19 December 1187
Paolo Scolari is elected as Pope Clement III.
19 December 1848
Thirty-year-old Emily Brontë, author of Wuthering Heights, dies of tuberculosis at her family home at Haworth, West Yorkshire.
19 December 1910
Birth at the Tarnier Clinic, Paris of criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright Jean Genet.
19 December 1919
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and former BEF commander, Sir John French, narrowly escaped assassination when the IRA ambushed his motorcade at Kelly’s Corner in Dublin.
19 December 1972
Apollo 17, the United States’ last manned lunar mission, returned to Earth. The crew on the 12-day mission comprised Eugene Ceman, Ronald Evans and Harrison Schmitt.
19 December 1981
The Penlee lifeboat disaster. The RNLB Solomon Browne went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.
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