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Explore the historical events that shaped our world on December 9th. From major milestones to cultural achievements, see what happened on this day in history. Dates for earlier events may be approximate.
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Belisarius, a Byzantine general, enters Rome on December 9, 536 AD right after retaking the city from the Ostrogoths during the Gothic War, as the Ostrogothic forces were simultaneously leaving the city.
This event marked the first time Rome had been part of the Roman Empire since the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the most important religious icons in Mexico, is believed to have appeared to Juan Diego on four occasions between December 9 and 12, 1531. More
The Ottoman Empire declares war on Venice, initiating the Seventh Ottoman-Venetian War. The war concluded two years later in 1718 with an Ottoman victory and the Treaty of Passarowitz.
Venice ceded its major possession, the Peloponnese, in the Greek peninsula, to the Ottomans. Venice was saved from a more significant defeat by the intervention of the Austrian Empire in 1716.
Jerusalem surrenders to British troops. The mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim al-Husseini, delivers the Ottoman Governor's letter surrendering the city to Brigadier General C.F. Watson, of the 180th Brigade.
Two days later General Edmund Allenby, commander of the British “Egyptian Expeditionary Force,” understanding the symbolic sensitivity of Jerusalem to both its residents and religious adherents the world over, entered Jerusalem, on foot. More
The John Birch Society (JBS) is founded by Robert W. Welch Jr. More
Tanzania National day. It is celebrated on the anniversary of Tanganyika and Zanzibar gaining independence from British colonial rule on December 9, 1961. Tanganyika and Zanzibar came together to form a single country – the United Republic of Tanzania on April 26, 1964.
Douglas Engelbart, gives a landmark computer demonstration at the Association for Computing Machinery / Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (ACM/IEEE)—Computer Society's Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco".
The presentation demonstrated for the first time many of the fundamental elements of modern personal computing: windows, hypertext, graphics, efficient navigation and command input, video conferencing, the computer mouse, word processing, dynamic file linking, revision control, and a collaborative real-time editor. The name "The Mother of All Demos" was retroactively applied to the landmark computer demonstration. More
The World Health Assembly declares smallpox, a serious infectious disease, eradicated (eliminated). No cases of naturally occurring smallpox have happened since. More
The Intifada begins in the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip twenty years after Israeli conquered the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and annexed East Jerusalem.
Israeli settlers had moved into the occupied territories, seizing Arab land. By December 1987, 2,200 armed Jewish settlers occupied 40 percent of the Gaza Strip, while 650,000 impoverished Palestinians were crowded into the other 60 percent, making the Palestinian portion of the tiny Gaza Strip one of the most densely populated areas on earth. More
Lech Walesa, founder of the Solidarity movement and Polish anti-communist leader is elected Poland's first democratically elected President on December 9, 1990. He won a landslide victory in the first free presidential election in Poland marking a key moment in Eastern Europe's shift from communism.
He served until 1995 when he narrowly lost his re-election bid to a former communist. He established the Lech Walesa Institute and remained a global symbol of non-violent struggle for democracy.
