1955: Rosa Parks<\/a> sits to take a stand<\/h4>\nIt was about six o\u2019 clock on the evening of 1 December 1955 when the 42-year-old Rosa Parks boarded a bus.<\/p>\n
A few minutes later, the bus stopped in front of the Empire Theater. By this time it was almost full, and some white passengers were standing at the front. When the driver noticed, he ordered the first row of black passengers to give up their seats, as the regulations demanded. Rosa Parks was among them. And at that moment, she wrote: \u201cI felt a determination cover my body like a quilt on a winter night.\u201d<\/p>\n
The man next to her moved back; but she did not. The driver asked: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you stand up?\u201d Parks replied: \u201cI don\u2019t think I should have to.\u201d She was arrested. Four days later, the Montgomery bus boycott<\/a> began.<\/p>\n2 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1908: Two-year-old Pu Yi becomes the last Emperor of China<\/h4>\n
Pensioned off following the Chinese Revolution of 1911\u201312, he was installed by the Japanese in 1932 as the puppet ruler of Manchuria.<\/p>\n
3 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1926: Agatha Christie vanishes<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Agatha]( "\\"English")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> English crime writer Agatha Christie (1890 \u2013 1976) and her daughter, Rosalind, (right), are featured in a newspaper article reporting the mysterious disappearance of the novelist. (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the evening of 3 December, Christie was at home in the Berkshire stockbroker belt. She went upstairs to kiss her seven-year-old daughter goodnight. Then she got into her Morris, started the engine \u2013 and disappeared.<\/p>\n
What followed was a media sensation. Amid a blizzard of headlines, the police mobilised a thousand officers to help with the search, while volunteers chartered aeroplanes to scour the countryside.<\/p>\n
The denouement was bizarre indeed. On 14 December Christie turned up in the elegant Swan Hydro Hotel in Harrogate under an assumed name. For days she had joined in with the hotel\u2019s bridge and dancing programme, and when she was finally recognised, she claimed to have lost her memory. The really weird thing, though, was that she had checked in under the name Theresa Neele. For as it turned out, her husband had been having an affair \u2013 with a woman whose surname was Neele.<\/p>\n
4 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1872: Sailors spot a mysterious ghost ship \u2013 the abandoned Mary Celeste<\/em><\/h4>\nAs Captain Morehouse and his mates\u00a0approached the stricken vessel, they realised that they knew her. She was an American merchant ship, barely a decade old. Only a few weeks earlier both ships had been in New York Harbor, and their captains vaguely knew one another. This was Captain Benjamin Briggs\u2019 ship, the Mary Celeste<\/em>. But where were the crew?<\/p>\nAs the two mates investigated, the mystery deepened. Contrary to myth, there were no untouched meals and no signs of a struggle. The sails were poorly set, some of the hatches were open and there was a little water in the hold, but the ship was otherwise in decent order. The captain\u2019s cabin was slightly messy, and his papers were missing. So, tellingly, was the lifeboat. But the galley was tidy, and there were plenty of supplies. Above all, there were no signs of a fight, no hints of fire or disaster \u2013 nothing, in short, that would explain the disappearance of the entire crew.<\/p>\n
5 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h4>\n
Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n
6 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1240: The Mongols<\/a> terrorise Kiev<\/h4>\nThe Mongols poured into the city, looting, raping and killing. Hundreds of Kiev\u2019s citizens fled inside the Church of the Virgin Mary. But so many stampeded up the stairs towards the dome that the structure collapsed beneath their weight. There was no escape from the slaughter.<\/p>\n
Six years later, a papal envoy passed the ruins of what had once been Kiev, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The people had been enslaved, only 200 houses still stood, and there were \u201ccountless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground\u201d. Kiev, he wrote, \u201chas been reduced almost to nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n Births in December<\/h2>\n3 December 1838<\/h6>\n
Octavia Hill, social reformer<\/p>\n
5 December 1661<\/h6>\n
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford<\/p>\n
5 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Christina Georgina Rossetti, poet<\/p>\n
5 December 1859<\/h6>\n
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, governor general of New Zealand<\/p>\n
6 December 1421<\/h6>\n
Henry, the only son and heir of Henry V of England<\/p>\n
7 December 1598<\/h6>\n
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor and architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 December 1810<\/h6>\n
Theodor Schwann, physiologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
8 December 1542<\/h6>\n
Mary, Queen of Scots\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 December 1608<\/h6>\n
John Milton, poet<\/p>\n
10 December 1812<\/h6>\n
Paul Abadie, French architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 December 1871<\/h6>\n
Emily Carr, Canadian writer and expressionist painter<\/p>\n
14 December 1730<\/h6>\n
James Bruce, Scottish traveller and writer<\/p>\n
15 December 1832<\/h6>\n
Gustave Eiffel, engineer and tower designer<\/p>\n
15 December 1859<\/h6>\n
LL Zamenhof, inventor of the international language, Esperanto<\/p>\n
16 December 1882<\/h6>\n
Jack Hobbs, cricketer<\/p>\n
16 December 1717<\/h6>\n
Elizabeth Carter, writer and \u201cbluestocking\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 December 1619<\/h6>\n
Prince Rupert, the son of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth<\/p>\n
18 December 1707<\/h6>\n
Charles Wesley, hymn writer<\/p>\n
19 December 1910<\/h6>\n
Jean Genet, criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1642<\/h6>\n
Isaac Newton, English physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and theologian\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1759<\/h6>\n
Richard Porson, English classical scholar\u00a0<\/p>\n
26 December 1887<\/h6>\n
Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in 1942<\/p>\n
29 December 1788<\/h6>\n
CJ Thomsen, Danish archaeologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
29 December 1809<\/h6>\n
William Ewart Gladstone, future prime minister\u00a0<\/p>\n
31 December 1908<\/h6>\n
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter<\/p>\n
31 December 1912<\/h6>\n
John Frost, British soldier and paratrooper<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe clock had just ticked past five to eight in the morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Tension between Tokyo and Washington had been building for weeks. Even so, none of the American airmen and sailors at Pearl Harbor that day had any expectation that Japan would strike with such devastating speed<\/p>\n
Some 353 Japanese planes descended in two thick black waves on the Hawaiian naval base. What followed was hell on earth. More than 2,400 Americans were killed, almost 200 aircraft were destroyed, four battleships were sunk and another four were badly damaged. Just two hours after they had screamed out of the sky, the Japanese were gone. They left a scene of total devastation, black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the ships.<\/p>\n
8 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1980: Crazed fan murders John Lennon<\/a><\/h4>\nThat day was a Monday and, bizarrely, it was the ABC commentators on the evening\u2019s American football game who broke the news of Lennon\u2019s death. Within moments the news had spread around the globe: thousands of fans gathered outside the Dakota Building in New York, while millions mourned across the world. Six days after the murder, some 30,000 people paid tribute in Liverpool, while a further 225,000 gathered in New York.<\/p>\n
Mark Chapman, a college dropout who had been a big Beatles<\/a> fan before being \u2018born again\u2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has had eight parole hearings since 2000, none of which have been successful.<\/p>\n9 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Coronation Street<\/em> hits TV sets<\/h4>\nFor British audiences, 9 December 1960 was a milestone in television history. At seven that evening, with more than 3m people staring at their sets, a brass band struck up a mournful tune, the grainy black and white picture showed a long street of terraced back-to-backs, and Coronation Street<\/em> began its record-breaking run as the nation\u2019s best-loved soap opera.<\/p>\n10 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1884: Huckleberry Finn<\/em> comes to Britain<\/h4>\n ![\"A]( "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> A vintage cover of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>. (Photo by Buyenlarge\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAt the end of 1884, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> was finished, and was published in Britain on 10 December by Chatto & Windus \u2013 though American publication, oddly, had to wait a few more weeks.<\/p>\nAlas, not everybody liked it. In New England, one library committee called it \u201cthe veriest trash\u201d, adding that it was \u201cmore suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable, people\u201d. Twain thought that was hilarious. \u201cThis will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure!\u201d he wrote. And he was right.<\/p>\n
11 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1282: Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, the last prince of an independent Wales, is killed by the English in a minor skirmish while campaigning in the Builth region<\/h4>\n
His head was later sent for public display in London.<\/p>\n
12 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1870: Joseph H Rainey, a South Carolina Republican, becomes the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives<\/h4>\n13 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1577: Francis Drake sails from Plymouth on his world voyage<\/h4>\n14 December<\/a><\/h2>\nAD 557: The earth moves in Constantinople<\/h4>\n
It was at around midnight on 14 December 557 that Constantinople felt the first tremors. Its people were no strangers to earthquakes \u2013 there had been one just a matter of months earlier \u2013 but this seemed worse. As the Roman capital\u2019s buildings began to shake, \u201cshrieks and lamentations\u201d rose from the imperial city. After each tremor, recorded the historian Agathias, there came a \u201cdeep, growling sound like thunder issuing from the bowels of the earth\u201d, while the sky \u201cgrew dim with the vaporous exhalations of a smoky haze rising from an unknown source, and gleamed with a dull radiance\u201d.<\/p>\n
15 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1939: Premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\nAn estimated 300,000 people lined the streets to watch the stars arrive at Loew\u2019s Grand Theater. Among the guests of honour was a group of Confederate veterans, whose appearance drew great roars of approval from the crowds. But although most of the Hollywood names turned up, one was missing. This was Hattie McDaniel, who later won an Academy Award for her performance as Mammy. Since McDaniel was black, state law prevented her from sitting alongside her white counterparts. Amid all the Civil War<\/a> nostalgia, here was a reminder of the enduring injustice at the heart of the old South.<\/p>\n16 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1773: Boston rebels dump tea into the sea<\/h4>\n ![\"Boston]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor December 16, 1773. (Photo by GettyImages)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIt was dark in Boston when the Tea Party<\/a> began. After years of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies, attention had become focused on the Tea Act of 1773, which reaffirmed the controversial tax on imported tea. At the end of November, the first tea ship, the Dartmouth<\/em>, had arrived in Boston, but local activists demanded that it return home without paying the import duty.<\/p>\nWith passions running high, the crowd was soon surging towards the harbour. That evening, dozens of men, some of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth<\/em> and two other tea ships, unloaded hundreds of chests of tea and dumped them into Boston harbour. It was an act of pure vandalism, and back in Britain, the authorities were appalled.<\/p>\n17 December<\/a><\/h2>\n497 BC: Romans celebrate the first Saturnalia<\/a><\/h4>\nSometimes described as the Roman inspiration for Christmas, the festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated on 17 December 497 BC, to mark the inauguration of Rome\u2019s new Temple of Saturn.<\/p>\n
18 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: Newspapers announce the discovery in Sussex of the skull and jaw of the \u2018Piltdown Man<\/a>\u2019<\/h4>\nIt was presented as the missing link between apes and humans but 40 years later the \u2018discovery\u2019 was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax.<\/p>\n
19 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: The Penlee lifeboat disaster<\/h4>\n
The RNLB Solomon Browne<\/em> went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star<\/em> after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.<\/p>\n20 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> is captured<\/h4>\n ![\"King]( "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> King Richard I in prison. (Photo by The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe men of Leopold, Duke of Austria, struck on 20 December.\u00a0Some versions of the story claim that Richard tried to evade capture by pretending to be a chef, even turning meat over a spit in the kitchen. But it was no good. Arrested and charged with grievously insulting the Austrian duke, Richard was taken to the castle of Du\u0308rnstein, perched high above the Danube, west of Vienna. There he remained before being moved to another castle in Germany. He was not released until February 1194, after his countrymen had paid an enormous ransom.<\/p>\n
21 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1910: A massive underground explosion at Lancashire\u2019s Hulton Colliery Number 3 Bank Pit<\/h4>\n
It was known locally as the Pretoria Pit, and killed 344 men and boys. It was the third worst mining disaster in British history.<\/p>\n
22 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1938: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of a small museum in East London, South Africa, discovers what turns out to be a coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years.<\/h4>\n23 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1815: Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Emma<\/em>, a novel about \u201ca heroine whom no one but myself will much like\u201d, is an instant hit<\/h4>\nEmma was published in three volumes, each set costing one guinea. It was an instant success. Sir Walter Scott thought Austen\u2019s characters were \u201cfinished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me entreat you to read Emma,\u201d the poet Thomas Moore told a friend, \u201cit is the very perfection of novel-writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Deaths in December<\/h2>\n2 December 1560<\/h6>\n
Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne<\/p>\n
3 December 311<\/h6>\n
Diocletian, Roman emperor<\/p>\n
4 December 1732<\/h6>\n
John Gay, poet and dramatist<\/p>\n
8 December 1691<\/h6>\n
Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader and theologian<\/p>\n
9 December 1641<\/h6>\n
Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish painter<\/p>\n
10 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux during the Bozeman War of 1866\u201368<\/p>\n
12 December 1889<\/h6>\n
Robert Browning, poet<\/p>\n
14 December 1861<\/h6>\n
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria<\/p>\n
14 December 1542<\/h6>\n
James V of Scotland\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 December 1683<\/h6>\n
Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler<\/em><\/p>\n17 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Simon Bolivar, who played a key role in Latin America\u2019s successful bid for independence from Spain<\/p>\n
19 December 1848<\/h6>\n
Emily Bront\u00eb, author of Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/p>\n22 December 1960<\/h6>\n
Sir John Ninian Comper, Scottish church architect<\/p>\n
26 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Frederic Remington, New York-born painter and sculptor<\/p>\n
27 December 1940<\/h6>\n
Jessie Margaret Saxby, Shetland writer and folklorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 December 1360<\/h6>\n
Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent<\/p>\n
28 December 1937<\/h6>\n
Maurice Ravel, French composer\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 December 1408<\/h6>\n
John Hawley, wine and wool merchant<\/p>\n
31 December 1877<\/h6>\n
Gustave Courbet, French realist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
24 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1818: An Austrian priest, Josef Mohr, unveils his new carol: \u2018Silent Night\u2019<\/h4>\n
As the worshippers trudged through the snow towards St Nicholas\u2019s Church that Christmas Eve, none knew that they were to witness the birth of a musical phenomenon. Today \u2018Silent Night\u2019 is probably the world\u2019s most familiar carol, having been translated into an estimated 300 languages and dialects. Its fame in the English-speaking world owes much to an American priest, John Freeman Young, who translated it for his New York parishioners in 1859 and later became bishop of Florida.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | Christmas carols: the history behind 9 festive favourites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet the carol we sing today is not quite the same as Mohr and Gruber\u2019s original. During its early days, it was faster and jauntier, a song to gee up the parishioners of a bruised, moribund little town \u2013 and a long way from the gentle ballad we know and love in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
25 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1223: The Christmas nativity<\/a> is born<\/h4>\nIn 1223, Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world\u2019s first nativity scene.<\/p>\n
Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he \u201cprepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed\u201d. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, \u201cthe brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis\u2019s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of \u201can Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger\u201d. From then on, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n
26 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1792: A brilliant defence fails to save Louis XVI from the guillotine<\/a><\/h4>\nFor two weeks, de S\u00e8ze, reputedly one of the finest lawyers in the country, had worked almost without a break.\u00a0Now, as he rose to address the National Assembly, he looked exhausted: in fact, he had not slept for four days. Still, even Louis\u2019 fiercest critics admitted that his lawyer gave a command performance. One by one de Se\u0300ze went through the prosecution\u2019s charges, ruthlessly dissecting their distortions and evasions.<\/p>\n
Then came a memorable peroration, praising the former king as the \u201cconstant friend of the people\u201d. \u201cCitizens,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI cannot finish\u2026 I stop myself before history. Think how it will judge your judgment, and that the judgment of him will be judged by the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it was Louis\u2019 turn. Pale and quiet, he was determined to avoid the example of England\u2019s Charles I<\/a>, whose defiance in 1649 had done him no favours. \u201cYou have heard my defence, I would not repeat the details,\u201d he said softly. \u201cIn talking to you perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\nAfterwards, on the journey back, the king seemed more anxious for the shattered de Se\u0300ze than for himself. A month later, Louis went to the guillotine.<\/p>\n
27 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1539: Anne of Cleves<\/a> lands in England, disembarking at Deal and moving on to Dover<\/h4>\nShe then travelled to Rochester where, on 1 January 1540, Henry VIII<\/a> visited her privately in disguise.<\/p>\n28 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1879: Tragedy strikes at the Tay Rail Bridge<\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n
2 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1908: Two-year-old Pu Yi becomes the last Emperor of China<\/h4>\n
Pensioned off following the Chinese Revolution of 1911\u201312, he was installed by the Japanese in 1932 as the puppet ruler of Manchuria.<\/p>\n
3 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1926: Agatha Christie vanishes<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Agatha]( "\\"English")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> English crime writer Agatha Christie (1890 \u2013 1976) and her daughter, Rosalind, (right), are featured in a newspaper article reporting the mysterious disappearance of the novelist. (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the evening of 3 December, Christie was at home in the Berkshire stockbroker belt. She went upstairs to kiss her seven-year-old daughter goodnight. Then she got into her Morris, started the engine \u2013 and disappeared.<\/p>\n
What followed was a media sensation. Amid a blizzard of headlines, the police mobilised a thousand officers to help with the search, while volunteers chartered aeroplanes to scour the countryside.<\/p>\n
The denouement was bizarre indeed. On 14 December Christie turned up in the elegant Swan Hydro Hotel in Harrogate under an assumed name. For days she had joined in with the hotel\u2019s bridge and dancing programme, and when she was finally recognised, she claimed to have lost her memory. The really weird thing, though, was that she had checked in under the name Theresa Neele. For as it turned out, her husband had been having an affair \u2013 with a woman whose surname was Neele.<\/p>\n
4 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1872: Sailors spot a mysterious ghost ship \u2013 the abandoned Mary Celeste<\/em><\/h4>\nAs Captain Morehouse and his mates\u00a0approached the stricken vessel, they realised that they knew her. She was an American merchant ship, barely a decade old. Only a few weeks earlier both ships had been in New York Harbor, and their captains vaguely knew one another. This was Captain Benjamin Briggs\u2019 ship, the Mary Celeste<\/em>. But where were the crew?<\/p>\nAs the two mates investigated, the mystery deepened. Contrary to myth, there were no untouched meals and no signs of a struggle. The sails were poorly set, some of the hatches were open and there was a little water in the hold, but the ship was otherwise in decent order. The captain\u2019s cabin was slightly messy, and his papers were missing. So, tellingly, was the lifeboat. But the galley was tidy, and there were plenty of supplies. Above all, there were no signs of a fight, no hints of fire or disaster \u2013 nothing, in short, that would explain the disappearance of the entire crew.<\/p>\n
5 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h4>\n
Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n
6 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1240: The Mongols<\/a> terrorise Kiev<\/h4>\nThe Mongols poured into the city, looting, raping and killing. Hundreds of Kiev\u2019s citizens fled inside the Church of the Virgin Mary. But so many stampeded up the stairs towards the dome that the structure collapsed beneath their weight. There was no escape from the slaughter.<\/p>\n
Six years later, a papal envoy passed the ruins of what had once been Kiev, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The people had been enslaved, only 200 houses still stood, and there were \u201ccountless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground\u201d. Kiev, he wrote, \u201chas been reduced almost to nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n Births in December<\/h2>\n3 December 1838<\/h6>\n
Octavia Hill, social reformer<\/p>\n
5 December 1661<\/h6>\n
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford<\/p>\n
5 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Christina Georgina Rossetti, poet<\/p>\n
5 December 1859<\/h6>\n
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, governor general of New Zealand<\/p>\n
6 December 1421<\/h6>\n
Henry, the only son and heir of Henry V of England<\/p>\n
7 December 1598<\/h6>\n
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor and architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 December 1810<\/h6>\n
Theodor Schwann, physiologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
8 December 1542<\/h6>\n
Mary, Queen of Scots\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 December 1608<\/h6>\n
John Milton, poet<\/p>\n
10 December 1812<\/h6>\n
Paul Abadie, French architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 December 1871<\/h6>\n
Emily Carr, Canadian writer and expressionist painter<\/p>\n
14 December 1730<\/h6>\n
James Bruce, Scottish traveller and writer<\/p>\n
15 December 1832<\/h6>\n
Gustave Eiffel, engineer and tower designer<\/p>\n
15 December 1859<\/h6>\n
LL Zamenhof, inventor of the international language, Esperanto<\/p>\n
16 December 1882<\/h6>\n
Jack Hobbs, cricketer<\/p>\n
16 December 1717<\/h6>\n
Elizabeth Carter, writer and \u201cbluestocking\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 December 1619<\/h6>\n
Prince Rupert, the son of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth<\/p>\n
18 December 1707<\/h6>\n
Charles Wesley, hymn writer<\/p>\n
19 December 1910<\/h6>\n
Jean Genet, criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1642<\/h6>\n
Isaac Newton, English physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and theologian\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1759<\/h6>\n
Richard Porson, English classical scholar\u00a0<\/p>\n
26 December 1887<\/h6>\n
Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in 1942<\/p>\n
29 December 1788<\/h6>\n
CJ Thomsen, Danish archaeologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
29 December 1809<\/h6>\n
William Ewart Gladstone, future prime minister\u00a0<\/p>\n
31 December 1908<\/h6>\n
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter<\/p>\n
31 December 1912<\/h6>\n
John Frost, British soldier and paratrooper<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe clock had just ticked past five to eight in the morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Tension between Tokyo and Washington had been building for weeks. Even so, none of the American airmen and sailors at Pearl Harbor that day had any expectation that Japan would strike with such devastating speed<\/p>\n
Some 353 Japanese planes descended in two thick black waves on the Hawaiian naval base. What followed was hell on earth. More than 2,400 Americans were killed, almost 200 aircraft were destroyed, four battleships were sunk and another four were badly damaged. Just two hours after they had screamed out of the sky, the Japanese were gone. They left a scene of total devastation, black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the ships.<\/p>\n
8 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1980: Crazed fan murders John Lennon<\/a><\/h4>\nThat day was a Monday and, bizarrely, it was the ABC commentators on the evening\u2019s American football game who broke the news of Lennon\u2019s death. Within moments the news had spread around the globe: thousands of fans gathered outside the Dakota Building in New York, while millions mourned across the world. Six days after the murder, some 30,000 people paid tribute in Liverpool, while a further 225,000 gathered in New York.<\/p>\n
Mark Chapman, a college dropout who had been a big Beatles<\/a> fan before being \u2018born again\u2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has had eight parole hearings since 2000, none of which have been successful.<\/p>\n9 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Coronation Street<\/em> hits TV sets<\/h4>\nFor British audiences, 9 December 1960 was a milestone in television history. At seven that evening, with more than 3m people staring at their sets, a brass band struck up a mournful tune, the grainy black and white picture showed a long street of terraced back-to-backs, and Coronation Street<\/em> began its record-breaking run as the nation\u2019s best-loved soap opera.<\/p>\n10 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1884: Huckleberry Finn<\/em> comes to Britain<\/h4>\n ![\"A]( "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> A vintage cover of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>. (Photo by Buyenlarge\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAt the end of 1884, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> was finished, and was published in Britain on 10 December by Chatto & Windus \u2013 though American publication, oddly, had to wait a few more weeks.<\/p>\nAlas, not everybody liked it. In New England, one library committee called it \u201cthe veriest trash\u201d, adding that it was \u201cmore suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable, people\u201d. Twain thought that was hilarious. \u201cThis will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure!\u201d he wrote. And he was right.<\/p>\n
11 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1282: Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, the last prince of an independent Wales, is killed by the English in a minor skirmish while campaigning in the Builth region<\/h4>\n
His head was later sent for public display in London.<\/p>\n
12 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1870: Joseph H Rainey, a South Carolina Republican, becomes the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives<\/h4>\n13 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1577: Francis Drake sails from Plymouth on his world voyage<\/h4>\n14 December<\/a><\/h2>\nAD 557: The earth moves in Constantinople<\/h4>\n
It was at around midnight on 14 December 557 that Constantinople felt the first tremors. Its people were no strangers to earthquakes \u2013 there had been one just a matter of months earlier \u2013 but this seemed worse. As the Roman capital\u2019s buildings began to shake, \u201cshrieks and lamentations\u201d rose from the imperial city. After each tremor, recorded the historian Agathias, there came a \u201cdeep, growling sound like thunder issuing from the bowels of the earth\u201d, while the sky \u201cgrew dim with the vaporous exhalations of a smoky haze rising from an unknown source, and gleamed with a dull radiance\u201d.<\/p>\n
15 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1939: Premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\nAn estimated 300,000 people lined the streets to watch the stars arrive at Loew\u2019s Grand Theater. Among the guests of honour was a group of Confederate veterans, whose appearance drew great roars of approval from the crowds. But although most of the Hollywood names turned up, one was missing. This was Hattie McDaniel, who later won an Academy Award for her performance as Mammy. Since McDaniel was black, state law prevented her from sitting alongside her white counterparts. Amid all the Civil War<\/a> nostalgia, here was a reminder of the enduring injustice at the heart of the old South.<\/p>\n16 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1773: Boston rebels dump tea into the sea<\/h4>\n ![\"Boston]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor December 16, 1773. (Photo by GettyImages)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIt was dark in Boston when the Tea Party<\/a> began. After years of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies, attention had become focused on the Tea Act of 1773, which reaffirmed the controversial tax on imported tea. At the end of November, the first tea ship, the Dartmouth<\/em>, had arrived in Boston, but local activists demanded that it return home without paying the import duty.<\/p>\nWith passions running high, the crowd was soon surging towards the harbour. That evening, dozens of men, some of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth<\/em> and two other tea ships, unloaded hundreds of chests of tea and dumped them into Boston harbour. It was an act of pure vandalism, and back in Britain, the authorities were appalled.<\/p>\n17 December<\/a><\/h2>\n497 BC: Romans celebrate the first Saturnalia<\/a><\/h4>\nSometimes described as the Roman inspiration for Christmas, the festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated on 17 December 497 BC, to mark the inauguration of Rome\u2019s new Temple of Saturn.<\/p>\n
18 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: Newspapers announce the discovery in Sussex of the skull and jaw of the \u2018Piltdown Man<\/a>\u2019<\/h4>\nIt was presented as the missing link between apes and humans but 40 years later the \u2018discovery\u2019 was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax.<\/p>\n
19 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: The Penlee lifeboat disaster<\/h4>\n
The RNLB Solomon Browne<\/em> went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star<\/em> after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.<\/p>\n20 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> is captured<\/h4>\n ![\"King]( "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> King Richard I in prison. (Photo by The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe men of Leopold, Duke of Austria, struck on 20 December.\u00a0Some versions of the story claim that Richard tried to evade capture by pretending to be a chef, even turning meat over a spit in the kitchen. But it was no good. Arrested and charged with grievously insulting the Austrian duke, Richard was taken to the castle of Du\u0308rnstein, perched high above the Danube, west of Vienna. There he remained before being moved to another castle in Germany. He was not released until February 1194, after his countrymen had paid an enormous ransom.<\/p>\n
21 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1910: A massive underground explosion at Lancashire\u2019s Hulton Colliery Number 3 Bank Pit<\/h4>\n
It was known locally as the Pretoria Pit, and killed 344 men and boys. It was the third worst mining disaster in British history.<\/p>\n
22 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1938: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of a small museum in East London, South Africa, discovers what turns out to be a coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years.<\/h4>\n23 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1815: Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Emma<\/em>, a novel about \u201ca heroine whom no one but myself will much like\u201d, is an instant hit<\/h4>\nEmma was published in three volumes, each set costing one guinea. It was an instant success. Sir Walter Scott thought Austen\u2019s characters were \u201cfinished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me entreat you to read Emma,\u201d the poet Thomas Moore told a friend, \u201cit is the very perfection of novel-writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Deaths in December<\/h2>\n2 December 1560<\/h6>\n
Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne<\/p>\n
3 December 311<\/h6>\n
Diocletian, Roman emperor<\/p>\n
4 December 1732<\/h6>\n
John Gay, poet and dramatist<\/p>\n
8 December 1691<\/h6>\n
Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader and theologian<\/p>\n
9 December 1641<\/h6>\n
Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish painter<\/p>\n
10 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux during the Bozeman War of 1866\u201368<\/p>\n
12 December 1889<\/h6>\n
Robert Browning, poet<\/p>\n
14 December 1861<\/h6>\n
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria<\/p>\n
14 December 1542<\/h6>\n
James V of Scotland\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 December 1683<\/h6>\n
Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler<\/em><\/p>\n17 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Simon Bolivar, who played a key role in Latin America\u2019s successful bid for independence from Spain<\/p>\n
19 December 1848<\/h6>\n
Emily Bront\u00eb, author of Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/p>\n22 December 1960<\/h6>\n
Sir John Ninian Comper, Scottish church architect<\/p>\n
26 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Frederic Remington, New York-born painter and sculptor<\/p>\n
27 December 1940<\/h6>\n
Jessie Margaret Saxby, Shetland writer and folklorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 December 1360<\/h6>\n
Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent<\/p>\n
28 December 1937<\/h6>\n
Maurice Ravel, French composer\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 December 1408<\/h6>\n
John Hawley, wine and wool merchant<\/p>\n
31 December 1877<\/h6>\n
Gustave Courbet, French realist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
24 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1818: An Austrian priest, Josef Mohr, unveils his new carol: \u2018Silent Night\u2019<\/h4>\n
As the worshippers trudged through the snow towards St Nicholas\u2019s Church that Christmas Eve, none knew that they were to witness the birth of a musical phenomenon. Today \u2018Silent Night\u2019 is probably the world\u2019s most familiar carol, having been translated into an estimated 300 languages and dialects. Its fame in the English-speaking world owes much to an American priest, John Freeman Young, who translated it for his New York parishioners in 1859 and later became bishop of Florida.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | Christmas carols: the history behind 9 festive favourites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet the carol we sing today is not quite the same as Mohr and Gruber\u2019s original. During its early days, it was faster and jauntier, a song to gee up the parishioners of a bruised, moribund little town \u2013 and a long way from the gentle ballad we know and love in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
25 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1223: The Christmas nativity<\/a> is born<\/h4>\nIn 1223, Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world\u2019s first nativity scene.<\/p>\n
Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he \u201cprepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed\u201d. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, \u201cthe brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis\u2019s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of \u201can Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger\u201d. From then on, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n
26 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1792: A brilliant defence fails to save Louis XVI from the guillotine<\/a><\/h4>\nFor two weeks, de S\u00e8ze, reputedly one of the finest lawyers in the country, had worked almost without a break.\u00a0Now, as he rose to address the National Assembly, he looked exhausted: in fact, he had not slept for four days. Still, even Louis\u2019 fiercest critics admitted that his lawyer gave a command performance. One by one de Se\u0300ze went through the prosecution\u2019s charges, ruthlessly dissecting their distortions and evasions.<\/p>\n
Then came a memorable peroration, praising the former king as the \u201cconstant friend of the people\u201d. \u201cCitizens,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI cannot finish\u2026 I stop myself before history. Think how it will judge your judgment, and that the judgment of him will be judged by the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it was Louis\u2019 turn. Pale and quiet, he was determined to avoid the example of England\u2019s Charles I<\/a>, whose defiance in 1649 had done him no favours. \u201cYou have heard my defence, I would not repeat the details,\u201d he said softly. \u201cIn talking to you perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\nAfterwards, on the journey back, the king seemed more anxious for the shattered de Se\u0300ze than for himself. A month later, Louis went to the guillotine.<\/p>\n
27 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1539: Anne of Cleves<\/a> lands in England, disembarking at Deal and moving on to Dover<\/h4>\nShe then travelled to Rochester where, on 1 January 1540, Henry VIII<\/a> visited her privately in disguise.<\/p>\n28 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1879: Tragedy strikes at the Tay Rail Bridge<\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n
1926: Agatha Christie vanishes<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Agatha]( "\\"English")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> English crime writer Agatha Christie (1890 \u2013 1976) and her daughter, Rosalind, (right), are featured in a newspaper article reporting the mysterious disappearance of the novelist. (Photo by Hulton Archive\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nOn the evening of 3 December, Christie was at home in the Berkshire stockbroker belt. She went upstairs to kiss her seven-year-old daughter goodnight. Then she got into her Morris, started the engine \u2013 and disappeared.<\/p>\n
What followed was a media sensation. Amid a blizzard of headlines, the police mobilised a thousand officers to help with the search, while volunteers chartered aeroplanes to scour the countryside.<\/p>\n
The denouement was bizarre indeed. On 14 December Christie turned up in the elegant Swan Hydro Hotel in Harrogate under an assumed name. For days she had joined in with the hotel\u2019s bridge and dancing programme, and when she was finally recognised, she claimed to have lost her memory. The really weird thing, though, was that she had checked in under the name Theresa Neele. For as it turned out, her husband had been having an affair \u2013 with a woman whose surname was Neele.<\/p>\n
4 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1872: Sailors spot a mysterious ghost ship \u2013 the abandoned Mary Celeste<\/em><\/h4>\nAs Captain Morehouse and his mates\u00a0approached the stricken vessel, they realised that they knew her. She was an American merchant ship, barely a decade old. Only a few weeks earlier both ships had been in New York Harbor, and their captains vaguely knew one another. This was Captain Benjamin Briggs\u2019 ship, the Mary Celeste<\/em>. But where were the crew?<\/p>\nAs the two mates investigated, the mystery deepened. Contrary to myth, there were no untouched meals and no signs of a struggle. The sails were poorly set, some of the hatches were open and there was a little water in the hold, but the ship was otherwise in decent order. The captain\u2019s cabin was slightly messy, and his papers were missing. So, tellingly, was the lifeboat. But the galley was tidy, and there were plenty of supplies. Above all, there were no signs of a fight, no hints of fire or disaster \u2013 nothing, in short, that would explain the disappearance of the entire crew.<\/p>\n
5 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h4>\n
Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n
6 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1240: The Mongols<\/a> terrorise Kiev<\/h4>\nThe Mongols poured into the city, looting, raping and killing. Hundreds of Kiev\u2019s citizens fled inside the Church of the Virgin Mary. But so many stampeded up the stairs towards the dome that the structure collapsed beneath their weight. There was no escape from the slaughter.<\/p>\n
Six years later, a papal envoy passed the ruins of what had once been Kiev, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The people had been enslaved, only 200 houses still stood, and there were \u201ccountless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground\u201d. Kiev, he wrote, \u201chas been reduced almost to nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n Births in December<\/h2>\n3 December 1838<\/h6>\n
Octavia Hill, social reformer<\/p>\n
5 December 1661<\/h6>\n
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford<\/p>\n
5 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Christina Georgina Rossetti, poet<\/p>\n
5 December 1859<\/h6>\n
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, governor general of New Zealand<\/p>\n
6 December 1421<\/h6>\n
Henry, the only son and heir of Henry V of England<\/p>\n
7 December 1598<\/h6>\n
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor and architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 December 1810<\/h6>\n
Theodor Schwann, physiologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
8 December 1542<\/h6>\n
Mary, Queen of Scots\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 December 1608<\/h6>\n
John Milton, poet<\/p>\n
10 December 1812<\/h6>\n
Paul Abadie, French architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 December 1871<\/h6>\n
Emily Carr, Canadian writer and expressionist painter<\/p>\n
14 December 1730<\/h6>\n
James Bruce, Scottish traveller and writer<\/p>\n
15 December 1832<\/h6>\n
Gustave Eiffel, engineer and tower designer<\/p>\n
15 December 1859<\/h6>\n
LL Zamenhof, inventor of the international language, Esperanto<\/p>\n
16 December 1882<\/h6>\n
Jack Hobbs, cricketer<\/p>\n
16 December 1717<\/h6>\n
Elizabeth Carter, writer and \u201cbluestocking\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 December 1619<\/h6>\n
Prince Rupert, the son of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth<\/p>\n
18 December 1707<\/h6>\n
Charles Wesley, hymn writer<\/p>\n
19 December 1910<\/h6>\n
Jean Genet, criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1642<\/h6>\n
Isaac Newton, English physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and theologian\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1759<\/h6>\n
Richard Porson, English classical scholar\u00a0<\/p>\n
26 December 1887<\/h6>\n
Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in 1942<\/p>\n
29 December 1788<\/h6>\n
CJ Thomsen, Danish archaeologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
29 December 1809<\/h6>\n
William Ewart Gladstone, future prime minister\u00a0<\/p>\n
31 December 1908<\/h6>\n
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter<\/p>\n
31 December 1912<\/h6>\n
John Frost, British soldier and paratrooper<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe clock had just ticked past five to eight in the morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Tension between Tokyo and Washington had been building for weeks. Even so, none of the American airmen and sailors at Pearl Harbor that day had any expectation that Japan would strike with such devastating speed<\/p>\n
Some 353 Japanese planes descended in two thick black waves on the Hawaiian naval base. What followed was hell on earth. More than 2,400 Americans were killed, almost 200 aircraft were destroyed, four battleships were sunk and another four were badly damaged. Just two hours after they had screamed out of the sky, the Japanese were gone. They left a scene of total devastation, black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the ships.<\/p>\n
8 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1980: Crazed fan murders John Lennon<\/a><\/h4>\nThat day was a Monday and, bizarrely, it was the ABC commentators on the evening\u2019s American football game who broke the news of Lennon\u2019s death. Within moments the news had spread around the globe: thousands of fans gathered outside the Dakota Building in New York, while millions mourned across the world. Six days after the murder, some 30,000 people paid tribute in Liverpool, while a further 225,000 gathered in New York.<\/p>\n
Mark Chapman, a college dropout who had been a big Beatles<\/a> fan before being \u2018born again\u2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has had eight parole hearings since 2000, none of which have been successful.<\/p>\n9 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Coronation Street<\/em> hits TV sets<\/h4>\nFor British audiences, 9 December 1960 was a milestone in television history. At seven that evening, with more than 3m people staring at their sets, a brass band struck up a mournful tune, the grainy black and white picture showed a long street of terraced back-to-backs, and Coronation Street<\/em> began its record-breaking run as the nation\u2019s best-loved soap opera.<\/p>\n10 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1884: Huckleberry Finn<\/em> comes to Britain<\/h4>\n ![\"A]( "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> A vintage cover of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>. (Photo by Buyenlarge\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAt the end of 1884, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> was finished, and was published in Britain on 10 December by Chatto & Windus \u2013 though American publication, oddly, had to wait a few more weeks.<\/p>\nAlas, not everybody liked it. In New England, one library committee called it \u201cthe veriest trash\u201d, adding that it was \u201cmore suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable, people\u201d. Twain thought that was hilarious. \u201cThis will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure!\u201d he wrote. And he was right.<\/p>\n
11 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1282: Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, the last prince of an independent Wales, is killed by the English in a minor skirmish while campaigning in the Builth region<\/h4>\n
His head was later sent for public display in London.<\/p>\n
12 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1870: Joseph H Rainey, a South Carolina Republican, becomes the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives<\/h4>\n13 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1577: Francis Drake sails from Plymouth on his world voyage<\/h4>\n14 December<\/a><\/h2>\nAD 557: The earth moves in Constantinople<\/h4>\n
It was at around midnight on 14 December 557 that Constantinople felt the first tremors. Its people were no strangers to earthquakes \u2013 there had been one just a matter of months earlier \u2013 but this seemed worse. As the Roman capital\u2019s buildings began to shake, \u201cshrieks and lamentations\u201d rose from the imperial city. After each tremor, recorded the historian Agathias, there came a \u201cdeep, growling sound like thunder issuing from the bowels of the earth\u201d, while the sky \u201cgrew dim with the vaporous exhalations of a smoky haze rising from an unknown source, and gleamed with a dull radiance\u201d.<\/p>\n
15 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1939: Premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\nAn estimated 300,000 people lined the streets to watch the stars arrive at Loew\u2019s Grand Theater. Among the guests of honour was a group of Confederate veterans, whose appearance drew great roars of approval from the crowds. But although most of the Hollywood names turned up, one was missing. This was Hattie McDaniel, who later won an Academy Award for her performance as Mammy. Since McDaniel was black, state law prevented her from sitting alongside her white counterparts. Amid all the Civil War<\/a> nostalgia, here was a reminder of the enduring injustice at the heart of the old South.<\/p>\n16 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1773: Boston rebels dump tea into the sea<\/h4>\n ![\"Boston]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor December 16, 1773. (Photo by GettyImages)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIt was dark in Boston when the Tea Party<\/a> began. After years of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies, attention had become focused on the Tea Act of 1773, which reaffirmed the controversial tax on imported tea. At the end of November, the first tea ship, the Dartmouth<\/em>, had arrived in Boston, but local activists demanded that it return home without paying the import duty.<\/p>\nWith passions running high, the crowd was soon surging towards the harbour. That evening, dozens of men, some of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth<\/em> and two other tea ships, unloaded hundreds of chests of tea and dumped them into Boston harbour. It was an act of pure vandalism, and back in Britain, the authorities were appalled.<\/p>\n17 December<\/a><\/h2>\n497 BC: Romans celebrate the first Saturnalia<\/a><\/h4>\nSometimes described as the Roman inspiration for Christmas, the festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated on 17 December 497 BC, to mark the inauguration of Rome\u2019s new Temple of Saturn.<\/p>\n
18 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: Newspapers announce the discovery in Sussex of the skull and jaw of the \u2018Piltdown Man<\/a>\u2019<\/h4>\nIt was presented as the missing link between apes and humans but 40 years later the \u2018discovery\u2019 was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax.<\/p>\n
19 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: The Penlee lifeboat disaster<\/h4>\n
The RNLB Solomon Browne<\/em> went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star<\/em> after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.<\/p>\n20 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> is captured<\/h4>\n ![\"King]( "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> King Richard I in prison. (Photo by The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe men of Leopold, Duke of Austria, struck on 20 December.\u00a0Some versions of the story claim that Richard tried to evade capture by pretending to be a chef, even turning meat over a spit in the kitchen. But it was no good. Arrested and charged with grievously insulting the Austrian duke, Richard was taken to the castle of Du\u0308rnstein, perched high above the Danube, west of Vienna. There he remained before being moved to another castle in Germany. He was not released until February 1194, after his countrymen had paid an enormous ransom.<\/p>\n
21 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1910: A massive underground explosion at Lancashire\u2019s Hulton Colliery Number 3 Bank Pit<\/h4>\n
It was known locally as the Pretoria Pit, and killed 344 men and boys. It was the third worst mining disaster in British history.<\/p>\n
22 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1938: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of a small museum in East London, South Africa, discovers what turns out to be a coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years.<\/h4>\n23 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1815: Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Emma<\/em>, a novel about \u201ca heroine whom no one but myself will much like\u201d, is an instant hit<\/h4>\nEmma was published in three volumes, each set costing one guinea. It was an instant success. Sir Walter Scott thought Austen\u2019s characters were \u201cfinished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me entreat you to read Emma,\u201d the poet Thomas Moore told a friend, \u201cit is the very perfection of novel-writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Deaths in December<\/h2>\n2 December 1560<\/h6>\n
Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne<\/p>\n
3 December 311<\/h6>\n
Diocletian, Roman emperor<\/p>\n
4 December 1732<\/h6>\n
John Gay, poet and dramatist<\/p>\n
8 December 1691<\/h6>\n
Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader and theologian<\/p>\n
9 December 1641<\/h6>\n
Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish painter<\/p>\n
10 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux during the Bozeman War of 1866\u201368<\/p>\n
12 December 1889<\/h6>\n
Robert Browning, poet<\/p>\n
14 December 1861<\/h6>\n
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria<\/p>\n
14 December 1542<\/h6>\n
James V of Scotland\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 December 1683<\/h6>\n
Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler<\/em><\/p>\n17 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Simon Bolivar, who played a key role in Latin America\u2019s successful bid for independence from Spain<\/p>\n
19 December 1848<\/h6>\n
Emily Bront\u00eb, author of Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/p>\n22 December 1960<\/h6>\n
Sir John Ninian Comper, Scottish church architect<\/p>\n
26 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Frederic Remington, New York-born painter and sculptor<\/p>\n
27 December 1940<\/h6>\n
Jessie Margaret Saxby, Shetland writer and folklorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 December 1360<\/h6>\n
Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent<\/p>\n
28 December 1937<\/h6>\n
Maurice Ravel, French composer\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 December 1408<\/h6>\n
John Hawley, wine and wool merchant<\/p>\n
31 December 1877<\/h6>\n
Gustave Courbet, French realist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
24 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1818: An Austrian priest, Josef Mohr, unveils his new carol: \u2018Silent Night\u2019<\/h4>\n
As the worshippers trudged through the snow towards St Nicholas\u2019s Church that Christmas Eve, none knew that they were to witness the birth of a musical phenomenon. Today \u2018Silent Night\u2019 is probably the world\u2019s most familiar carol, having been translated into an estimated 300 languages and dialects. Its fame in the English-speaking world owes much to an American priest, John Freeman Young, who translated it for his New York parishioners in 1859 and later became bishop of Florida.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | Christmas carols: the history behind 9 festive favourites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet the carol we sing today is not quite the same as Mohr and Gruber\u2019s original. During its early days, it was faster and jauntier, a song to gee up the parishioners of a bruised, moribund little town \u2013 and a long way from the gentle ballad we know and love in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
25 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1223: The Christmas nativity<\/a> is born<\/h4>\nIn 1223, Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world\u2019s first nativity scene.<\/p>\n
Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he \u201cprepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed\u201d. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, \u201cthe brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis\u2019s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of \u201can Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger\u201d. From then on, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n
26 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1792: A brilliant defence fails to save Louis XVI from the guillotine<\/a><\/h4>\nFor two weeks, de S\u00e8ze, reputedly one of the finest lawyers in the country, had worked almost without a break.\u00a0Now, as he rose to address the National Assembly, he looked exhausted: in fact, he had not slept for four days. Still, even Louis\u2019 fiercest critics admitted that his lawyer gave a command performance. One by one de Se\u0300ze went through the prosecution\u2019s charges, ruthlessly dissecting their distortions and evasions.<\/p>\n
Then came a memorable peroration, praising the former king as the \u201cconstant friend of the people\u201d. \u201cCitizens,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI cannot finish\u2026 I stop myself before history. Think how it will judge your judgment, and that the judgment of him will be judged by the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it was Louis\u2019 turn. Pale and quiet, he was determined to avoid the example of England\u2019s Charles I<\/a>, whose defiance in 1649 had done him no favours. \u201cYou have heard my defence, I would not repeat the details,\u201d he said softly. \u201cIn talking to you perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\nAfterwards, on the journey back, the king seemed more anxious for the shattered de Se\u0300ze than for himself. A month later, Louis went to the guillotine.<\/p>\n
27 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1539: Anne of Cleves<\/a> lands in England, disembarking at Deal and moving on to Dover<\/h4>\nShe then travelled to Rochester where, on 1 January 1540, Henry VIII<\/a> visited her privately in disguise.<\/p>\n28 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1879: Tragedy strikes at the Tay Rail Bridge<\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n
![\"Agatha](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-3163089-1-d601f53-e1701347216381.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"English")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>On the evening of 3 December, Christie was at home in the Berkshire stockbroker belt. She went upstairs to kiss her seven-year-old daughter goodnight. Then she got into her Morris, started the engine \u2013 and disappeared.<\/p>\n
What followed was a media sensation. Amid a blizzard of headlines, the police mobilised a thousand officers to help with the search, while volunteers chartered aeroplanes to scour the countryside.<\/p>\n
The denouement was bizarre indeed. On 14 December Christie turned up in the elegant Swan Hydro Hotel in Harrogate under an assumed name. For days she had joined in with the hotel\u2019s bridge and dancing programme, and when she was finally recognised, she claimed to have lost her memory. The really weird thing, though, was that she had checked in under the name Theresa Neele. For as it turned out, her husband had been having an affair \u2013 with a woman whose surname was Neele.<\/p>\n
4 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1872: Sailors spot a mysterious ghost ship \u2013 the abandoned Mary Celeste<\/em><\/h4>\nAs Captain Morehouse and his mates\u00a0approached the stricken vessel, they realised that they knew her. She was an American merchant ship, barely a decade old. Only a few weeks earlier both ships had been in New York Harbor, and their captains vaguely knew one another. This was Captain Benjamin Briggs\u2019 ship, the Mary Celeste<\/em>. But where were the crew?<\/p>\nAs the two mates investigated, the mystery deepened. Contrary to myth, there were no untouched meals and no signs of a struggle. The sails were poorly set, some of the hatches were open and there was a little water in the hold, but the ship was otherwise in decent order. The captain\u2019s cabin was slightly messy, and his papers were missing. So, tellingly, was the lifeboat. But the galley was tidy, and there were plenty of supplies. Above all, there were no signs of a fight, no hints of fire or disaster \u2013 nothing, in short, that would explain the disappearance of the entire crew.<\/p>\n
5 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h4>\n
Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n
6 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1240: The Mongols<\/a> terrorise Kiev<\/h4>\nThe Mongols poured into the city, looting, raping and killing. Hundreds of Kiev\u2019s citizens fled inside the Church of the Virgin Mary. But so many stampeded up the stairs towards the dome that the structure collapsed beneath their weight. There was no escape from the slaughter.<\/p>\n
Six years later, a papal envoy passed the ruins of what had once been Kiev, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The people had been enslaved, only 200 houses still stood, and there were \u201ccountless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground\u201d. Kiev, he wrote, \u201chas been reduced almost to nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n Births in December<\/h2>\n3 December 1838<\/h6>\n
Octavia Hill, social reformer<\/p>\n
5 December 1661<\/h6>\n
Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford<\/p>\n
5 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Christina Georgina Rossetti, poet<\/p>\n
5 December 1859<\/h6>\n
Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, governor general of New Zealand<\/p>\n
6 December 1421<\/h6>\n
Henry, the only son and heir of Henry V of England<\/p>\n
7 December 1598<\/h6>\n
Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor and architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
7 December 1810<\/h6>\n
Theodor Schwann, physiologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
8 December 1542<\/h6>\n
Mary, Queen of Scots\u00a0<\/p>\n
9 December 1608<\/h6>\n
John Milton, poet<\/p>\n
10 December 1812<\/h6>\n
Paul Abadie, French architect\u00a0<\/p>\n
13 December 1871<\/h6>\n
Emily Carr, Canadian writer and expressionist painter<\/p>\n
14 December 1730<\/h6>\n
James Bruce, Scottish traveller and writer<\/p>\n
15 December 1832<\/h6>\n
Gustave Eiffel, engineer and tower designer<\/p>\n
15 December 1859<\/h6>\n
LL Zamenhof, inventor of the international language, Esperanto<\/p>\n
16 December 1882<\/h6>\n
Jack Hobbs, cricketer<\/p>\n
16 December 1717<\/h6>\n
Elizabeth Carter, writer and \u201cbluestocking\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
18 December 1619<\/h6>\n
Prince Rupert, the son of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth<\/p>\n
18 December 1707<\/h6>\n
Charles Wesley, hymn writer<\/p>\n
19 December 1910<\/h6>\n
Jean Genet, criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1642<\/h6>\n
Isaac Newton, English physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and theologian\u00a0<\/p>\n
25 December 1759<\/h6>\n
Richard Porson, English classical scholar\u00a0<\/p>\n
26 December 1887<\/h6>\n
Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in 1942<\/p>\n
29 December 1788<\/h6>\n
CJ Thomsen, Danish archaeologist\u00a0<\/p>\n
29 December 1809<\/h6>\n
William Ewart Gladstone, future prime minister\u00a0<\/p>\n
31 December 1908<\/h6>\n
Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter<\/p>\n
31 December 1912<\/h6>\n
John Frost, British soldier and paratrooper<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
7 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe clock had just ticked past five to eight in the morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Tension between Tokyo and Washington had been building for weeks. Even so, none of the American airmen and sailors at Pearl Harbor that day had any expectation that Japan would strike with such devastating speed<\/p>\n
Some 353 Japanese planes descended in two thick black waves on the Hawaiian naval base. What followed was hell on earth. More than 2,400 Americans were killed, almost 200 aircraft were destroyed, four battleships were sunk and another four were badly damaged. Just two hours after they had screamed out of the sky, the Japanese were gone. They left a scene of total devastation, black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the ships.<\/p>\n
8 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1980: Crazed fan murders John Lennon<\/a><\/h4>\nThat day was a Monday and, bizarrely, it was the ABC commentators on the evening\u2019s American football game who broke the news of Lennon\u2019s death. Within moments the news had spread around the globe: thousands of fans gathered outside the Dakota Building in New York, while millions mourned across the world. Six days after the murder, some 30,000 people paid tribute in Liverpool, while a further 225,000 gathered in New York.<\/p>\n
Mark Chapman, a college dropout who had been a big Beatles<\/a> fan before being \u2018born again\u2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has had eight parole hearings since 2000, none of which have been successful.<\/p>\n9 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1960: Coronation Street<\/em> hits TV sets<\/h4>\nFor British audiences, 9 December 1960 was a milestone in television history. At seven that evening, with more than 3m people staring at their sets, a brass band struck up a mournful tune, the grainy black and white picture showed a long street of terraced back-to-backs, and Coronation Street<\/em> began its record-breaking run as the nation\u2019s best-loved soap opera.<\/p>\n10 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1884: Huckleberry Finn<\/em> comes to Britain<\/h4>\n ![\"A]( "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> A vintage cover of Huckleberry Finn<\/em>. (Photo by Buyenlarge\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nAt the end of 1884, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> was finished, and was published in Britain on 10 December by Chatto & Windus \u2013 though American publication, oddly, had to wait a few more weeks.<\/p>\nAlas, not everybody liked it. In New England, one library committee called it \u201cthe veriest trash\u201d, adding that it was \u201cmore suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable, people\u201d. Twain thought that was hilarious. \u201cThis will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure!\u201d he wrote. And he was right.<\/p>\n
11 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1282: Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, the last prince of an independent Wales, is killed by the English in a minor skirmish while campaigning in the Builth region<\/h4>\n
His head was later sent for public display in London.<\/p>\n
12 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1870: Joseph H Rainey, a South Carolina Republican, becomes the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives<\/h4>\n13 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1577: Francis Drake sails from Plymouth on his world voyage<\/h4>\n14 December<\/a><\/h2>\nAD 557: The earth moves in Constantinople<\/h4>\n
It was at around midnight on 14 December 557 that Constantinople felt the first tremors. Its people were no strangers to earthquakes \u2013 there had been one just a matter of months earlier \u2013 but this seemed worse. As the Roman capital\u2019s buildings began to shake, \u201cshrieks and lamentations\u201d rose from the imperial city. After each tremor, recorded the historian Agathias, there came a \u201cdeep, growling sound like thunder issuing from the bowels of the earth\u201d, while the sky \u201cgrew dim with the vaporous exhalations of a smoky haze rising from an unknown source, and gleamed with a dull radiance\u201d.<\/p>\n
15 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1939: Premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\nAn estimated 300,000 people lined the streets to watch the stars arrive at Loew\u2019s Grand Theater. Among the guests of honour was a group of Confederate veterans, whose appearance drew great roars of approval from the crowds. But although most of the Hollywood names turned up, one was missing. This was Hattie McDaniel, who later won an Academy Award for her performance as Mammy. Since McDaniel was black, state law prevented her from sitting alongside her white counterparts. Amid all the Civil War<\/a> nostalgia, here was a reminder of the enduring injustice at the heart of the old South.<\/p>\n16 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1773: Boston rebels dump tea into the sea<\/h4>\n ![\"Boston]( "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Boston Tea Party destroying tea in Boston Harbor December 16, 1773. (Photo by GettyImages)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nIt was dark in Boston when the Tea Party<\/a> began. After years of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies, attention had become focused on the Tea Act of 1773, which reaffirmed the controversial tax on imported tea. At the end of November, the first tea ship, the Dartmouth<\/em>, had arrived in Boston, but local activists demanded that it return home without paying the import duty.<\/p>\nWith passions running high, the crowd was soon surging towards the harbour. That evening, dozens of men, some of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth<\/em> and two other tea ships, unloaded hundreds of chests of tea and dumped them into Boston harbour. It was an act of pure vandalism, and back in Britain, the authorities were appalled.<\/p>\n17 December<\/a><\/h2>\n497 BC: Romans celebrate the first Saturnalia<\/a><\/h4>\nSometimes described as the Roman inspiration for Christmas, the festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated on 17 December 497 BC, to mark the inauguration of Rome\u2019s new Temple of Saturn.<\/p>\n
18 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1912: Newspapers announce the discovery in Sussex of the skull and jaw of the \u2018Piltdown Man<\/a>\u2019<\/h4>\nIt was presented as the missing link between apes and humans but 40 years later the \u2018discovery\u2019 was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax.<\/p>\n
19 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1981: The Penlee lifeboat disaster<\/h4>\n
The RNLB Solomon Browne<\/em> went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star<\/em> after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.<\/p>\n20 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1192: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> is captured<\/h4>\n ![\"King]( "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> King Richard I in prison. (Photo by The Print Collector\/Print Collector\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\nThe men of Leopold, Duke of Austria, struck on 20 December.\u00a0Some versions of the story claim that Richard tried to evade capture by pretending to be a chef, even turning meat over a spit in the kitchen. But it was no good. Arrested and charged with grievously insulting the Austrian duke, Richard was taken to the castle of Du\u0308rnstein, perched high above the Danube, west of Vienna. There he remained before being moved to another castle in Germany. He was not released until February 1194, after his countrymen had paid an enormous ransom.<\/p>\n
21 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1910: A massive underground explosion at Lancashire\u2019s Hulton Colliery Number 3 Bank Pit<\/h4>\n
It was known locally as the Pretoria Pit, and killed 344 men and boys. It was the third worst mining disaster in British history.<\/p>\n
22 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1938: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of a small museum in East London, South Africa, discovers what turns out to be a coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years.<\/h4>\n23 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1815: Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Emma<\/em>, a novel about \u201ca heroine whom no one but myself will much like\u201d, is an instant hit<\/h4>\nEmma was published in three volumes, each set costing one guinea. It was an instant success. Sir Walter Scott thought Austen\u2019s characters were \u201cfinished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cLet me entreat you to read Emma,\u201d the poet Thomas Moore told a friend, \u201cit is the very perfection of novel-writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Deaths in December<\/h2>\n2 December 1560<\/h6>\n
Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne<\/p>\n
3 December 311<\/h6>\n
Diocletian, Roman emperor<\/p>\n
4 December 1732<\/h6>\n
John Gay, poet and dramatist<\/p>\n
8 December 1691<\/h6>\n
Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader and theologian<\/p>\n
9 December 1641<\/h6>\n
Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish painter<\/p>\n
10 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux during the Bozeman War of 1866\u201368<\/p>\n
12 December 1889<\/h6>\n
Robert Browning, poet<\/p>\n
14 December 1861<\/h6>\n
Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria<\/p>\n
14 December 1542<\/h6>\n
James V of Scotland\u00a0<\/p>\n
15 December 1683<\/h6>\n
Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler<\/em><\/p>\n17 December 1830<\/h6>\n
Simon Bolivar, who played a key role in Latin America\u2019s successful bid for independence from Spain<\/p>\n
19 December 1848<\/h6>\n
Emily Bront\u00eb, author of Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/p>\n22 December 1960<\/h6>\n
Sir John Ninian Comper, Scottish church architect<\/p>\n
26 December 1909<\/h6>\n
Frederic Remington, New York-born painter and sculptor<\/p>\n
27 December 1940<\/h6>\n
Jessie Margaret Saxby, Shetland writer and folklorist\u00a0<\/p>\n
28 December 1360<\/h6>\n
Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent<\/p>\n
28 December 1937<\/h6>\n
Maurice Ravel, French composer\u00a0<\/p>\n
30 December 1408<\/h6>\n
John Hawley, wine and wool merchant<\/p>\n
31 December 1877<\/h6>\n
Gustave Courbet, French realist painter<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div> <\/section>
24 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1818: An Austrian priest, Josef Mohr, unveils his new carol: \u2018Silent Night\u2019<\/h4>\n
As the worshippers trudged through the snow towards St Nicholas\u2019s Church that Christmas Eve, none knew that they were to witness the birth of a musical phenomenon. Today \u2018Silent Night\u2019 is probably the world\u2019s most familiar carol, having been translated into an estimated 300 languages and dialects. Its fame in the English-speaking world owes much to an American priest, John Freeman Young, who translated it for his New York parishioners in 1859 and later became bishop of Florida.<\/p>\n
\n- Read more | Christmas carols: the history behind 9 festive favourites<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Yet the carol we sing today is not quite the same as Mohr and Gruber\u2019s original. During its early days, it was faster and jauntier, a song to gee up the parishioners of a bruised, moribund little town \u2013 and a long way from the gentle ballad we know and love in the 21st century.<\/p>\n
25 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1223: The Christmas nativity<\/a> is born<\/h4>\nIn 1223, Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world\u2019s first nativity scene.<\/p>\n
Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he \u201cprepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed\u201d. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, \u201cthe brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise\u201d.<\/p>\n
The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis\u2019s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of \u201can Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger\u201d. From then on, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n
26 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1792: A brilliant defence fails to save Louis XVI from the guillotine<\/a><\/h4>\nFor two weeks, de S\u00e8ze, reputedly one of the finest lawyers in the country, had worked almost without a break.\u00a0Now, as he rose to address the National Assembly, he looked exhausted: in fact, he had not slept for four days. Still, even Louis\u2019 fiercest critics admitted that his lawyer gave a command performance. One by one de Se\u0300ze went through the prosecution\u2019s charges, ruthlessly dissecting their distortions and evasions.<\/p>\n
Then came a memorable peroration, praising the former king as the \u201cconstant friend of the people\u201d. \u201cCitizens,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI cannot finish\u2026 I stop myself before history. Think how it will judge your judgment, and that the judgment of him will be judged by the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then it was Louis\u2019 turn. Pale and quiet, he was determined to avoid the example of England\u2019s Charles I<\/a>, whose defiance in 1649 had done him no favours. \u201cYou have heard my defence, I would not repeat the details,\u201d he said softly. \u201cIn talking to you perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\nAfterwards, on the journey back, the king seemed more anxious for the shattered de Se\u0300ze than for himself. A month later, Louis went to the guillotine.<\/p>\n
27 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1539: Anne of Cleves<\/a> lands in England, disembarking at Deal and moving on to Dover<\/h4>\nShe then travelled to Rochester where, on 1 January 1540, Henry VIII<\/a> visited her privately in disguise.<\/p>\n28 December<\/a><\/h2>\n1879: Tragedy strikes at the Tay Rail Bridge<\/h4>\n ![\"Smoke]( "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div> Thick smoke billows up from stricken American warships along battleship row during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (Photo by US Navy\/Interim Archives\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n
As Captain Morehouse and his mates\u00a0approached the stricken vessel, they realised that they knew her. She was an American merchant ship, barely a decade old. Only a few weeks earlier both ships had been in New York Harbor, and their captains vaguely knew one another. This was Captain Benjamin Briggs\u2019 ship, the Mary Celeste<\/em>. But where were the crew?<\/p>\n As the two mates investigated, the mystery deepened. Contrary to myth, there were no untouched meals and no signs of a struggle. The sails were poorly set, some of the hatches were open and there was a little water in the hold, but the ship was otherwise in decent order. The captain\u2019s cabin was slightly messy, and his papers were missing. So, tellingly, was the lifeboat. But the galley was tidy, and there were plenty of supplies. Above all, there were no signs of a fight, no hints of fire or disaster \u2013 nothing, in short, that would explain the disappearance of the entire crew.<\/p>\n Two days later, Mozart was buried in a pauper\u2019s grave. The gale howled, and all day, rain hammered down in the sepulchral darkness. The heavens themselves were weeping \u2013 or were they? Actually, contemporary accounts suggest it was a mild, misty day, with only a moderate wind. Even the pauper\u2019s grave is a fiction. Mozart was buried in an ordinary unmarked grave, like the overwhelming majority of middle-class Viennese.<\/p>\n The Mongols poured into the city, looting, raping and killing. Hundreds of Kiev\u2019s citizens fled inside the Church of the Virgin Mary. But so many stampeded up the stairs towards the dome that the structure collapsed beneath their weight. There was no escape from the slaughter.<\/p>\n Six years later, a papal envoy passed the ruins of what had once been Kiev, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland. The people had been enslaved, only 200 houses still stood, and there were \u201ccountless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground\u201d. Kiev, he wrote, \u201chas been reduced almost to nothing\u201d.<\/p>\n Octavia Hill, social reformer<\/p>\n Robert Harley, 1st Earl of Oxford<\/p>\n Christina Georgina Rossetti, poet<\/p>\n Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, governor general of New Zealand<\/p>\n Henry, the only son and heir of Henry V of England<\/p>\n Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Baroque sculptor and architect\u00a0<\/p>\n Theodor Schwann, physiologist\u00a0<\/p>\n Mary, Queen of Scots\u00a0<\/p>\n John Milton, poet<\/p>\n Paul Abadie, French architect\u00a0<\/p>\n Emily Carr, Canadian writer and expressionist painter<\/p>\n James Bruce, Scottish traveller and writer<\/p>\n Gustave Eiffel, engineer and tower designer<\/p>\n LL Zamenhof, inventor of the international language, Esperanto<\/p>\n Jack Hobbs, cricketer<\/p>\n Elizabeth Carter, writer and \u201cbluestocking\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Prince Rupert, the son of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth<\/p>\n Charles Wesley, hymn writer<\/p>\n Jean Genet, criminal turned novelist, poet and playwright\u00a0<\/p>\n Isaac Newton, English physicist, astronomer, mathematician, philosopher and theologian\u00a0<\/p>\n Richard Porson, English classical scholar\u00a0<\/p>\n Arthur Percival, who surrendered Singapore to the Japanese in 1942<\/p>\n CJ Thomsen, Danish archaeologist\u00a0<\/p>\n William Ewart Gladstone, future prime minister\u00a0<\/p>\n Simon Wiesenthal, Nazi hunter<\/p>\n John Frost, British soldier and paratrooper<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> The clock had just ticked past five to eight in the morning when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Tension between Tokyo and Washington had been building for weeks. Even so, none of the American airmen and sailors at Pearl Harbor that day had any expectation that Japan would strike with such devastating speed<\/p>\n Some 353 Japanese planes descended in two thick black waves on the Hawaiian naval base. What followed was hell on earth. More than 2,400 Americans were killed, almost 200 aircraft were destroyed, four battleships were sunk and another four were badly damaged. Just two hours after they had screamed out of the sky, the Japanese were gone. They left a scene of total devastation, black smoke pouring from the wreckage of the ships.<\/p>\n That day was a Monday and, bizarrely, it was the ABC commentators on the evening\u2019s American football game who broke the news of Lennon\u2019s death. Within moments the news had spread around the globe: thousands of fans gathered outside the Dakota Building in New York, while millions mourned across the world. Six days after the murder, some 30,000 people paid tribute in Liverpool, while a further 225,000 gathered in New York.<\/p>\n Mark Chapman, a college dropout who had been a big Beatles<\/a> fan before being \u2018born again\u2019, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He has had eight parole hearings since 2000, none of which have been successful.<\/p>\n For British audiences, 9 December 1960 was a milestone in television history. At seven that evening, with more than 3m people staring at their sets, a brass band struck up a mournful tune, the grainy black and white picture showed a long street of terraced back-to-backs, and Coronation Street<\/em> began its record-breaking run as the nation\u2019s best-loved soap opera.<\/p>\n At the end of 1884, the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn<\/em> was finished, and was published in Britain on 10 December by Chatto & Windus \u2013 though American publication, oddly, had to wait a few more weeks.<\/p>\n Alas, not everybody liked it. In New England, one library committee called it \u201cthe veriest trash\u201d, adding that it was \u201cmore suited to the slums than to intelligent, respectable, people\u201d. Twain thought that was hilarious. \u201cThis will sell us another 25,000 copies for sure!\u201d he wrote. And he was right.<\/p>\n His head was later sent for public display in London.<\/p>\n It was at around midnight on 14 December 557 that Constantinople felt the first tremors. Its people were no strangers to earthquakes \u2013 there had been one just a matter of months earlier \u2013 but this seemed worse. As the Roman capital\u2019s buildings began to shake, \u201cshrieks and lamentations\u201d rose from the imperial city. After each tremor, recorded the historian Agathias, there came a \u201cdeep, growling sound like thunder issuing from the bowels of the earth\u201d, while the sky \u201cgrew dim with the vaporous exhalations of a smoky haze rising from an unknown source, and gleamed with a dull radiance\u201d.<\/p>\n An estimated 300,000 people lined the streets to watch the stars arrive at Loew\u2019s Grand Theater. Among the guests of honour was a group of Confederate veterans, whose appearance drew great roars of approval from the crowds. But although most of the Hollywood names turned up, one was missing. This was Hattie McDaniel, who later won an Academy Award for her performance as Mammy. Since McDaniel was black, state law prevented her from sitting alongside her white counterparts. Amid all the Civil War<\/a> nostalgia, here was a reminder of the enduring injustice at the heart of the old South.<\/p>\n It was dark in Boston when the Tea Party<\/a> began. After years of rising tension between Britain and its American colonies, attention had become focused on the Tea Act of 1773, which reaffirmed the controversial tax on imported tea. At the end of November, the first tea ship, the Dartmouth<\/em>, had arrived in Boston, but local activists demanded that it return home without paying the import duty.<\/p>\n With passions running high, the crowd was soon surging towards the harbour. That evening, dozens of men, some of them disguised as Native Americans, boarded the Dartmouth<\/em> and two other tea ships, unloaded hundreds of chests of tea and dumped them into Boston harbour. It was an act of pure vandalism, and back in Britain, the authorities were appalled.<\/p>\n Sometimes described as the Roman inspiration for Christmas, the festival of Saturnalia was first celebrated on 17 December 497 BC, to mark the inauguration of Rome\u2019s new Temple of Saturn.<\/p>\n It was presented as the missing link between apes and humans but 40 years later the \u2018discovery\u2019 was revealed to have been an elaborate hoax.<\/p>\n The RNLB Solomon Browne<\/em> went to the aid of the coaster MV Union Star<\/em> after its engines failed in heavy seas off the Cornish coast. Both vessels were lost and 16 people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.<\/p>\n The men of Leopold, Duke of Austria, struck on 20 December.\u00a0Some versions of the story claim that Richard tried to evade capture by pretending to be a chef, even turning meat over a spit in the kitchen. But it was no good. Arrested and charged with grievously insulting the Austrian duke, Richard was taken to the castle of Du\u0308rnstein, perched high above the Danube, west of Vienna. There he remained before being moved to another castle in Germany. He was not released until February 1194, after his countrymen had paid an enormous ransom.<\/p>\n It was known locally as the Pretoria Pit, and killed 344 men and boys. It was the third worst mining disaster in British history.<\/p>\n Emma was published in three volumes, each set costing one guinea. It was an instant success. Sir Walter Scott thought Austen\u2019s characters were \u201cfinished up to nature, and with a precision which delights the reader\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cLet me entreat you to read Emma,\u201d the poet Thomas Moore told a friend, \u201cit is the very perfection of novel-writing.\u201d<\/p>\n Charles de Marillac, Archbishop of Vienne<\/p>\n Diocletian, Roman emperor<\/p>\n John Gay, poet and dramatist<\/p>\n Richard Baxter, English Puritan church leader and theologian<\/p>\n Sir Anthony Van Dyck, Flemish painter<\/p>\n Red Cloud, leader of the Oglala Lakota Sioux during the Bozeman War of 1866\u201368<\/p>\n Robert Browning, poet<\/p>\n Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria<\/p>\n James V of Scotland\u00a0<\/p>\n Izaak Walton, author of The Compleat Angler<\/em><\/p>\n Simon Bolivar, who played a key role in Latin America\u2019s successful bid for independence from Spain<\/p>\n Emily Bront\u00eb, author of Wuthering Heights<\/em><\/p>\n Sir John Ninian Comper, Scottish church architect<\/p>\n Frederic Remington, New York-born painter and sculptor<\/p>\n Jessie Margaret Saxby, Shetland writer and folklorist\u00a0<\/p>\n Thomas Holland, Earl of Kent<\/p>\n Maurice Ravel, French composer\u00a0<\/p>\n John Hawley, wine and wool merchant<\/p>\n Gustave Courbet, French realist painter<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> As the worshippers trudged through the snow towards St Nicholas\u2019s Church that Christmas Eve, none knew that they were to witness the birth of a musical phenomenon. Today \u2018Silent Night\u2019 is probably the world\u2019s most familiar carol, having been translated into an estimated 300 languages and dialects. Its fame in the English-speaking world owes much to an American priest, John Freeman Young, who translated it for his New York parishioners in 1859 and later became bishop of Florida.<\/p>\n Yet the carol we sing today is not quite the same as Mohr and Gruber\u2019s original. During its early days, it was faster and jauntier, a song to gee up the parishioners of a bruised, moribund little town \u2013 and a long way from the gentle ballad we know and love in the 21st century.<\/p>\n In 1223, Greccio, in the Apennines in central Italy, welcomed one of the best-known men in the medieval world: Francis of Assisi, Catholic friar and founder of the Franciscan order. And it was Francis who decided that Greccio should put on the world\u2019s first nativity scene.<\/p>\n Francis had been to the Holy Land a few years earlier, and may well have been inspired by the sites associated with the Gospels. According to St Bonaventure, he \u201cprepared a manger, and brought hay, and an ox and an ass to the place appointed\u201d. Then, as midnight approached on Christmas Eve, \u201cthe brethren were summoned, the people ran together, the forest resounded with their voices, and that venerable night was made glorious by many and brilliant lights and sonorous psalms of praise\u201d.<\/p>\n The nativity scene was a huge hit. One man, a former soldier who had become one of Francis\u2019s closest companions, even claimed to have seen a vision of \u201can Infant marvellously beautiful, sleeping in the manger\u201d. From then on, there was no looking back.<\/p>\n For two weeks, de S\u00e8ze, reputedly one of the finest lawyers in the country, had worked almost without a break.\u00a0Now, as he rose to address the National Assembly, he looked exhausted: in fact, he had not slept for four days. Still, even Louis\u2019 fiercest critics admitted that his lawyer gave a command performance. One by one de Se\u0300ze went through the prosecution\u2019s charges, ruthlessly dissecting their distortions and evasions.<\/p>\n Then came a memorable peroration, praising the former king as the \u201cconstant friend of the people\u201d. \u201cCitizens,\u201d he concluded, \u201cI cannot finish\u2026 I stop myself before history. Think how it will judge your judgment, and that the judgment of him will be judged by the centuries.\u201d<\/p>\n Then it was Louis\u2019 turn. Pale and quiet, he was determined to avoid the example of England\u2019s Charles I<\/a>, whose defiance in 1649 had done him no favours. \u201cYou have heard my defence, I would not repeat the details,\u201d he said softly. \u201cIn talking to you perhaps for the last time, I declare that my conscience reproaches me with nothing, and that my defenders have told you the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n Afterwards, on the journey back, the king seemed more anxious for the shattered de Se\u0300ze than for himself. A month later, Louis went to the guillotine.<\/p>\n She then travelled to Rochester where, on 1 January 1540, Henry VIII<\/a> visited her privately in disguise.<\/p>\n5 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1791: Composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart meets an untimely end<\/h4>\n
6 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1240: The Mongols<\/a> terrorise Kiev<\/h4>\n
Births in December<\/h2>\n
3 December 1838<\/h6>\n
5 December 1661<\/h6>\n
5 December 1830<\/h6>\n
5 December 1859<\/h6>\n
6 December 1421<\/h6>\n
7 December 1598<\/h6>\n
7 December 1810<\/h6>\n
8 December 1542<\/h6>\n
9 December 1608<\/h6>\n
10 December 1812<\/h6>\n
13 December 1871<\/h6>\n
14 December 1730<\/h6>\n
15 December 1832<\/h6>\n
15 December 1859<\/h6>\n
16 December 1882<\/h6>\n
16 December 1717<\/h6>\n
18 December 1619<\/h6>\n
18 December 1707<\/h6>\n
19 December 1910<\/h6>\n
25 December 1642<\/h6>\n
25 December 1759<\/h6>\n
26 December 1887<\/h6>\n
29 December 1788<\/h6>\n
29 December 1809<\/h6>\n
31 December 1908<\/h6>\n
31 December 1912<\/h6>\n
7 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1941: Japanese planes bomb Pearl Harbor<\/a><\/h4>\n
![\"Smoke](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-543495249-f75f0ab-e1701347275704.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"Smoke")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>8 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1980: Crazed fan murders John Lennon<\/a><\/h4>\n
9 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1960: Coronation Street<\/em> hits TV sets<\/h4>\n
10 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1884: Huckleberry Finn<\/em> comes to Britain<\/h4>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-90017646-7ce4027-e1701347536349.jpg?quality=90&resize=620%2C412\" "\\"A")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>11 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1282: Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, the last prince of an independent Wales, is killed by the English in a minor skirmish while campaigning in the Builth region<\/h4>\n
12 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1870: Joseph H Rainey, a South Carolina Republican, becomes the first African-American to serve in the United States House of Representatives<\/h4>\n
13 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1577: Francis Drake sails from Plymouth on his world voyage<\/h4>\n
14 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
AD 557: The earth moves in Constantinople<\/h4>\n
15 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1939: Premiere of Gone with the Wind<\/em><\/a><\/h4>\n
16 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1773: Boston rebels dump tea into the sea<\/h4>\n
![\"Boston](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-514890446-e3bb953-e1701347191639.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"Illustration")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>17 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
497 BC: Romans celebrate the first Saturnalia<\/a><\/h4>\n
18 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1912: Newspapers announce the discovery in Sussex of the skull and jaw of the \u2018Piltdown Man<\/a>\u2019<\/h4>\n
19 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1981: The Penlee lifeboat disaster<\/h4>\n
20 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1192: Richard the Lionheart<\/a> is captured<\/h4>\n
![\"King](\"https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2023\/12\/GettyImages-463952667-1c957ea-e1701347136372.jpg?quality=90&resize=619%2C413\" "\\"King")
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>21 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1910: A massive underground explosion at Lancashire\u2019s Hulton Colliery Number 3 Bank Pit<\/h4>\n
22 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1938: Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, curator of a small museum in East London, South Africa, discovers what turns out to be a coelacanth, a fish believed to have been extinct for millions of years.<\/h4>\n
23 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1815: Jane Austen<\/a>\u2019s Emma<\/em>, a novel about \u201ca heroine whom no one but myself will much like\u201d, is an instant hit<\/h4>\n
Deaths in December<\/h2>\n
2 December 1560<\/h6>\n
3 December 311<\/h6>\n
4 December 1732<\/h6>\n
8 December 1691<\/h6>\n
9 December 1641<\/h6>\n
10 December 1909<\/h6>\n
12 December 1889<\/h6>\n
14 December 1861<\/h6>\n
14 December 1542<\/h6>\n
15 December 1683<\/h6>\n
17 December 1830<\/h6>\n
19 December 1848<\/h6>\n
22 December 1960<\/h6>\n
26 December 1909<\/h6>\n
27 December 1940<\/h6>\n
28 December 1360<\/h6>\n
28 December 1937<\/h6>\n
30 December 1408<\/h6>\n
31 December 1877<\/h6>\n
24 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1818: An Austrian priest, Josef Mohr, unveils his new carol: \u2018Silent Night\u2019<\/h4>\n
\n
25 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1223: The Christmas nativity<\/a> is born<\/h4>\n
26 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1792: A brilliant defence fails to save Louis XVI from the guillotine<\/a><\/h4>\n
27 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1539: Anne of Cleves<\/a> lands in England, disembarking at Deal and moving on to Dover<\/h4>\n
28 December<\/a><\/h2>\n
1879: Tragedy strikes at the Tay Rail Bridge<\/h4>\n
\n<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture>\n<\/div>