See what makes December 31 special at Famous Daily.
History, birthdays, holiday, and a quote!
What happened on December 31
- December 31, 0406 "Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gallia."
- December 31, 0870 England's Ethelred I defeats the Danes December 31 in a skirmish at Englefield in Berkshire
- December 31, 1229 "James I of Aragon the Conqueror enters Medina Mayurqa (nowadays Palma de Mallorca, Spain) thus consummating the Christian conquest of the island of Mallorca."
- December 31, 1599 British East India Company is chartered.
- December 31, 1660 James II of England is created Duke of Normandy by King Louis XIV.
- December 31, 1687 The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope.
- December 31, 1695 "A window tax is imposed in England, causing many shopkeepers to brick up their windows to avoid the tax."
- December 31, 1744 James Bradley announces discovery of Earth's motion of nutation
- December 31, 1775 Battle of Quebec; Americans unable to take British stronghold
- December 31, 1776 "Rhode Island establishes wage and price controls to curb inflation: Limit is $0.70 a day for carpenters, $0.42 for tailors"
- December 31, 1781 "Bank of North America, first US bank opens"
- December 31, 1805 End of French Republican calendar; France returns to Gregorianism
- December 31, 1831 Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.
- December 31, 1841 Alabama becomes first state to license dental surgeons
- December 31, 1857 Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as new capitol of Canada
- December 31, 1860 The Brockville and Ottawa Railway opens a tunnel l/3 of a mile under the town of Brockville. This was the first railway tunnel in Canada.
- December 31, 1862 American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union (thus dividing Virginia in two).
- December 31, 1862 President Lincoln signs act admitting West Virginia to the Union
- December 31, 1862 "USS Monitor founders in a storm off Cape Hatteras, NC.1862 Battle of Murfreesboro, Tennessee"
- December 31, 1870 "J D Schneiter patents rocket mail in France, (not done)"
- December 31, 1879 Cornerstone laid for Iolani Palace (only royal palace in US)
- December 31, 1879 Edison gives first public demonstration of his incandescent lamp
- December 31, 1879 "The opera ""The Pirates of Penzance"" is produced (New York NY)"
- December 31, 1890 Ellis Island (New York NY) opens as a US immigration depot
- December 31, 1891 "A new immigration depot is opened on Ellis Island, New York."
- December 31, 1897 "Brooklyn's last day as a city, it incorporates into NYC (1/1/1898)"
- December 31, 1904 "The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square, then known as Longacre Square, in New York, New York."
- December 31, 1907 For the first time a ball drops at Times Square to signal the new year
- December 31, 1909 Manhattan Bridge opens.
- December 31, 1921 Last San Francisco firehorses retired
- December 31, 1923 "First transatlantic radio broadcast of a voice, Pittsburgh-Manchester"
- December 31, 1923 The chimes of Big Ben are broadcast on radio for the first time by the BBC.
- December 31, 1924 Hubble announces existence of distant galaxies.
- December 31, 1929 Guy Lombardo performs Auld Lang Syne at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York City for the first time.
- December 31, 1934 Helen Richey becomes first woman to pilot an airmail transport
- December 31, 1941 Admiral Chester W. Nimitz assumes command of U.S. Pacific Fleet.
- December 31, 1942 "Commissioning of USS Essex (CV-9), first of new class of aircraft carriers, at Norfolk, VA"
- December 31, 1943 NYC's Times Square greets Frank Sinatra at the Paramount Theater
- December 31, 1944 "48 people die in a train accident in Ogden, Utah"
- December 31, 1945 Ratification of UN Charter completed
- December 31, 1946 French troops leave Lebanon
- December 31, 1946 President Truman officially proclaims end of WW-II
- December 31, 1951 First battery to convert radioactive energy to electrical announced
- December 31, 1953 Hulan Jack sworn in as Manhattan Borough president
- December 31, 1955 General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over USD $1 billion in a year.
- December 31, 1958 International Geophyscial Year ends
- December 31, 1960 The farthing coin ceases to be legal tender in the United Kingdom.
- December 31, 1961 First performance of the Beach Boys
- December 31, 1961 Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than $12 billion
- December 31, 1961 The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than USD $12 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
- December 31, 1962 Katanga becomes part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo
- December 31, 1963 "The Central African Federation officially collapses and splits into Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia."
- December 31, 1964 Donald Campbell (UK) sets world water speed record (276.33 mph)
- December 31, 1966 "Monkee's ""I'm a Believer"" hits #1 and stays there for 7 weeks"
- December 31, 1966 "Pirate Radio 390 (Radio Invicata) off England, resumes transmitting"
- December 31, 1968 First supersonic airliner flown (Russian TU-144)
- December 31, 1970 Paul McCartney files a lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles
- December 31, 1974 "Gold legal in US, Franklin Mint strikes Panama's Gold 100 balboa coin"
- December 31, 1976 "TV soap ""Somerset"" ends 6 year run"
- December 31, 1977 "Donald Woods, a banned white editor flees South Africa"
- December 31, 1978 Taiwan's final day of diplomatic relations with the US
- December 31, 1979 Winterland Rock Concert Hall in San Francisco closes after 556 concerts
- December 31, 1980 A Jewish owned hotel in Nairobi Kenya is bombed killing 18
- December 31, 1981 Coup d'tat in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight Lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.
- December 31, 1981 Lt Rawlings stages coup in Ghana
- December 31, 1982 "TV soap ""The Doctors"" ends 19 year run"
- December 31, 1983 Brunei gains complete independence from Britain
- December 31, 1983 The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.
- December 31, 1984 NYC subway gunman Bernhard Goetz surrenders to police in NH
- December 31, 1984 "Rajiv Gandhi takes office as India's 6th PM succeeds his mom, Indira"
- December 31, 1985 King Hussein of Jordan and President Assid hold talks
- December 31, 1986 "A fire at the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 97 and injures 140."
- December 31, 1986 "Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico kills 97"
- December 31, 1989 "The last part of the railway on Prince Edward Island, operated by CN Rail, is abandoned."
- December 31, 1990 Iraq begins a military draft of 17 year olds
- December 31, 1990 The Sci-Fi Channel on cable TV begins transmitting
- December 31, 1991 Dow Jones closes at record high 3168.83
- December 31, 1992 Target date for Europe's single market
- December 31, 1994 "This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC-11 to UTC+13 and UTC-10 to UTC+14, respectively."
- December 31, 1997 Quaker Oats settles a lawsuit involving the immoral use of child subjects in radioactivity experiments circa 1945-1956.
- December 31, 1998 Exchange rates between the euro and legacy currencies in the Eurozone become fixed.
- December 31, 1999 "Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President."
- December 31, 1999 Control of Panama Canal reverts to Panama
- December 31, 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."
- December 31, 1999 The United States Government handed Panama Canal control over to Panama as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties
- December 31, 2004 "The official opening of Taipei 101, the current tallest skyscraper in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 feet)."
- December 31, 2005 The Greek BBC radio service ends.
- December 31, 2006 The United Kingdom pays final installment of Second World War debt to the United States.
- December 31, 2009 "A High Court in Malaysia rules that the country's Christians have a constitutional right to use the word Allah in reference to God, declaring the government's ban on the use of Allah by non-Muslims as unconstitutional."
- December 31, 2009 "At least six people are killed by a gunman at a shopping centre in Espoo, near Helsinki."
- December 31, 2009 Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.
- December 31, 2009 "Former Catholic Primate of All Ireland Cardinal Cahal Daly, ""the hierarchy's foremost theologian and its most trenchant critic of politically-inspired violence"", dies in Belfast aged 92."
- December 31, 2009 Les Choristes by Impressionist artist Edgar Degas mysteriously disappears from Marseilles's Cantini Museum.
- December 31, 2009 Lithuania shuts the Baltic region's one and only nuclear power station in Visaginas. The Lithuanian nuclear power station provides 70% of the nation's energy and was traded for membership to the European Union.
- December 31, 2009 "Patrick Stewart, the actor who played Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor X in X-Men, is knighted by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom."
- December 31, 2009 "Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade issues an apology to ""humiliated"" Christians for comparing an ""idolatrous"" statue to Jesus Christ."
- December 31, 2009 The Althing (Icelandic parliament) approves the payment of ?3.8 billion to the United Kingdom and the Netherlands as deposit insurance for the collapsed Icesave savings scheme.
- December 31, 2009 The Government of Serbia decides to sue Croatia for genocide before the International Court of Justice.
- December 31, 2009 "The University of Cambridge successfully acquires a collection of Siegfried Sassoon's personal papers for �1.25 million, following a six-month fundraising campaign."
- December 31, 2009 "Two French journalists and their translator are kidnapped in Kapisa Province, Afghanistan."
- December 31, 2009 Van Morrison tells RT� News at One that a baby his own website claimed he has fathered does not exist and that he has never met the alleged mother.
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