1st december anniversaries

• Birth
  • 1933
  • "Birth of Lou Rawls, American soul, jazz and blues singer ."
• event
  • 1420
  • France
  • Henry V of England enters Paris
  • 1835
  • Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales
  • 1918
  • "Iceland gained its independence from Denmark, but retained the King of Denmark as its monarch."
  • 1918
  • "The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as Yugoslavia) was proclaimed."
  • 1918
  • Proclamation of the uniting of Transylvania with Romania .
  • 1934
  • "Soviet leader Josef Stalin began a massive purge (i.e. assassination) of his real and perceived enemies and opponents in the Communist Party, government, armed forces, and intelligentsia"
  • 1939
  • Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer made his first ever appearance in a childrens colouring book given away by Montgomery Ward stores in the USA. (Date is approximate; it was launched for the 1939 Christmas season)
  • 1958
  • The Central African Republic became independent from France .
  • 1959
  • "12 countries, including the UK and the USA, signed the Antarctic Treaty, setting aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve free from military activity"
  • 1969
  • The US Government held its first draft lottery since WWII to determine the order in which men were selected for war service in Vietnam
  • 1978
  • United States
  • "US President Jimmy Carter designated 56 million acres of Alaska as national monuments, doubling the size of the US national park system."
  • 1988
  • A cyclone in Bangladesh killed thousands of people and left five million homeless.
  • 1989
  • Mikhail Gorbachev became the first Soviet leader to visit the Vatican and meet the Pope
  • 1990
  • Channel Tunnel excavation teams meet in the middle
  • 1999
  • An international team of scientists announced that they had mapped an entire human chromosome. (All chromosomes were mapped by April 2003)
• Death
  • 1135
  • Great Britain
  • Death of Henry I; Stephen seizes the throne of England amid a confusion of Matildas
  • 1707
  • "1 Jeremiah Clarke, shot himself 1707 while mentally deranged (born c 1673). Organist and composer. Best known for the so-called 'trumpet voluntary', once thought to have been written by Purcell"