is founded in Italy. December 18 – The British War Office sends Lord Roberts to South Africa to become the new commander of British forces in the Second Boer War, with Lord Kitchener to be second in command, and announces that 100,000 additional men will be sent. U.S. Army General Lawton is killed by a Filipino sniper near San Mateo on Luzon island. Stock prices fall drastically at the New York exchanges and the Produce Exchange Trust Company fails. December 19 – New York City's clearinghouse banks pool together a $10,000,000 loan fund to prevent further failures of companies. December 20 – The U.S. government arrests nine customs officials in Havana on charges of collusion to defraud the government. December 21 – U.S. Army General Leonard Wood arrives in Havana to become the new Governor-General of Cuba. December 22 – More than 40 schoolchildren from Belgium drown in the capsizing of a boat near the French town of Frelinghien on the River Lys that serves a boundary between Belgium and France. A fire kills 16 children in Quincy, Illinois. December 23 – Forty coal miners are killed in an explosion near Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Sir Reginald Wingate is appointed as the new British Governor-General of Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. December 24 – The wreck of the British steamship Ariosto off the coast of Hatteras, North Carolina in the U.S. drowns 21 of the crew. December 26 – Pinnacle Rock, a balancing rock in Cumberland Gap on the Tennessee and Kentucky border in the U.S., falls down. December 28 – The bodies of the officers and men killed on the 1898 explosion of the battleship USS Maine are reinterred at the Arlington National Cemetery. December 29 – The British Royal Navy cruiser HMS Magicienne seizes the German steamer, Bundesroth in Delagoa Bay at Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) on grounds that German officers and men are being brought to supplement the Boer Army. The Bundesroth is then escorted to Durban in Britain's Natal Colony. December 30 – General Wood completes the appointment of a cabinet of ministers composed of Cuban residents, with Diego Tamayo, Luis Esterez, Juan B. Hernandez, Enrique Varona, Jose R. Villaton and Ruiz Rivera taking office. December 31 The last day of the 1890s takes place, and the German government and Kaiser Wilhelm II declare that the 20th century will begin on January 1, 1900. In most of the world, however,