What Happened on December 14th in History
30 historical events on this date
Friedrich Karl von Hessen, a German prince elected by the Parliament of Finland to become King of Finland, renounces the throne.
Frederick Charles Louis Constantine, Prince and Landgrave of Hesse, was the brother-in-law of the German Emperor, Wilhelm II. He was elected King of Finland on 9 October 1918, but renounced the...
Portuguese President SidĂłnio Pais is assassinated.
The president of Portugal, officially the president of the Portuguese Republic, is the head of state and highest office of Portugal.
Wozzeck, Alban Berg's first opera, is premiered at the Berlin State Opera conducted by Erich Kleiber.
Wozzeck is the first opera by Austrian composer Alban Berg, created between 1914 and 1922 and premiered on 14 December 1925 at the Berlin State Opera. Based on Georg BĂŒchner's play Woyzeck (1836),...
Winter War: The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland.
The Winter War was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland. It began with a Soviet invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II, and ended three and a...
Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.
Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element...
An Aeroflot Tupolev ANT-20 crashes near Tashkent, killing all 36 people on board.
PJSC Aeroflot â Russian Airlines, commonly known as Aeroflot, is the flag carrier and the largest airline of Russia. Aeroflot is headquartered in the Central Administrative Okrug, Moscow, with its...
Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann are granted a patent for their cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game.
Thomas Toliver Goldsmith Jr. was an American television pioneer, the co-inventor of the cathode-ray tube amusement device, and a professor of physics at Furman University.
Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Ceylon, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania and Spain join the United Nations through United Nations Security Council Resolution 109.
Albania, officially the Republic of Albania, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is located in the Balkans, on the Adriatic and Ionian Seas within the Mediterranean Sea, and shares land borders...
The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first to reach the southern pole of inaccessibility.
The Third Soviet Antarctic Expedition (1957â59) was led by Yevgeny Tolstikov on the continent and included Czech future astronomer AntonĂn Mrkos; the marine expedition on the Ob was led by I V...
Convention against Discrimination in Education of UNESCO is adopted.
The UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education is a multilateral treaty which aims to combat discrimination in the field of education. It was adopted on 14 December 1960 in Paris and came...
NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the U.S. federal government responsible for the United States' civil space program and for research in aeronautics and...
The dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir bursts, killing five people and damaging hundreds of homes in Los Angeles, California.
The Baldwin Hills Dam disaster occurred on December 14, 1963 in the Baldwin Hills neighborhood of South Los Angeles, when the dam containing the Baldwin Hills Reservoir suffered a catastrophic...
American Civil Rights Movement: Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States: The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Congress can use the Constitution's Commerce Clause to fight discrimination.
The civil rights movement was a social movement in the United States from 1954 to 1968 which aimed to abolish legalized racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement in the country,...
Bangladesh Liberation War: Over 200 of East Pakistan's intellectuals are executed by the Pakistan Army and their local allies. (The date is commemorated in Bangladesh as Martyred Intellectuals Day.)
The Bangladesh Liberation War, also known as the Bangladesh War of Independence, was an armed conflict sparked by the rise of the Bengali nationalist and self-determination movement in East...
Apollo program: Eugene Cernan is the most recent person to walk on the Moon, after he and Harrison Schmitt complete the third and final extravehicular activity (EVA) of the Apollo 17 mission.
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo was conceived in 1960 in the...
ArabâIsraeli conflict: Israel's Knesset ratifies the Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli law to the Golan Heights.
Since the declaration of Israel's establishment in 1948, conflict has existed between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries, rooted in conflict over territory also claimed by Palestinian Arabs....
Wilma Mankiller takes office as the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation.
Wilma Pearl Mankiller was a Native American activist, social worker, community developer and the first woman elected to serve as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma,...
Qasba Aligarh massacre: Over 400 Muhajirs killed in revenge killings in Qasba colony after a raid on Pashtun heroin processing and distribution center in Sohrab Goth by the security forces.
The QasbaâAligarh massacre was a massacre that took place when recently settled armed Pashtuns from tribal belt in northwestern Pakistan attacked densely populated localities in Qasba Colony,...
War in Abkhazia: Siege of Tkvarcheli: A helicopter carrying evacuees from Tkvarcheli is shot down, resulting in at least 52 deaths, including 25 children. The incident catalyses more concerted Russian military intervention on behalf of Abkhazia.
The War in Abkhazia was fought between Georgian government and paramilitary forces, and a coalition of Abkhaz separatist forces and North Caucasian militants between 1992 and 1993. Ethnic Georgians...
Construction begins on the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river.
The Three Gorges Dam, officially known as Yangtze River Three Gorges Water Conservancy Project is a hydroelectric gravity dam that spans the Yangtze River near Sandouping in Yiling District,...
Yugoslav Wars: The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris by the leaders of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the same day, NATO began ground peacekeeping operations in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place from 1991 to 2001 in what had been the Socialist Federal Republic of...
Yugoslav Wars: The Yugoslav Army ambushes a group of Kosovo Liberation Army fighters attempting to smuggle weapons from Albania into Kosovo, killing 36.
The Armed Forces of Serbia and Montenegro included ground forces with internal and border troops, naval forces, air and air defense forces, and civil defense. From 1992 to 2003, the VSCG was called...
Torrential rains cause flash floods in Vargas, Venezuela, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, the destruction of thousands of homes, and the complete collapse of the state's infrastructure.
The Vargas tragedy was a natural disaster that occurred in Vargas State, Venezuela on 15 December 1999, when torrential rains caused flash floods and debris flows that killed tens of thousands of...
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf narrowly escapes an assassination attempt.
Pervez Musharraf was a Pakistani politician and military officer who served as the tenth president of Pakistan from 2001 to 2008. He overthrew Nawaz Sharif's government in the 1999 coup d'Ă©tat and...
The Millau Viaduct, the tallest bridge in the world, is formally inaugurated near Millau, France.
The Millau Viaduct is a multispan cable-stayed bridge completed in 2004 across the gorge valley of the Tarn near Millau in the Aveyron department in the Occitanie Region, in Southern France. The...
Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, are killed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
On December 14, 2012, a mass shooting occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, United States. The perpetrator, 20-year-old Adam Lanza, shot and killed 26 people. The victims...
A reported coup attempt in South Sudan leads to continued fighting and hundreds of casualties.
The South Sudanese Civil War was a multi-sided civil war in South Sudan fought from 2013 to 2018 between government and opposition forces. The civil war caused rampant human rights abuses, including...
The Walt Disney Company announces that it would acquire 21st Century Fox, including the 20th Century Fox movie studio, for $52.4Â billion.
The Walt Disney Company, commonly and globally known as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in...
A total solar eclipse is visible from parts of the South Pacific Ocean, southern South America, and the South Atlantic Ocean.
A total solar eclipse occurred at the Moon's descending node of orbit on Monday, December 14, 2020, with a magnitude of 1.0254. A total solar eclipse occurs when the Moon's apparent diameter is...
At least 16 people are killed, including one gunman, and 43 injured in a mass shooting during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in the deadliest terror incident in Australia.
On 14 December 2025, an antisemitic Islamic State (IS)-inspired terrorist attack occurred at the Archer Park area of Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, during a celebration of the Jewish holiday of...