title: December 19
text: 
  
  Events
  
  Up to 1900 
  324 – Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor.
  1154 - Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.
  1187 – Pope Clement III is elected.
  1490 - Anne, Duchess of Brittany marries Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor by proxy.
  1666 - Lund University in southern Sweden is founded.
  1732 – Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanack
  1777 – George Washington's army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
  1783 - At age 24, William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest-ever Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
  1828 – John C. Calhoun pens South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.
  1835 – The Toledo Blade newspaper begins publishing.
  1842 – The United States recognizes the independence of Hawaii.
  
  1901  2000 
  1907 - 239 coal miners die in a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.
  1909 - The German football club Borussia Dortmund is founded.
  1912 – William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which killed over 1,000 people was pardoned by President Taft after  years in Sing Sing prison .
  1916 – The Battle of Verdun ended during World War I.
  1920 - King Constantine I of Greece is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son, Alexander of Greece, and a vote.
  1927 - Indian activists Ashfaqulla Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil and Roshan Singh are executed by British colonial authorities.
  1928 – First autogiro flight in the United States.
  1932 - The BBC World Service begins broadcasting, as the BBC Empire Service.
  1941 - World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sink the HMS Valiant and HMS Elizabeth in Alexandria harbor.
  1944 – The Soviet Union completely occupies Estonia (Ruhnu island).
  1944 - French newspaper Le Monde is founded.
  1945 – Austria becomes a republic for the second time, the first having been founded in 1918 and interrupted by the Austro-fascist dictatorship from 1934 onwards and the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938.
  1946 – Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi.
  1956 - Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of over 160 patients. Eventually, he is only convicted of minor charges.
  1961 – The Indian Army invades the Portuguese province of Estado da India Portuguesa (Portuguese State of India) which will become part of India.
  1962 – Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
  1963 – Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom to become a constitutional monarchy under the sultan.
  1964 - The South Vietnamese military junta of Nguyen Khanh dissolves the High National Council and arrest some of the members.
  1965 – Prisoners Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker escape from HM Prison Pentridge, Melbourne. During the escape a guard is killed. Ryan would hang for his death, in 1967.
  1967 – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt is declared dead, two days after going missing.
  1972 – Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight, returns to Earth.
  1974 – The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, goes on sale.
  1975 - John Paul Stevens is appointed as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.
  1980 – Anguilla is made a dependency of the United Kingdom separate from Saint Kitts and Nevis.
  1982 - A tanker fire in Tacoa, Venezuela, kills 150 people.
  1983 - The Jules Rimet FIFA World Cup trophy is stolen from the Headquarters of the Brazilian Football Federation in Rio de Janeiro and is never seen again.
  1984 – The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which handed Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
  1984 - Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.
  1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, from exile in Gorky.
  1997 – A Silkair Boeing 737-300 crashes into the Musi River, in Sumatra, Indonesia killing 104
  1997 – Titanic (the highest-grossing movie ever as of 2005) opens in U.S. theaters.
  1998 – The U.S. House of Representatives passes articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.
  2000 – The Leninist Guerrilla Units attack a party office of the far-right MHP in Istanbul, Turkey. One MHP member is killed and several wounded.
  
  From 2001 
  2001 – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, opens in theaters.
  2001 – A new world-record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is set at Tosontsengel, Hövsgöl Aymag, Mongolia.
  2001 – The Argentine economic crisis bursts into street riots after the announcement by the economy minister of the measures of holding back the bank deposits.
  2005 – Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon suffers a minor stroke.
  2007 – Marcus Stephen becomes President of Nauru.
  2007 - Lee Myung-bak is elected President of South Korea.
  2011 – North Korean state television announces that Kim Jong-il died two days earlier. His son Kim Jong-un has been named as his successor, as North Korea's leader.
  2012 - Park Geunhye is elected President of South Korea, as the first woman elected to lead South Korea.
  2016 - Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated at an art gallery in Ankara by an off-duty police officer.
  2016 - A lorry is driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing at least 12 people.
  
  Births
  
  Up to 1900 
  1343 - William I, Margrave of Meissen (d. 1407)
  1498 - Andreas Osiander, German theologian (d. 1552)
  1554 - Philip William, Prince of Orange (d. 1618)
  1587 - Dorothea Sophia, Abbess of Quedlinburg (d. 1645)
  1594 - Gustavus II Adolphus of Sweden (d. 1632)
  1683 – King Philip V of Spain (d. 1746)
  1699 – William Bowyer, printer (d. 1777)
  1714 - John Winthrop, American astronomer (d. 1779)
  1753 - John Taylor Gilman, Governor of New Hampshire (d. 1828)
  1778 - Marie Thérèse of France (d. 1851)
  1784 - Marcus Morton, 16th and 18th Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1864)
  1790 - William Parry, English admiral and polar explorer (d. 1855)
  1796 - Manuel Breton de los Herreros, Spanish playwright (d. 1873)
  1813 – Thomas Andrews, chemist (d. 1885)
  1815 - Edwin M. Stanton, American politician (d. 1869)
  1816 - Franz Sacher, Austrian confectioner (d. 1907)
  1817 - James J. Archer, American lawyer and general (d. 1864)
  1819 – James Spriggs Payne, 4th and 8th President of Liberia (d. 1882)
  1820 – Mary Ashton Livermore, women's rights activist (d. 1905)
  1838 - Ghedrub Gyatso, 11th Dalai Lama (d. 1856)
  1845 - Henri Joseph Perrotin, French astronomer (d. 1904)
  1852 – Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-born physicist (d. 1931)
  1854 - Marcel Brillouin, French physicist (d. 1948)
  1861 – Italo Svevo, Italian writer (d. 1928)
  1865 – Minnie Maddern Fiske, stage actress (d. 1932)
  1875 – Mileva Maric, Serbian-Swiss scientist, was married to Albert Einstein (d. 1948)
  1875 - Carter G. Woodson, American historian, author and journalist (d. 1950)
  1876 - Enrique Pla y Deniel, Archbishop of Toledo, Spain (d. 1968)
  1879 - Beals Wright, American tennis player (d. 1961)
  1882 - Walter Braunfels, German composer (d. 1954)
  1884 - Antonin Zapotocky, Czech politician (d. 1957)
  1885 – Joe "King" Oliver, jazz musician (d. 1938)
  1888 – Fritz Reiner, Hungarian conductor (d. 1963)
  1891 – Edward Raczynski, Polish diplomat and politician (d. 1993)
  1894 – Ford Frick, American commissioner of baseball (d. 1978)
  1899 - Martin Luther King, Sr., father of Martin Luther King, Jr. (d. 1984)
  1900 – Géza von Cziffra, movie director (d. 1989)
  
  1901  1950 
  1901 – Rudolf Hell, German inventor (d. 2002)
  1902 - Ralph Richardson, English actor (d. 1983)
  1903 – George Davis Snell, American geneticist (d. 1996)
  1905 - Irving Kahn, American businessman (d. 2015)
  1906 – Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician (d. 1982)
  1910 – Jean Genet, French writer (d. 1986)
  1913 - Juan Landazuri Ricketts, Archbishop of Lima (d. 1997)
  1915 - Claudia Testoni, Italian athlete (d. 1998)
  1915 – Édith Piaf, French singer and actress (d. 1963)
  1916 - Manoel de Barros, Brazilian poet (d. 2014)
  1916 – Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, German publicist (d. 2010)
  1918 – Professor Longhair, American musician (d. 1980)
  1920 - Little Jimmy Dickens, American country music singer (d. 2015)
  1920 - Alexander McAllister, Scottish cricketer
  1920 – David Susskind, movie, stage, and television producer (d. 1987)
  1922 - Eamonn Andrews, Irish radio and television host (d. 1987)
  1923 – Gordon Jackson, Scottish movie, stage and television actor (d. 1990)
  1924 - Michel Tournier, French writer (d. 2016)
  1925 – Tankred Dorst, German dramatist (d. 2017)
  1925 - Robert B. Sherman, American songwriter (d. 2012)
  1925 - Rabah Bitat, President of Algeria (d. 2000)
  1926 - Fikret Otyam, Turkish painter and journalist (d. 2015)
  1927 - Remo Capitani, Italian actor (d. 2014)
  1929 - Lorenzo Buffon, Italian footballer
  1929 – Bob Brookmeyer, American musician (d. 2011)
  1930 - Georg Stollenwerk, German footballer (d. 2014)
  1932 - Thomas Hunter, American actor (d. 2017)
  1932 - Bernhard Vogel, German politician
  1933 – Cicely Tyson, American actress
  1934 – Rudi Carrell, Dutch entertainer (d. 2006)
  1934 – Al Kaline, American Baseball Hall of Famer
  1934 – Pratibha Patil, former President of India
  1935 – Bobby Timmons, American jazz pianist (d. 1974)
  1936 - Marian McKnight, American model
  1938 – Karel Svoboda, Czech composer (d. 2007)
  1940 – Phil Ochs, singer, songwriter (d. 1976)
  1941 – Maurice White, American musician (d. 2016)
  1941 – Lee Myung-bak, former President of South Korea
  1942 – Cornell Dupree, American musician (d. 2011)
  1943 - Sam Kelly, English actor (d. 2014)
  1944 – Richard Leakey, Kenyan anthropologist (d. 2022)
  1944 – Alvin Lee, British musician (d. 2013)
  1946 – Robert Urich, American actor (d. 2002)
  1947 - Jimmy Bain, Scottish musician (d. 2016)
  1949 – Jupp Kapellmann, German footballer
  1949 – Nasser Hejazi, Iranian footballer (d. 2011)
  1949 – Claudia Kolb, swimmer
  1949 - Carlos Gomes Junior, former Prime Minister of Guinea-Bissau
  1950 - Walter Frosch, German footballer (d. 2013)
  
  1951  1975 
  1951 - Mohammed Reza Aref, 2nd Vice President of Iran
  1952 - Walter Murphy, American songwriter and musician
  1955 - Rob Portman, American politician
  1956 – Jens Fink-Jensen, Danish writer
  1957 – Kevin McHale, American basketball player
  1957 - Cyril Collard, French actor, director and composer (d. 1993)
  1957 - Michael E. Fossum, American astronaut
  1957 - John Gulager, American actor, cinematographer and director
  1958 - José Aguilar, Cuban boxer (d. 2014)
  1959 - Ivan Vallejo, Ecuadorean footballer
  1960 – Mike Lookinland, actor
  1961 - Eric Allin Cornell, American physicist
  1961 – Reggie White, American football player (d. 2004)
  1963 - Til Schweiger, German actor
  1963 - Jennifer Beals, American actress
  1964 – Arvydas Sabonis, Lithuanian basketball player
  1964 - Béatrice Dalle, French actress
  1965 - Jessica Steen, Canadian actress
  1965 – Chito Martinez, Belizean baseball player
  1966 - Alberto Tomba, Italian skier
  1967 – Criss Angel, American illusionist
  1968 - Ken Marino, American actor and comedian
  1968 - Kristina Keneally, 42nd Premier of New South Wales
  1969 – Aziza Mustafa Zadeh, Azerbaijani composer, pianist and singer
  1969 – Kristy Swanson, American actress
  1969 – Richard Hammond, British television presenter
  1971 – Tiffany Towers, American actress
  1972 – Alyssa Milano, American actress
  1972 – Warren Sapp, American football player
  1974 – Jake Plummer, American football player
  1974 – Ricky Ponting, Australian cricketer
  
  From 1976 
  1978 - Patrick Casey, American screenwriter and actor
  1979 – Gareth Williams, Welsh rugby player
  1980 – Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor
  1980 - Billy O'Sullivan, American actor
  1980 – Marla Sokoloff, actress
  1982 - Tero Pitkamaki, Finnish javelin thrower
  1983 – Matt Stajan, Canadian ice hockey player
  1985 - Neil Kilkenny, Australian footballer
  1985 – Gary Cahill, English footballer
  1985 – Lady Sovereign, English musician
  1985 - Dan Logan, English bass player
  1986 – Ryan Babel, Dutch footballer
  1987 – Karim Benzema, French footballer
  1988 – Alexis Sanchez, Chilean footballer
  1989 - Yong Jun-hyung, South Korean singer, rapper and actor
  1991 – Declan Galbraith, English singer
  1991 - Edwin Jackson, American football player (d. 2018)
  1991 - Jorge Blanco, Mexican actor and singer
  1992 - Iker Muniain, Spanish footballer
  1993 - Leonardo Bittencourt, German footballer
  1994 - Michele Bravi, Italian singer
  1994 - Estelle Balet, Swiss snowboarder (d. 2016)
  1995 - Brandur Olsen, Faroese footballer
  1998 - Frans Jeppsson Wall, Swedish singer
  
  Deaths
  
  Up to 1900 
  211 - Geta, Roman Emperor
  401 – Pope Anastasius I
  1075 – Edith of Wessex, queen of Edward the Confessor of England
  1111 - Al-Ghazali, Persian theologian and philosopher
  1123 - Saint Berardo, Italian bishop
  1327 – Agnes of France, Duchess of Burgundy
  1370 – Pope Urban V (b. 1310)
  1475 - Louis de Luxembourg, Count of Saint-Pol (b. 1418)
  1737 – James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (b. 1667)
  1741 – Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer (b. 1681)
  1745 – Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)
  1749 – Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)
  1751 – Louise of Great Britain, queen of Frederick V of Denmark (b. 1724)
  1807 – Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, German writer (b. 1723)
  1813 - James McGill, Scottish-Canadian businessman and philanthropist (b. 1744)
  1814 - Joseph Bramah, English inventor and locksmith (b. 1748)
  1819 – Sir Thomas Fremantle, English naval officer and politician (b. 1765)
  1848 – Emily Brontë, English writer (b. 1818)
  1851 – J. M. W. Turner, English painter (b. 1775)
  1859 - Mirabeau B. Lamar, American politician and President of Texas (b. 1798)
  1860 - Konstantin Aksakov, Russian writer (b. 1817)
  1899 - Henry Ware Lawton, American Civil War general (b. 1843)
  
  1901  2000 
  1915 – Alois Alzheimer, German neuroscientist (b. 1864)
  1916 - Thibaw Min, King of Burma (b. 1859)
  1927 - Ashfaqulla Khan, Indian activist (b. 1900)
  1927 - Ram Prasad Bismil, Indian activist (b. 1897)
  1927 - Roshan Singh, Indian activist (b. 1892)
  1932 – Yoon Bong-Gil, Korean resister against Japanese occupation (executed) (b. 1908)
  1933 - George Jackson Churchward, English engineer (b. 1857)
  1939 – Hans Langsdorff, German naval officer (b. 1894)
  1944 - Abbas II of Egypt (b. 1874)
  1944 - Rudolph Karstadt, German entrepreneur (b. 1856)
  1946 - Paul Langevin, French physicist (b. 1872)
  1953 – Robert Millikan, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)
  1967 – Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)
  1968 – Norman Thomas, American socialist (b. 1884)
  1976 – Giuseppe Caselli, Italian painter (b. 1893)
  1977 – Nellie Tayloe Ross, Governor of Wyoming (b. 1876)
  1982 - Dwight Macdonald, American philosopher, author and critic (b. 1906)
  1988 - Robert Bernstein, American author and playwright (b. 1919)
  1989 – Stella Gibbons, English writer (b. 1902)
  1993 - Michael Clarke, American drummer (b. 1946)
  1996 – Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (b. 1924)
  1997 - Masaru Ibuka, Japanese industrialist (b. 1908)
  1998 - Mel Fisher, American treasure hunter (b. 1922)
  1999 – Desmond Llewelyn, Welsh actor (b. 1914)
  2000 - Pops Staples, American singer (b. 1915)
  2000 - John Lindsay, 103rd Mayor of New York City (b. 1921)
  2000 - Rob Buck, American guitarist and songwriter (b. 1958)
  
  From 2001 
  2003 – Peter Carter-Ruck, British lawyer (b. 1914)
  2003 – Hope Lange, American actress (b. 1941)
  2004 – Herbert C. Brown, English-born chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)
  2004 – Renata Tebaldi, Italian soprano (b. 1922)
  2008 - Carol Chomsky, American linguist and educator (b. 1930)
  2009 – Hossein-Ali Montazeri, Iranian cleric (b. 1922)
  2009 – Kim Peek, American megasavant, inspiration for the movie Rain Man (b. 1951)
  2012 - Peter Struck, German politician (b. 1943)
  2012 - Robert Bork, American judge and scholar (b. 1927)
  2013 - Herb Geller, American-German saxophonist and composer (b. 1928)
  2013 - Ned Vizzini, American writer (b. 1981)
  2014 - Igor Rodionov, Russian general and politician (b. 1936)
  2014 - Philip Bradbourn, English politician (b. 1951)
  2014 - Arthur Gardner, American movie and television producer (b. 1910)
  2015 - Jimmy Hill, English footballer and pundit (b. 1928)
  2015 - Kurt Masur, German conductor (b. 1927)
  2015 - Greville Janner, British politician (b. 1928)
  2015 - Karin Söder, Swedish politician (b. 1928)
  2015 - Dickie Moore, Canadian ice hockey player (b. 1931)
  2015 - Selma Reis, Brazilian actress and singer (b. 1960)
  2016 - Andrei Karlov, Russian diplomat, Ambassador to Turkey (b. 1954)
  2017 - Lito Cruz, Argentine actor (b. 1941)
  2017 - Clifford Irving, American author (b. 1930)
  2017 - Hiep Thi Le, Vietnamese-American actress (b. 1971)
  2018 - Tömür Dawamat, Chinese Uighur politician; b. '27
  2018 - Mel Hutchins, American basketball player; b. '28
  2018 - Geetha Salam, Indian actor; b. '48
  Twenty-nineteen
  Ricardo de Aparici, Argentine lawyer and politician; b. '40
  Francisco Brennand, Brazilian sculptor; b. '27
  Jules Deelder, Dutch poet; b. '44
  Jan de Laval, Swedish actor; b. '48
  Ward Just, American journalist and writer; b. '35
  George Metallinos, Greek priest; b. '40
  Yoshio Mochizuki, Japanese politician; b. '47
  Shahdon Winchester, Trinidadian footballer
  Alba Zaluar, Brazilian anthropologist; b. '42
  
  Observances 
   Liberation Day (Goa)
   National Heroes and Heroines Day (Anguilla)
  
  Days of the year