1542 – Princess Mary Stuart becomes Mary, Queen of Scots.
1896 – The Glasgow Underground Railway is opened by the Glasgow District Subway Company.
1903 – The Wright brothers make their first attempt to fly with the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1911 - Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen became the first man to reach the South Pole, 35 days ahead of British explorer Captain Scott.
1946 - The United Nations General Assembly voted to establish United Nations headquarters in New York. They also voted to accept a gift of more than $8 million from American philanthropist John D. Rockefeller, Jr., to be used toward the establishment of permanent the United Nations headquarters along New York City's East River.
1947 – The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) is founded in Daytona Beach, Florida.
1959 - The shortest murder trial in British legal history. In 30 seconds, at Winchester Assizes, Brian Cawley pleaded guilty to the murder of Rupert Steed and was later sentenced to life imprisonment.
1962 - U.S. Mariner II sent the first close-up pictures of the planet Venus back to Earth.
2000 - America Online and Time Warner merge in an $111 billion deal.
2006 – American spy satellite USA-193 is launched.
1890 - Sioux Indian Chief Sitting Bull and 11 other tribe members were killed in Grand River, South Dakota, in a fight with Indian police.
1906 – The London Underground's Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway opens.
1913 - Suffragette's caused a dynamite explosion at Holloway Prison where Emmeline Pankhurst and Lady Constance Lytton were detained.
1916 - The Battle of Verdun ended, with 364,000 Allied soldiers and 338,000 Germans dead.
1939 - Nylon was first produced commercially, in Delaware.
1939 – Gone with the Wind receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
1941 – Holocaust: German troops execute over 15,000 Jews at Drobitsky Yar, a ravine southeast of the city of Kharkiv, Ukraine.
1973 – John Paul Getty III, grandson of American billionaire J. Paul Getty, is found alive near Naples, Italy, after being kidnapped by an Italian gang on July 10, 1973.
1982 - Reputed to be Robin Hood's tree, the 'Major Oak' in Sherwood Forest, was fitted with a fire alarm.
1984 - 'Do They Know It's Christmas' by Band Aid entered the chart at No.1 and stayed at the top for 5 weeks. At the time it was the biggest selling single ever in the UK, with sales of over three and a half million.
1986 - Carnegie Hall reopened after a $50 million renovation.
2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean.
1653 - Following the execution of Charles I, Oliver Cromwell failed to get the Parliament he wanted and became Lord Protector, turning himself into an uncrowned king for the next four years.
1773 - Taxes by Britain on tea and other commodities led Samuel Adams and 150 'Sons of Liberty' disguised as Mohawk Indians to hold the Boston Tea Party in which 342 tea chests worth £18,000 were tossed off Griffin’s Wharf into Boston Harbour.
1809 - Napoleon was granted a divorce from his wife Josephine, he divorced her because she had not produced children.
1925 - One of the deadliest earthquakes in history hit the Gansu province of midwestern China, and caused massive landslides and the deaths of over 200,000 people. It measured 8.5 on the Richter scale.
1944 - The Battle of the Bulge, the last major offensive of German forces against the Allies, began as German forces launched a surprise counterattack against Allied forces in Belgium during World War II.
1985 – Mafia: In New York City, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti are shot dead on the orders of John Gotti, who assumes leadership of the Gambino family.
1997 – An episode of Pokémon, "Dennō Senshi Porygon", aired in Japan induces seizures in hundreds of Japanese children.
1577 – Francis Drake sails from Plymouth, England, on a secret mission to explore the Pacific Coast of the Americas for English Queen Elizabeth I.
1790 – Discovery of the Aztec calendar stone -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aztec_calendar_stone
1843 - A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens, was published.
1903 – The Wright Brothers make their first powered and heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1954 - The British Petroleum Company (BP) was formed.
1957 – The United States successfully launches the first Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
1969 – Project Blue Book: The United States Air Force closes its study of UFOs, stating that sightings were generated as a result of "A mild form of mass hysteria, Individuals who fabricate such reports to perpetrate a hoax or seek publicity, psychopathological persons, and misidentification of various conventional objects."
1989 – The first episode of television series The Simpsons, "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire", airs in the United States.
1997 – The United Kingdom commences its Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997, which extends the state's gun ban to include all handguns, with the exception of antique and show weapons.
2003 – The Soham murder trial ends at the Old Bailey in London, with Ian Huntley found guilty of two counts of murder. His girlfriend Maxine Carr is found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
2003 – SpaceShipOne flight 11P, piloted by Brian Binnie, makes its first supersonic flight -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceShipOne_flight_11P
1559 - Queen Elizabeth I of England sent aid to the Scottish Lords to drive the French from Scotland.
1865 - The 13th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, abolishing slavery, went into effect.
1892 - Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker" was first performed, in St. Petersburg by the Russian Imperial Ballet.
1912 - The Piltdown Man was discovered in Sussex by Charles Dawson. It was claimed to be the fossilized skull and remains of the earliest known European, but in 1953 it was proved to be a hoax. The skull was that of an orang-utan.
1916 - The Battle of Verdun, the longest engagement of World War I, ended after 10 months and massive loss of life. 23 million shells had been fired and 650,000 were killed.
1958 – Project SCORE, the world's first communications satellite, is launched.
1966 – Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.
1979 - The sound barrier was broken on land for the first time by Stanley Barrett, driving at 739.6 mph, in California.
1997 - A bill giving Scotland its own parliament for the first time in three centuries was unveiled in Glasgow.
1154 - Henry II was crowned king of England.
1848 - Emily Bronte, English author of Wuthering Heights, died of tuberculosis at the age of 30.
1863 - Frederick Walton of London patented a new floor covering called linoleum.
1905 - London County Council set up Britain's first motorised ambulance service for the victims of traffic accidents.
1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.
1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.
1984 - Britain and China signed an agreement in Beijing, in which Britain agreed to transfer full sovereignty of Hong Kong to China in 1997.
1997 - The epic movie Titanic (the highest grossing film ever made), opened in American movie theaters.
69 – Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor.
1192 – Richard the Lion-Heart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the Third crusade.
1880 - Electric lights were installed throughout Broadway's theater section in New York City.
1928 - Harry Ramsden started his fish and chip restaurant in a hut near Bradford, West Yorkshire. It soon became the most famous fish and chip restaurant in the world.
1955 - Cardiff was officially named the capital of Wales.
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.
1989 - U.S. armed forces invaded Panama to overthrow military dictator Manuel Antonio Noriega, who had been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and accused of suppressing democracy in Panama.
1999 - Macau reverted to Chinese rule, it had been a Portuguese colony since 1557.
2005 – The first same sex civil partnerships in Scotland are celebrated.
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.
1620 - The Pilgrims of the Mayflower went ashore for the first time at present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts.
1913 - The first crossword puzzle, compiled by Arthur Wynne, was published, appearing in the New York World.
1937 - Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was shown in Los Angeles, it was the first full-length animated talking picture.
1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, is launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The crew performs the first ever manned Trans Lunar Injection and become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity.
1975 - In Vienna, Austria, Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, led Arab terrorists on a raid of a meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). The terrorists killed three people, and took 70 people hostage, including 11 OPEC ministers. Sanchez evaded authorities until 1994, when French agents captured him hiding in the Sudan. He was sentenced to life imprisonment by a French jury.
1988 - A terrorist bomb exploded aboard a Pam Am Boeing 747 over Lockerbie, Scotland, sending wreckage crashing to the ground and killing 270 people.