December 31Birthdays & History

On this day: December 31 in history

Oldest first. Tap a year to see it on the World Chronicle timeline.

1. 406Vandals, Alans and Suebians cross the Rhine, beginning an invasion of Gaul.Europe
2. 535Byzantine general Belisarius completes the conquest of Sicily, defeating the Gothic garrison of Palermo (Panormos), and ending his consulship for the year.Europe
3. 870Battle of Englefield: The Vikings clash with ealdorman Æthelwulf of Berkshire. The invaders are driven back to Reading (East Anglia); many Danes are killed.Europe
4. 1105Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV is forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Henry V, in Ingelheim.Europe
5. 1225The Lý dynasty of Vietnam ends after 216 years by the enthronement of the boy emperor Trần Thái Tông, husband of the last Lý monarch, Lý Chiêu Hoàng, starting the Trần dynasty.Asia
6. 1229James I the Conqueror, King of Aragon, enters Medina Mayurqa (now known as Palma de Mallorca, Spain), thus consummating the Christian reconquest of the island of Mallorca.EuropeMiddle East
7. 1501The First Battle of Cannanore commences, seeing the first use of the naval line of battle.Asia
8. 1600The British East India Company is chartered.EuropeAsia
9. 1660James, Duke of York is named Duke of Normandy by Louis XIV of France.Europe
10. 1670The expedition of John Narborough leaves Corral Bay, having surveyed the coast and lost four hostages to the Spanish.Europe
11. 1687The first Huguenots set sail from France to the Cape of Good Hope.Europe
12. 1757Empress Elizabeth I of Russia issues her ukase incorporating Königsberg into Russia.Europe
13. 1759Arthur Guinness signs a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum and starts brewing Guinness.Europe
14. 1775American Revolutionary War: Battle of Quebec: British forces under General Guy Carleton repulse an attack by Continental Army General Richard Montgomery in a snowstorm.North AmericaEurope
15. 1790Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today, is published for the first time.Europe
16. 1796The incorporation of Baltimore as a city.North America
17. 1831Gramercy Park is deeded to New York City.North America
18. 1844The Philippines skipped this date in order to align the country with the rest of Asia, as the trading interest switched to China, Dutch East Indies and neighboring territories after Mexico gained independence from Spain on 27 September 1821. In the islands, Monday, 30 December 1844 was immediately followed by Wednesday, 1 January 1845.AsiaEuropeLatin America
19. 1853A dinner party is held inside a life-size model of an iguanodon created by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Sir Richard Owen in south London, England.Europe
20. 1857Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa, then a small logging town, as the capital of the Province of Canada.North America
21. 1862American Civil War: The three-day Battle of Stones River begins near Murfreesboro, Tennessee between the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg and the Union Army of the Cumberland under General William S. Rosecrans.North America
22. 1862American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an enabling act that would admit West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.North America
23. 1878Karl Benz, working in Mannheim, Germany, files for a patent on his first reliable two-stroke gas engine. He was granted the patent in 1879.Europe
24. 1879Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, in Menlo Park, New Jersey.North America
25. 1906Mozaffar ad-Din Shah Qajar signs the Persian Constitution of 1906.Middle East
26. 1907The first ever ball drop in Times Square.North America
27. 1942USS Essex, first aircraft carrier of a 24-ship class, is commissioned.North America
28. 1942World War II: The Royal Navy defeats the Kriegsmarine at the Battle of the Barents Sea. This leads to the resignation of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder a month later.Europe
29. 1944World War II: Operation Nordwind, the last major Wehrmacht offensive on the Western Front, begins.Europe
30. 1946President Harry S. Truman officially proclaims the end of hostilities in World War II.North America
31. 1951Cold War: The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Western Europe.North AmericaEurope
32. 1955General Motors becomes the first U.S. corporation to make over US$1 billion in a year.North America
33. 1956The Romanian Television network begins its first broadcast in Bucharest.Europe
34. 1961RTÉ, Ireland's state broadcaster, launches its first national television service.Europe
35. 1963The Central African Federation officially collapses, subsequently becoming Zambia, Malawi and Rhodesia.Africa
36. 1965Jean-Bédel Bokassa, leader of the Central African Republic army, and his military officers begin a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko.Africa
37. 1968MacRobertson Miller Airlines Flight 1750 crashes near Port Hedland, Western Australia, killing all 26 people on board.Oceania
38. 1968The first flight of the Tupolev Tu-144, the first civilian supersonic transport in the world.Europe
39. 1981A coup d'état in Ghana removes President Hilla Limann's PNP government and replaces it with the Provisional National Defence Council led by Flight lieutenant Jerry Rawlings.Africa
40. 1983Benjamin Ward is appointed New York City Police Department's first ever African American police commissioner.North AmericaAfrica
41. 1983In Nigeria, a coup d'état led by Major General Muhammadu Buhari ends the Second Nigerian Republic.Africa
42. 1983The AT&T Bell System is broken up by the United States Government.North America
43. 1986Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others, making it the second-deadliest hotel fire in American history.Latin AmericaNorth America
44. 1991All official Soviet Union institutions have ceased operations by this date, five days after the Soviet Union is officially dissolved.Europe
45. 1992Czechoslovakia is peacefully dissolved in what is dubbed by media as the Velvet Divorce, resulting in the creation of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.Europe
46. 1994The First Chechen War: The Russian Ground Forces begin a New Year's storming of Grozny.Europe
47. 1994This date is skipped altogether in Kiribati as the Phoenix Islands and Line Islands change time zones from UTC−11:00 to UTC+13:00 and UTC−10:00 to UTC+14:00, respectively.Oceania
48. 1995The final comic of Calvin and Hobbes is published.North America
49. 1998The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.Europe
50. 1999Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ends after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandahar Airport, Afghanistan.Asia
51. 1999The first President of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, resigns from office, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President and successor.Europe
52. 1999The U.S. government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties.North AmericaLatin America
53. 2001Rwanda adopts a new national flag and anthem.Africa
54. 2004The official opening of Taipei 101, the tallest skyscraper at that time in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).Asia
55. 2009Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.World
56. 2010Tornadoes touch down in midwestern and southern United States, including Washington County, Arkansas; Greater St. Louis, Sunset Hills, Missouri, Illinois, and Oklahoma, with a few tornadoes in the early hours. A total of 36 tornadoes touched down, resulting in the deaths of nine people and $113 million in damages.North America
57. 2011NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the Moon.North America
58. 2014A New Year's Eve celebration stampede in Shanghai kills at least 36 people and injures 49 others.Asia
59. 2015A fire breaks out at the Downtown Address Hotel in Downtown Dubai, United Arab Emirates, located near the Burj Khalifa, two hours before the fireworks display is due to commence. Sixteen injuries were reported; one had a heart attack, another suffered a major injury, and fourteen others with minor injuries.Middle East
60. 2018Thirty-nine people are killed after a ten-story building collapses in the industrial city of Magnitogorsk, Russia.Europe
61. 2019The World Health Organization is informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID-19, the cause of the COVID-19 pandemic.Asia
62. 2020The World Health Organization issues its first emergency use validation for a COVID-19 vaccine.World

Source: Wikipedia "December 31" / CC BY-SA 4.0