EVENTS:
- 1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in The Pennsylvania Journal entitled “The American Crisis“.
- 1907 – Two hundred thirty-nine coal miners die in a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
- 1927 – Three Indian revolutionaries, Ram Prasad Bismil, Roshan Singh and Ashfaqulla Khan are executed by the British Empire.
- 1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service.
- 1941 – World War II: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-chief of the German Army.
- 1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.
- 1961 – India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.
- 1997 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.
- 1998 – President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second President of the United States to be impeached.
- 2012 – Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea.
- 2013 – Spacecraft Gaia is launched by European Space Agency.
- 2016 – A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills and injures multiple people at a Christmas market.
BIRTHS:
- 1852 – Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-American physicist, chemist, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
- 1903 – George Davis Snell, American geneticist and immunologist, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1996)
- 1926 – Bobby Layne, American football player and coach (d. 1986)
- 1934 – Pratibha Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, 12th President of India
- 1961 – Eric Allin Cornell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1961 – Reggie White, American football player and wrestler (d. 2004)
- 1966 – Rajesh Chauhan, Indian cricketer
- 1969 – Nayan Mongia, Indian cricketer
- 1972 – Warren Sapp, American football player and sportscaster
- 1974 – Joe Jurevicius, American football player
- 1974 – Jake Plummer, American football player and sportscaster
- 1974 – Ricky Ponting, Australian cricketer
- 1985 – Gary Cahill, English footballer
- 1986 – Calvin Andrew, English footballer
- 1988 – Peter Winn, English footballer
- 1989 – Hamza Riazuddin, English cricketer
