Today In History – This Day In History Funny Events

Publius Septimius Geta was Roman emperor with his father Septimius Severus and older brother Caracalla from 209 to 211. Severus died in February 211 and intended for his sons to rule together, but they proved incapable of sharing power, culminating with the murder of Geta in December of that year.

Publius Septimius Geta, co-emperor of Rome, is lured to come without his bodyguards to meet his brother Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla), to discuss a possible reconciliation. When he arrives, the Praetorian Guard murders him and he dies in the arms of his mother, Julia Domna.

Henry II, also known as Henry Fitzempress and Henry Curtmantle, was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. During his reign he controlled England, substantial parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France, an area that altogether was later called the Angevin Empire, and also held power over Scotland and the Duchy of Brittany.

Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

Pope Clement III, was the head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 December 1187 to his death in 1191. He ended the conflict between the Papacy and the city of Rome, by allowing the election of magistrates, which reinstalled the Papacy back in the city after a six year exile. Clement, faced with a deplete college of cardinals, created thirty-one cardinals over three years, the most since Hadrian IV. He died 20 March 1191 and was quickly replaced by Celestine III.

Pope Clement III is elected.

Anne of Brittany was reigning Duchess of Brittany from 1488 until her death, and Queen of France from 1491 to 1498 and from 1499 to her death. She was the only woman to have been queen consort of France twice. During the Italian Wars, Anne also became Queen of Naples, from 1501 to 1504, and Duchess of Milan, in 1499–1500 and from 1500 to 1512.

Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor by proxy.

The Battle of Dreux was fought on 19 December 1562 between Catholics and Huguenots. The Catholics were led by Anne de Montmorency while Louis I, Prince of Condé, led the Huguenots. Though commanders from both sides were captured, the French Catholics won the battle which would constitute the first major engagement of the French Wars of Religion and the only major engagement of the first French War of Religion.

The Battle of Dreux takes place during the French Wars of Religion.

Susan Constant was the largest of three ships of the English Virginia Company on the 1606–1607 voyage that resulted in the founding of Jamestown in the new Colony of Virginia. Captained by Christopher Newport, she was joined by the Discovery and Godspeed.

The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who founded, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

The Great Swamp Massacre or the Great Swamp Fight was a crucial battle fought during King Philip's War between the colonial militia of New England and the Narragansett people in December 1675. It was fought near the villages of Kingston and West Kingston in the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. The combined force of the New England militia included 150 Pequots, and they inflicted a huge number of Narragansett casualties, including many hundreds of women and children. The battle has been described by historians as "one of the most brutal and lopsided military encounters in all of New England's history."

The Great Swamp Fight, a pivotal battle in King Philip's War, gives the English settlers a bitterly won victory.

Thomas Paine was an English-born American Founding Father, French Revolutionary, inventor, and political philosopher. He authored Common Sense (1776) and The American Crisis (1776–1783), two of the most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution, and he helped to inspire the colonial era patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. His ideas reflected Enlightenment-era ideals of human rights.

Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled "The American Crisis".

The American Revolutionary War, also known as the Revolutionary War or American War of Independence, was an armed conflict that was part of the broader American Revolution, in which American Patriot forces organized as the Continental Army and commanded by George Washington defeated the British Army. The conflict was fought in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris (1783), which resulted in Great Britain ultimately recognizing the independence of the United States of America.

American Revolutionary War: George Washington's Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

The French Revolutionary Wars were a series of sweeping military conflicts resulting from the French Revolution that lasted from 1792 until 1802. They pitted France against Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other countries. The wars are divided into two periods: the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) and the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802). Initially confined to Europe, the fighting gradually assumed a global dimension. After a decade of constant warfare and aggressive diplomacy, France had conquered territories in the Italian Peninsula, the Low Countries, and the Rhineland due to its very large and powerful military, which had been totally mobilized for war against most of Europe with mass conscription of the vast French population. French success in these conflicts ensured military occupation and the spread of revolutionary principles over much of Europe.

French Revolutionary Wars: Two British frigates under Commodore Horatio Nelson and two Spanish frigates under Commodore Don Jacobo Stuart engage in battle off the coast of Murcia.

The nullification crisis was a sectional political crisis in the United States in 1832 and 1833, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. However, courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification by states.

Nullification Crisis: Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun pens the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

The Hopetoun Blunder was a political event immediately prior to the Federation of the British colonies in Australia.

Hopetoun Blunder: The first Governor-General of Australia John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, appoints Sir William Lyne premier of the new state of New South Wales, but he is unable to persuade other colonial politicians to join his government and is forced to resign.

The Darr Mine disaster at Van Meter, Rostraver Township, Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, near Smithton, killed 239 men and boys on December 19, 1907. It ranks as the worst coal mining disaster in Pennsylvanian history. Many victims were of immigrants from central Europe, including Rusyns, Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Poles and Italians.

Two hundred thirty-nine coal miners die in the Darr Mine Disaster in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. The term steamboat is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels working on lakes, rivers, and in short-sea shipping. The development of the steamboat led to the larger steamship, which is a seaworthy and often ocean-going ship.

William Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over one thousand people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

Constantine I was King of Greece from 18 March 1913 to 11 June 1917 and from 19 December 1920 to 27 September 1922. He was commander-in-chief of the Hellenic Army during the unsuccessful Greco-Turkish War of 1897 and led the Greek forces during the successful Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, in which Greece expanded to include Thessaloniki, doubling in area and population. The eldest son of George I of Greece, he succeeded to the throne following his father's assassination in 1913.

King Constantine I is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son Alexander of Greece and a plebiscite.

The Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost name refers both to a car model and one specific car from that series. Originally named the "40/50 h.p." the chassis was first made at Royce's Manchester works, with production moving to Derby in July 1908, and also, between 1921 and 1926, in Springfield, Massachusetts, USA. Chassis no. 60551, registered AX 201, was the car that was originally given the name "Silver Ghost". Other 40/50 hp cars were also given names, but the Silver Ghost title was taken up by the press, and soon all 40/50s were called by the name, a fact not officially recognised by Rolls-Royce until 1925, when the Phantom range was launched.

The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

Ram Prasad Bismil was an Indian poet, writer, and revolutionary who fought against British Raj, participating in the Mainpuri Conspiracy of 1918, and the Kakori Conspiracy of 1925. He composed in Urdu and Hindi under pen names Ram, Agyat and Bismil, becoming widely known under the latter. He was also a translator.

Three Indian revolutionaries, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Ashfaqulla Khan, are executed by the British Empire.

The BBC World Service is an international broadcaster owned and operated by the BBC. It is the world's largest external broadcaster in terms of reception area, language selection and audience reach. It broadcasts radio news, speech and discussions in more than 40 languages to many parts of the world on analogue and digital shortwave platforms, internet streaming, podcasting, satellite, DAB, FM, LW and MW relays. In 2024, the World Service reached an average of 450 million people a week. In November 2016, the BBC announced that it would start broadcasting in additional languages including Amharic and Igbo, in its biggest expansion since the 1940s.

BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.

World War II or the Second World War was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all the world's countries—including all the great powers—participated, with many investing all available economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities in pursuit of total war, blurring the distinction between military and civilian resources. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, with the latter enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, resulting in 70 to 85 million deaths, more than half being civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust of European Jews, as well as from massacres, starvation, and disease. Following the Allied powers' victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and war crimes tribunals were conducted against German and Japanese leaders.

World War II: Adolf Hitler appoints himself as head of the Oberkommando des Heeres.

A limpet mine is a type of naval mine attached to a target by magnets. It is so named because of its superficial similarity to the shape of the limpet, a type of sea snail that clings tightly to rocks or other hard surfaces.

World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers heavily damage the HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth in Alexandria harbour.

John Amery was a British fascist and Nazi collaborator during World War II. He was the originator of the British Free Corps, a volunteer Waffen-SS unit composed of former British and Dominion prisoners of war.

John Amery, British Fascist, at the age of 33 executed by the British Government for treason.

The First Indochina War was fought between France and Việt Minh, and their respective allies, from 19 December 1946 until 21 July 1954. Việt Minh was led by Võ Nguyên Giáp and Hồ Chí Minh. Most of the fighting took place in Tonkin in Northern Vietnam, although the conflict engulfed the entire country and also extended into the neighboring French Indochina protectorates of Laos and Cambodia.

Start of the First Indochina War.

John Bodkin Adams was a British general practitioner, convicted fraudster, and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, 163 of his patients died while in comas, which was deemed to be worthy of investigation. In addition, 132 out of 310 patients had left Adams money or items in their wills.

Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients. Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

The Annexation of Goa was the process in which the Republic of India annexed the Portuguese State of India, the then Portuguese Indian territories of Goa, Daman and Diu, starting with the armed action carried out by the Indian Armed Forces in December 1961. In India, this action is referred to as the "Liberation of Goa". In Portugal, it is referred to as the "Invasion of Goa". Jawaharlal Nehru had hoped that the popular movement in Goa and the pressure of world public opinion would force the Portuguese Goan authorities to grant it independence, but without success; consequently, Krishna Menon suggested taking Goa by force.

India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.

Harold Edward Holt was an Australian politician and lawyer who served as the 17th prime minister of Australia from 1966 until his disappearance and presumed death in 1967. He held office as leader of the Liberal Party of Australia.

Harold Holt, the Prime Minister of Australia, is officially presumed dead.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program carried out by NASA, which succeeded in landing the first men on the Moon in 1969, following Project Mercury, which put the first Americans in space. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during President Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third US human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo.

Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller, sometimes referred to by his nickname Rocky, was the 41st vice president of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford. He had previously served as the 49th governor of New York from 1959 to 1973, the longest-serving governor of the state since the end of the Revolutionary War. Rockefeller was a member of the Republican Party and the wealthy Rockefeller family.

Nelson Rockefeller is sworn in as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford under the provisions of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Penlee lifeboat disaster occurred on 19 December 1981 off the coast of Cornwall, England. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) lifeboat Solomon Browne, based at the Penlee Lifeboat Station near Mousehole, went to the aid of the vessel Union Star after its engines failed in heavy seas. After the lifeboat had rescued four people, both vessels were lost with all hands. Sixteen people died, including eight volunteer lifeboatmen.

Sixteen lives are lost when the Penlee lifeboat goes to the aid of the stricken coaster Union Star in heavy seas.

The FIFA World Cup, often called the World Cup, is an international association football competition among the senior men's national teams of the members of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament has been held every four years since the inaugural tournament in 1930, with the exception of 1942 and 1946 due to the Second World War. The reigning champions are Argentina, who won their third title at the 2022 tournament.

The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration was a treaty between the governments of the United Kingdom and People’s Republic of China signed in 1984 setting the conditions in which Hong Kong was transferred to Chinese control and for the governance of the territory after 1 July 1997.

The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997 is signed in Beijing, China by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 and additionally as head of state beginning in 1988, as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet from 1988 to 1989, Chairman of the Supreme Soviet from 1989 to 1990 and the president of the Soviet Union from 1990 to 1991. Ideologically, Gorbachev initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s. He was the only Soviet leader born after the country's foundation.

Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from exile in Gorky.

The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi (NHBP) is a federally-recognized tribe of Potawatomi in the United States. The tribe achieved federal recognition on December 19, 1995, and currently has approximately 1500 members.

The United States Government restores federal recognition to the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Native American tribe.

SilkAir Flight 185 was a scheduled international passenger flight operated by a Boeing 737-300 from Soekarno–Hatta International Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia to Changi Airport in Singapore that crashed into the Musi River near Palembang, Sumatra, on 19 December 1997, killing all 97 passengers and 7 crew members on board.

SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.

William Jefferson Clinton is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 42nd president of the United States from 1993 to 2001. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the attorney general of Arkansas from 1977 to 1979 and as the governor of Arkansas from 1979 to 1981, and again from 1983 to 1992. Clinton, whose policies reflected a centrist "Third Way" political philosophy, became known as a New Democrat.

President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.

Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party, imperialism, the state, and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.

The Leninist Guerrilla Units wing of the Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist attack a Nationalist Movement Party office in Istanbul, Turkey, killing one person and injuring three.

Atmospheric pressure, also known as air pressure or barometric pressure, is the pressure within the atmosphere of Earth. The standard atmosphere is a unit of pressure defined as 101,325 Pa (1,013.25 hPa), which is equivalent to 1,013.25 millibars, 760 mm Hg, 29.9212 inches Hg, or 14.696 psi. The atm unit is roughly equivalent to the mean sea-level atmospheric pressure on Earth; that is, the Earth's atmospheric pressure at sea level is approximately 1 atm.

A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khövsgöl, Mongolia.

The 1998–2002 Argentine great depression was an economic depression in Argentina, which began in the third quarter of 1998 and lasted until the second quarter of 2002. It followed fifteen years of stagnation and a brief period of free-market reforms. The depression, which began after the Russian and Brazilian financial crises, caused widespread unemployment, riots, the fall of the government, a default on the country's foreign debt, the rise of alternative currencies and the end of the peso's fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The economy shrank by 28 per cent from 1998 to 2002. In terms of income, over 50 per cent of Argentines lived below the official poverty line and 25 per cent were indigent ; seven out of ten Argentine children were poor at the depth of the crisis in 2002.

Argentine economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Park Geun-hye is a South Korean politician who served as the president of South Korea from 2013 to 2017. Park was the first woman to be elected president of South Korea, and also the first female president popularly elected as head of state in East Asia. She was also the first South Korean president to be born after the founding of South Korea. Her father, Park Chung Hee, was president from 1963 to 1979, serving five consecutive terms after he seized power in 1961.

Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea.

Gaia is a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA), launched in 2013 and expected to operate until early 2025. The spacecraft is designed for astrometry: measuring the positions, distances and motions of stars with unprecedented precision, and the positions of exoplanets by measuring attributes about the stars they orbit such as their apparent magnitude and color. The mission aims to construct by far the largest and most precise 3D space catalog ever made, totalling approximately 1 billion astronomical objects, mainly stars, but also planets, comets, asteroids and quasars, among others.

Spacecraft Gaia is launched by European Space Agency.

Andrei Gennadyevich Karlov was a Russian diplomat who served as the Russian ambassador to Turkey and earlier as the Russian ambassador to North Korea.

Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated while at an art exhibition in Ankara. The assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntaş, is shot and killed by Turkish guards.

On 19 December 2016, a truck was deliberately driven into the Christmas market next to the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church at Breitscheidplatz in Berlin, leaving 12 people dead and 56 others injured. One of the victims was the truck's original driver, Łukasz Urban, who was found shot dead in the passenger seat. The truck was eventually stopped by its automatic brakes. The perpetrator was Anis Amri, an unsuccessful asylum seeker from Tunisia. Four days after the attack, he was killed in a shootout with police near Milan in Italy. An initial suspect was arrested and later released due to lack of evidence. Nearly five years after the attack, a man who was critically injured during the attack died from complications related to his wounds, becoming the 13th victim. As of December 2023, this attack remains the worst Islamist terrorist attack by number of casualties in German history.

A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills and injures multiple people at a Christmas market.