In 1120, The White Ship sank in the English Channel, drowning William Adelin, son and heir of England’s King Henry I.
1487 - Elizabeth of York was crowned Queen of England.
1758 - Britain captured Fort Duquesne (later Fort Pitt/Pittsburgh) from the French.
1783 - Britain evacuated New York city, its last military position in the United States.
1867 - Alfred Nobel patented dynamite.
1947 - New Zealand ratified the Statute of Westminster to become independent of legislative control by the United Kingdom.
1952 - Agatha Christie’s murder-mystery play The Mousetrap opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London. It now the longest continuously-running play in history.
1955 - Clement Attlee resigned as leader of the UK Labour Party.
1960 - Three of the four Mirabal sisters, opponents of the dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, were assassinated.
1963 - The funeral of assassinated President John F Kennedy took place in Washington.
1973 - Greek President George Papadapoulos was ousted in a military coup.
1984 - Thirty-six top musicians gathered in a Notting Hill studio to record Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas? in order to raise money for famine relief in Ethiopia.
1990 - Poland held its first popular presidential election.
1992 - The Czech parliament voted to split the country into separate Czech and Slovak republics, beginning on January 1, 1993.
1993 - Egyptian Prime Minister Atef Sedki escaped an attempt on his life when a bomb was detonated by Islamic militants near his motorcade.
1998 - Britain’s highest court ruled that former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose extradition was being sought by Spain, could not claim immunity from prosecution for the crimes he committed during his rule.
2013 - The Guinness World Records stated the Richards family in Canberra, Australia, had set the world record for having the most Christmas lights, with over 500,000 lights around their home.