December 20 - Events

Events

• 69 – Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor.
• 217 – The papacy of Zephyrinus ends. Callixtus I is elected as the sixteenth pope, but is opposed by thetheologian Hippolytus who accuses him of laxity and of being a Modalist, one who denies any distinction between the three persons of the Trinity.
• 1192 – Richard the Lion-Heart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home toEngland after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the Third crusade.
• 1522 – Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate. They eventually settle on Malta and become known as the Knights of Malta.
• 1606 – The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
• 1803 – The Louisiana Purchase is completed at a ceremony in New Orleans.
• 1860 – South Carolina becomes the first state to secede from the United States.
• 1915 – World War I: Last Australian troops evacuated from Gallipoli.
• 1917 – Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded.
• 1924 – Hitler: was released from Landsberg Prison
• 1941 – World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" inKunming, China.
• 1942 – World War II: Bombing of Calcutta by the Japanese.
• 1946 – An 8.1 M_w earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Nankaidō, Japan, kill over 1,300 people and destroy over 38,000 homes.
• 1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.
• 1952 – United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington killing 87.
• 1955 – Cardiff is proclaimed the capital city of Wales, United Kingdom.
• 1959 – The Walker Family Murders
• 1960 – National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam is formed.
• 1968 – The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.
• 1973 – The Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is assassinated by a car bomb attack in Madrid.
• 1977 – Djibouti and Vietnam join the United Nations.
• 1984 – The Summit tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million litres of petrol derails near the town of Todmorden in the Pennines.
• 1987 – History's worst peacetime sea disaster, when the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).
• 1988 – The United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances is signed in Vienna.
• 1989 – United States invasion of Panama: The United States sends troops into Panama to overthrow government of Manuel Noriega.
• 1991 – A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.
• 1995 – NATO begins peacekeeping in Bosnia.
• 1995 – American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia killing 160.
• 1996 – NeXT merges with Apple Computer, starting the path to Mac OS X.
• 1999 – Macau is handed over to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.
• 2005 – US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of "intelligent design" in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
• 2007 – Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
• 2007 – The painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art, along with O Lavrador de Café, by the major Brazilian modernist painter Candido Portinari.