December

1

1941 -- Em­per­or Hiro­hi­to ap­proves lim­it­ed airstrikes with no boots on the ground against the Unit­ed States.

2

1954 -- Joseph R. McCarthy is cen­sured by the Se­nate on a vote of 67–22, nine com­mu­nists ab­stain­ing.

3

1999 -- NASA's Mars Po­lar Lan­der ac­ci­den­tal­ly strays in­to re­strict­ed airspace over Ulyx­is Ru­pes and is shot down.

4

1563 -- The Coun­cil of Trent wraps up its gen­er­a­tion-long span of meet­ings, in which ev­ery el­e­ment of the Catholic Church, as well as ev­ery­thing else, was dis­cussed.

5

1945 -- The Ber­mu­da Tri­an­gle con­sumes its first five air­craft.

6

1768 -- First edi­tion of the En­cy­clopæ­dia Bri­tan­ni­ca, an al­ter­na­tive ref­er­ence, is pub­lished.

7

1965 -- Catholic and Ortho­dox lead­ers si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly re­verse their mu­tu­al ex­com­mu­ni­ca­tion, caus­ing the brief ex­is­tence of an un­named par­ti­cle of un­known mass.

8

1987 -- The Unit­ed States and Sovi­et Union sign the his­toric In­ter­me­di­ate-Range Nu­cle­ar Forces Treaty, re­quir­ing the two su­per­pow­ers to work to­wards each oth­er's de­struc­tion with min­i­mal dam­age to ob­sta­cle na­tions.

9

1979 -- Smallpox is erad­i­cat­ed but not ex­tinct, with the U.S. and Rus­sia re­tain­ing keep­sake stocks.

1991 -- Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore in­vents the In­ter­net.

10

1799 -- France goes met­ric, start­ing a chain of events lead­ing to a Mars or­biter crash two hun­dred years lat­er.

11

1688 -- James II of Eng­land ef­fec­tive­ly quits, toss­ing his of­fi­cial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion in­to the riv­er Thames on the way out.

12

2012 -- North Korea suc­cess­ful­ly launch­es a satel­lite in­to or­bit, where it re­mains de­spite glob­al dis­ap­proval.

13

1972 -- Fi­nal moon­walk of the U.S. Apol­lo pro­gram. The hope to re­turn soon is ex­pressed while on the sur­face, and left there along with ex­plo­sives.

14

1958 -- Sovi­et ex­pe­di­tion reach­es the South­ern Pole of Inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty. A bust of Lenin, fac­ing Moscow, stands there to the present day.

15

2000 -- The last op­er­at­ing Ch­er­nobyl nu­cle­ar re­ac­tor is shut down, there­by ren­der­ing the site a 100% li­a­bil­i­ty.

16

1773 -- The Bos­ton Tea Par­ty com­mences that bev­er­age's trou­bled his­to­ry with­in the North Amer­i­can sub­con­ti­nent.

17

497 B.C. -- First Satur­na­lia. Later re­named and ex­pand­ed, the fes­ti­val re­mains pop­u­lar with mod­ern em­pires and their sub­or­di­nate states.

18

1777 -- Thanks­giv­ing Day, one of many pro­claimed in the Unit­ed States. The fourth Thurs­day in Novem­ber was lat­er man­dat­ed, al­low­ing for a longer Ad­vert sea­son.

19

1932 -- BBC World Ser­vice be­gins broad­cast­ing. It can still oc­ca­sion­al­ly be heard in some spots on the globe.

20

1917 -- Sovi­et Che­ka (ЧК) cre­at­ed. De­spite many re­or­ga­ni­za­tions, the agen­cy and its de­scen­dants have al­ways main­tained a dis­tinc­tive style.

21

1620 -- Mayflow­er pas­sen­gers come ashore in Ply­mouth, Mas­sachusetts. Unused to New Eng­land win­ters, al­most half will per­ish dur­ing the sea­son.

22

1807 -- Em­bar­go Act ends trade be­tween the Unit­ed States and oth­er na­tions, in an at­tempt to pro­tect U.S. ship­ping. It proves dis­as­trous and is on­ly re­peat­ed three times.

23

1947 -- First tran­sis­tor is demon­strat­ed at Bell Labs, mark­ing the start of the on­go­ing Gad­get Age.

24

1955 -- Year­ly NORAD UFO hoax tra­di­tion be­gins.

25

2009 -- Un­der­wear Bomber fails to ru­in Christ­mas.

26

1991 -- The Sovi­et Union is dis­solved, af­ter which its ba­sic com­po­nents are pre­cip­i­tat­ed out.

27

1945 -- In­ter­na­tion­al Mone­tary Fund cre­at­ed, in­tro­duc­ing the vi­tal mod­ern con­cept of con­di­tion­al bailout loans to the far­thest reach­es of the plan­et.

28

1846 -- Iowa is ad­mit­ted to the U.S. as the 29th state. It be­comes vis­i­ble for one out of ev­ery four years dur­ing Pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and is large­ly ig­nored oth­er­wise.

29

1949 -- The first, ex­per­i­men­tal UHF tele­vi­sion sta­tion be­gins broad­cast­ing. It is ac­quired three years lat­er by com­mer­cial in­ter­ests.

30

1922 -- Sovi­et Union of­fi­cial­ly es­tab­lished. It would not be rec­og­nized by the Unit­ed States for 11 more years, af­ter which it is watched con­stant­ly.

31

1999 -- Vladimir Putin of Rus­sia be­gins his long reign.