December
31
Events
December 31
406 – Vandals,
Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of
Gaul.
535 – Byzantine General Belisarius completes the conquest of
Sicily, defeating the Ostrogothic garrison of Syracuse, and
ending his consulship for the year.
1225 – The Lý Dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the
enthronement of the boy emperor Tran Thai Tong, husband of the
last Ly monarch, Ly Chieu Hoang, starting the Trần Dynasty.
1229 – James I of Aragon the Conqueror enters Medina Mayurqa
(now known as Palma, Spain) thus consummating the Christian
reconquest of the island of Majorca.
1600 – The British East India Company is chartered.
1660 – James II of England is named Duke of Normandy by Louis
XIV of France.
1687 – The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape
of Good Hope.
1695 – A window tax is imposed in England, causing many householders
to brick up windows to avoid the tax.
1759 – Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000 year lease at £45 per annum
and starts brewing Guinness.
1775 – American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British
forces repulse an attack by Continental Army General Richard
Montgomery.
1790 – Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues
have survived till today is published for the first time.
1831 – Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.
1853 – A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an
Iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard
Owen in south London, England
1857 – Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town,
as the capital of Canada.
1862 – American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that
admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in
two.
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Stones River begins
near Murfreesboro, Tennessee.
1878 – Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, filed for a
patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine, and he was
granted the patent for it in 1879.
1879 – Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the
public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1906 – Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution
of 1906.
1907 – The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times
Square (then known as Longacre Square) in New York, New York.
1909 – Manhattan Bridge opens.
1923 – The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on radio for the
first time by the BBC.
1944 – World War II: Hungary declares war on Nazi Germany.
1946 – President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end
of hostilities in World War II.
1951 – The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than
US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
1955 – The General Motors Corporation becomes the first U.S.
corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.
1960 – The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United
Kingdom.
1961 – RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first
national television service.
1963 – The Central African Federation officially collapses and
splits into Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.
1965 – Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic
army, and his military officers begins a coup d'état against
the government of President David Dacko.
1967 – The Youth International Party, popularly known as the
"Yippies", is founded.
1981 – A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's
PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National
Defence Council led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.
1983 – The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States
Government.
1983 – In Nigeria a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu
Buhari ends the Nigerian Second Republic.
1986 – A fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, kills 97 and injures 140.
1991 – All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations
by this date and the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.
1992 – Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed
by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of
the Czech Republic and Slovakia.
1994 – This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix
Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to
UTC+13:00 and UTC-10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively.
1994 – The First Chechen War: Russian army began a New Year's
storm of Grozny
1998– The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values
of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the
value of the euro currency.
1999 – Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia, resigns
as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
as the acting President.
1999 – Five hijackers, who had been holding 155 hostages on
an Indian Airlines plane, leave the plane with two Islamic clerics
that they had demanded be freed.
1999 – The United States Government hands control of the Panama
Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the
Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing
of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.
2004 – The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper
at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres
(1,670 ft).
Holidays
and observances
Christian
Feast Day:
Pope Sylvester I (Roman Catholic Church)
International Solidarity Day (Azerbaijan)
New Year's Eve (International observances), and its related
observances:
Last Day of the Year or Bisperás ng Bagong Taón, special holiday
between Rizal Day and New Year's Day (The Philippines)
The first day of Hogmanay or "Auld Year’s Night" (Scotland)
The seventh day of Christmas (Western Christianity)
For details, contact Datacentre
|