#TodayInHistory – December 6

December 6 – Some important events on this day.

1196 👉🏼 Northern Dutch coast flooded, “Saint-Nicolas Flood”
1240 👉🏼 Mongols under Batu Khan occupy and destroy Kiev; out of 50,000 people in the city only 2,000 survive
1273 👉🏼 Thomas Aquinas is thought to have a mystical experience in Naples, refuses to continue his work “I cannot, because all that I have written seems like straw to me”
1631 👉🏼 1st predicted transit of Venus (Kepler) is observed
1768 👉🏼 1st edition of “Encyclopedia Brittanica” published in Scotland
1822 👉🏼 Veterinary school in Utrecht opens
1865 👉🏼 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution is ratified, abolishing slavery
1877 👉🏼 Thomas Edison records himself reciting “Mary had a little lamb”

1917 👉🏼 The Great Halifax Explosion
At 9:05 a.m., in the harbor of Halifax in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the most devastating manmade explosion in the pre-atomic age occurs when the Mont Blanc, a French munitions ship, explodes 20 minutes after colliding with another vessel.
✔️READ THE ARTICLE!

1921 👉🏼 Anglo-Irish Treaty signed; Ireland receives dominion status; partition creates Northern Ireland.
In 1919 the Irish War of Independence broke out. Nationalism had been growing in Ireland since at least the 1880s, and Ireland had been under the dominion of Britain for centuries. The war would churn on for another two years before the parties came to the negotiating table beginning in July 1921, days after a truce that ended the war came into effect.
The talks took months and were eventually signed at 2:20am on this day. Those involved included the British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George, Irish President Éamon de Valera and other figures such as Winston Churchill and Michael Collins. Valera did not participate in most of the discussions and eventually came out against the treaty but was outvoted by his cabinet.
The treaty created an Irish Free State that was to be afforded the same status as Canada, a self-governing dominion within the British Empire. Northern Ireland was given the option to leave the Free State, which it did. Disputes over the treaty led to the eruption of the Irish Civil War between pro and anti-treaty forces, and those in favor won the conflict.
Ireland remained under dominion status until 1937 when a new constitution was approved, effectively making Ireland a republic (though this was not formalized until 1949).

1958 👉🏼 US lunar probe Pioneer 3 reaches 107,269 km, falls back
1969 👉🏼 300,000 attend Altamont free concert in California, featuring The Rolling Stones. Marred by violence and four deaths.
1998 👉🏼 Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela
2001 👉🏼 The Canadian province of Newfoundland is renamed Newfoundland and Labrador
2006 👉🏼 NASA reveals photographs taken by Mars Global Surveyor suggesting the presence of liquid water on Mars
2018 👉🏼 Oldest-known plague sample found in 4,900-year-old remains of 20-year old woman in Gökhem, southern Sweden published in “Cell”
2018 👉🏼 Luxembourg is the first country to make all public transport free