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
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What Happened in December?
Victories, births, and treaties. Explore the significant historical events and milestones that occurred in December. Dates for earlier events may be approximate.
Note: Sources for the historical content shown, include research and reviews of relevant Online History Resources or printed material. When possible, we show a link to a source which provides additional or unique perspective about the event.
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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
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
The stolen “Mona Lisa” was recovered in Florence, Italy on December 12, 1913. It had been stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris on August 21, 1911, by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former Louvre employee.
Peruggia was arrested and claimed he was avenging Italy. After its recovery the Mona Lisa went on a short triumphal tour of Italy before being returned to the Musée du Louvre on January 4th 1914. More
President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act into law, creating the Federal Reserve. More
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President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act into law. The passing of the Federal Reserve act created a system for financial stability which impacted the US economic system domestically and internationally by creating means to regulate inflation, ability to respond to economic panics allowing the promotion and the internationalization of the U.S. Dollar as a stable global currency.
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The Battle of the Falkland Islands (WWI) takes place on December 8, 1914 The German naval forces led by Admiral Maximilian von Spee, are stopped in their attempt to raid the Falkland Islands by the British Navy commanded by Admiral Doveton Sturdee. All the German ships except Dresden and Seydlitz were tracked down and sunk.
The Christmas Truce of 1914. Although fighting continued in many parts of the Western Front, a rare heart-warming display of humanity in the history of human conflict takes place in some sections. By Christmas of that year there were millions of soldiers dug in trenches packed together and living in freezing conditions. On Christmas Eve German troops began unwrapping gifts from home and singing Christmas carols and soon the British and French troops joined in. Christmas greetings and well wishes were exchanged, and offers of a temporary ceasefire were communicated between the trenches. On Christmas morning, The troops began to greet one another, messages and gifts were exchanged and spontaneous games of football(soccer) were rumored to have happened. More