||