Browse Historical Events by Month:
Victories, births, and treaties. Explore the significant historical events and milestones that occurred in December. Dates for earlier events may be approximate.
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The popular Ring Theater in Vienna, Austria, catches fire on December 8, 1881. The official casualty estimate was that 384 people perished in the fire, although other estimates were that up to one thousand could have been killed.
The cause of the fire was attributed to flammable scenery, inward-opening doors trapping the crowd and other inadequate safety measures which led to new European fire regulations. More
The construction of the Washington Monument is completed with the placement of an 8.9 inch tall, 100-ounce pyramid of solid aluminum atop the capstone. Inscribed on the capstone is the Latin phrase “Laus Deo”, meaning “Praise be to God.”
The cornerstone had been laid 36 years earlier on July 4, 1848; the first stone was laid atop the unfinished stump on August 7, 1880; and the completed monument was dedicated on February 21, 1885. it opened on October 9, 1888. When completed, the Washington Monument surpassed the Cologne Cathedral (515') to be the tallest building in the world at 555 feet, 5.125 inches. More
Jackson Lanier, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" is first published on December 10, 1884 in the United Kingdom and Canada, followed by the first U.S. edition on February 18, 1885.
The book was written in vernacular English with open discussions about slavery and racism it the South, before the Civil War. It was controversial for its time but celebrated by most who read it.
The first session of the Indian National Congress (INC), A key moment in the Indian Independence Movement, takes place in Bombay (now Mumbai) from December 28 to 31, 1885. The historic meeting took place in the hall of the Gokuldas Tejpal Sanskrit College, with 72 delegates in attendance, and was presided over by Womesh Chandra Bonnerjee.
The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee takes place. Nearly three hundred Lakota people are massacred by soldiers of the United States Army. More
The first official basketball game with its original first 13 rules is played on December 21, 1891 at the YMCA International Training School in Springfield, Massachusetts. The game was invented by Canadian Dr. James Naismith as a less injury-prone indoor winter sport, using peach baskets and a soccer ball. More
The first recorded game of what would become ice hockey in the United States takes place in Baltimore, Maryland on December 26, 1894 featuring a match between Johns Hopkins University students and the Baltimore Athletic Club and marking the opening of the North Avenue Ice Palace.
French army officer Alfred Dreyfus is convicted of treason in a highly controversial trial, sparking the Dreyfus Affair.
The world’s first commercial movie screening takes place at the Grand Cafe in Paris on December 28, 1895; showing a series of short scenes from everyday French life and charged admission for the first time.
The film was made by Louis and Auguste Lumiere, two French brothers who developed a camera-projector called the Cinematographe. They had unveiled their invention to the public in March 1895 with a brief film showing workers leaving the Lumiere factory. More
Philippine nationalist José Rizal is publicly executed on December 30, 1896 by the Spanish Colonial government enraging and uniting Filipinos against Spain. Rizal came from a prosperous family, was educated in Manila and at the University of Madrid.
A brilliant medical student, he became an ophthalmologist by profession. He was also a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain, although he never advocated Philippine independence. The night before his execution he wrote “Último adiós” (“Last Farewell”), a masterpiece of 19th-century Spanish verse. More
The Treaty of Paris is signed by representatives of Spain and the United States, concluding the Spanish-American War.
Quantum Theory is born when German theoretical physicist Max Planck shares his hypothesis that radiation energy is emitted, not continuously, but rather in discrete packets called quanta. The energy E of the quantum is related to the frequency ν by E = hν. The quantity h, now known as Planck’s constant, is a universal constant with the approximate value of 6.62607 × 10−34 joule-second. In 1905 Einstein extended Planck’s hypothesis to explain the photoelectric effect. More
The first Five Nobel Prizes are presented on December 10, 1901, on the fifth anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. In accordance to Nobel's will; the Peace Prize, was presented in Christiania, as Oslo was then called and the others in Stockholm.
Since then, the Nobel Prizes have been presented to new laureates at ceremonies on December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death. More
Guglielmo Marconi and his assistant, George Kemp, confirmed the reception of the first transatlantic radio signals on December 12, 1901, from their test site in St. John, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada.
With a telephone receiver and a wire antenna kept aloft by a kite, they heard Morse code for the letter "S" transmitted from Poldhu, Cornwall, England. Their experiments showed that radio signals extended far beyond the horizon, giving radio a new global dimension for communication in the twentieth century. More
The Short Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle (SMLE Mk) becomes the official service rifle of the British Army on December 23, 1902. It replaced older Lee-Enfield models and carbines for all branches.
Orville Wright makes the first powered, controlled, and sustained flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina as his brother Wilbur looks on. Orville Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight of the day. The Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the last (More).
For additional historical context, see our feature on the first successful powered flight on December 17, 1903, which explores the Wright brothers’ achievement in greater detail and examines its long-term impact on aviation.
An explosion in a network of mines owned by the Fairmont Coal Company in Monongah kills 362 coal miners in West Virginia’s Marion County' 171 of them Italian migrants. Others killed in the disaster included Russians, Greeks, and immigrant workers from Austria-Hungary. The Monongah coal mine disaster was the worst mining disaster in American history. More
The Messina Earthquake, Europe's most powerful earthquake shook southern Italy on December 28, 1908. The epicenter was in the Messina Strait, which separates Sicily from Calabria. The quake's magnitude equaled a 7.5 by today's Richter scale.
Moments after a devastating tsunami formed, causing forty-foot waves to crash down on dozens of coastal cities. Most of southern Italy's cities lost as many as half their residents with the total death toll throughout Italy was estimated at nearly 200,000. More
Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian polar team was the first to reach the geographic South Pole on December. Five weeks later, on January, 1904, the polar team led by Robert Falcon Scott was the second. Scott's party of five died on the return journey from the pole. More
The world's first moving assembly line debuts at the Ford Model T car factory in Highland Park, Michigan. The innovation spearheaded by Henry Ford, revolutionized the auto industry. More
