December 1

Events

Pre-1600

• 800 - A council is convened in the Vatican, at which Charlemagne is to judge the accusations against Pope Leo III.
• 1420 - Henry V of England enters Paris alongside his father-in-law King Charles VI of France.
• 1577 - Courtiers Christopher Hatton and Thomas Heneage are knighted by Queen Elizabeth I of England.

  1601–1900

• 1640 - End of the Iberian Union: Portugal acclaims as King João IV of Portugal, ending 59 years of personal union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain and the end of the rule of the Philippine Dynasty.
• 1662 - Diarist John Evelyn records skating on the frozen lake in St James's Park, London, watched by Charles II and Queen Catherine.
• 1768 - The slave ship Fredensborg sinks off Tromøya in Norway.
• 1821 - José Núñez de Cáceres wins the independence of the Dominican Republic from Spain and names the new territory the Republic of Spanish Haiti.
• 1822 - Pedro I is crowned Emperor of Brazil.
• 1824 - United States presidential election: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
• 1828 - Argentine general Juan Lavalle makes a coup against governor Manuel Dorrego, beginning the Decembrist revolution.
• 1834 - Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony in accordance with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
• 1862 - American Civil War: In his second State of the Union Address, President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.
• 1865 - Shaw University, the first historically black university in the southern United States, is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina.
• 1878 - President Rutherford B. Hayes gets the first telephone installed in the White House.
• 1900 - Nicaragua sells canal rights to U.S. for $5 million. The canal agreement fails in March 1901. Great Britain rejects the amended treaty.

  1901–present

• 1913 - The Buenos Aires Metro, the first underground railway system in the Southern Hemisphere and in Latin America, begins operation.
• 1913 - Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece.
• 1918 - Transylvania unites with Romania, following the incorporation of Bessarabia and Bukovina and thus concluding the Great Union.
• 1918 - Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom.
• 1918 - The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes is proclaimed.
• 1919 - Lady Astor becomes the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom.
• 1924 - The National Hockey League's first United States–based franchise, the Boston Bruins, plays their first game in league play at home, at the still-extant Boston Arena indoor hockey facility.
• 1924 - A Soviet-backed communist 1924 Estonian coup d'état attempt fails in Estonia.
• 1934 - Sergei Kirov is assassinated, paving way for the repressive Great Purge, and Vinnytsia massacre by General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin.
• 1939 - World War II: A day after the beginning of the Winter War in Finland, the Cajander III Cabinet resigns and is replaced by the Ryti I Cabinet, while the Finnish Parliament move from Helsinki to Kauhajoki to escape the Soviet airstrikes.
• 1939 - The Soviet Union establishes the Finnish Democratic Republic puppet state in Terijoki.
• 1941 - World War II: Emperor Hirohito of Japan gives his tacit approval to the decision of the imperial council to initiate war against the United States.
• 1941 - World War II: Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.
• 1952 - The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery.
• 1955 - American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to that city's bus boycott.
• 1958 - The Central African Republic attains self-rule within the French Union.
• 1958 - The Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago kills 92 children and three nuns.
• 1959 - Cold War: Opening date for signature of the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.
• 1960 - Patrice Lumumba is arrested by Mobutu Sese Seko's men on the banks of the Sankuru River, for inciting the army to rebellion.
• 1963 - Nagaland, became the 16th state of India.
• 1964 - Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.
• 1969 - Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.
• 1971 - Cambodian Civil War: Khmer Rouge rebels intensify assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray.
• 1971 - Purge of Croatian Spring leaders starts in Yugoslavia at the meeting of the League of Communists at the Karađorđevo estate.
• 1973 - Papua New Guinea gains self-government from Australia.
• 1974 - TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport, killing all 92 people on board.
• 1974 - Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, another Boeing 727, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport.
• 1981 - Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, crashes in Corsica, killing all 180 people on board.
• 1984 - NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes.
• 1988 - World AIDS Day is proclaimed worldwide by the UN member states.
• 1988 - Benazir Bhutto, is named as the Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first female leader to lead a Muslim nation.
• 1989 - Philippine coup attempt: The right-wing military rebel Reform the Armed Forces Movement attempts to oust Philippine President Corazon Aquino in a failed bloody coup d'état.
• 1989 - Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist Party the leading role in the state.
• 1990 - Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet beneath the seabed.
• 1991 - Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.
• 1997 - In the Indian state of Bihar, Ranvir Sena attacks the CPI Party Unity stronghold Lakshmanpur-Bathe, killing 63 lower caste people.
• 1997 - Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal opens fire at a group of students in Heath High School in West Paducah, Kentucky, killing three and injuring five.
• 2000 - Vicente Fox Quesada is inaugurated as the president of Mexico, marking the first peaceful transfer of executive federal power to an opposing political party following a free and democratic election in Mexico's history.
• 2001 - The United Russia political party was founded.
• 2005 - As a result of the merger of the Perm Oblast and the Komi-Permyak Autonomous Okrug, a new subject of the Russian Federation, the Perm Krai, was created.
• 2006 - The law on same-sex marriage comes into force in South Africa, legalizing same-sex marriage for the first time on the African continent.
• 2009 - The Treaty of Lisbon entered into force in the European Union.
• 2011 - The Alma-Ata Metro was opened.
• 2018 - The Oulu Police informed the public about the first offence of the much larger child sexual exploitation in Oulu, Finland.
• 2019 - Arsenal Women 11–1 Bristol City Women breaks the record for most goals scored in a FA Women's Super League match, with Vivianne Miedema involved in ten of the eleven Arsenal goals.
• 2019 - The outbreak of coronavirus infection begins in Wuhan.
• 2020 - The Arecibo Telescope collapses.

  Births

Pre-1600

• 624 - Hasan ibn Ali, the second Shia Imam
• 1081 - Louis VI, French king
• 1083 - Anna Komnene, Byzantine physician and scholar
• 1415 - Jan Długosz, Polish historian
• 1438 - Peter II, Duke of Bourbon, son of Charles I
• 1443 - Magdalena of France, French princess
• 1521 - Takeda Shingen, Japanese daimyō
• 1525 - Tadeáš Hájek, Czech physician and astronomer
• 1530 - Bernardino Realino, Italian Jesuit
• 1561 - Sophie Hedwig of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, Duchess consort of Pomerania-Wolgast
• 1580 - Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, French astronomer and historian

  1601–1900

• 1690 - Philip Yorke, 1st Earl of Hardwicke, English lawyer and politician, Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom
• 1709 - Franz Xaver Richter, Czech composer, violinist, and conductor
• 1716 - Étienne Maurice Falconet, French sculptor
• 1743 - Martin Heinrich Klaproth, German chemist and academic
• 1761 - Marie Tussaud, French-English sculptor, founded Madame Tussauds Wax Museum
• 1792 - Nikolai Lobachevsky, Russian mathematician and geometer
• 1800 - Mihály Vörösmarty, Hungarian poet
• 1805 - 9th Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader
• 1844 - Alexandra of Denmark
• 1846 - Ledi Sayadaw, Burmese monk and philosopher
• 1847 - Julia A. Moore, American poet
• 1855 - John Evans, English-Australian politician, 21st Premier of Tasmania
• 1869 - Eligiusz Niewiadomski, Polish painter and critic
• 1871 - Archie MacLaren, English cricketer
• 1883 - Henry Cadbury, American historian, scholar, and academic
• 1884 - Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, German painter and etcher
• 1886 - Rex Stout, American detective novelist
• 1886 - Zhu De, Chinese general and politician, 1st Vice Chairman of the People's Republic of China
• 1894 - Afrânio Pompílio Gastos do Amaral, Brazilian herpetologist
• 1895 - Henry Williamson, English farmer, soldier, and author
• 1896 - Georgy Zhukov, Russian general and politician, 2nd Minister of Defence for the Soviet Union
• 1898 - Stuart Garson, Canadian lawyer and politician, 12th Premier of Manitoba
• 1898 - Cyril Ritchard, Australian-American actor and singer
• 1900 - Karna Maria Birmingham, Australian artist, illustrator and print maker