#TodayInHistory – December 12

December 12 – Some important events on this day.

627 👉🏼 Battle at Nineveh: Byzantine Emperor Heraclius beats Sassanid forces during Byzantine-Sassanid War
1694 👉🏼 The Royal Society censures Edmond Halley for suggesting in a paper titled ‘Some considerations about the cause of the universal deluge’ that the story of Noah’s flood could be an account of a cometary impact
1700 👉🏼 Utrecht, Overijssel, Buren, Leerdam and Ijsselstein adopt Gregorian calendar
1792 👉🏼 In Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven (22) receives 1st lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn
1800 👉🏼 Washington, D.C., established as the capital of the United States of America
1858 👉🏼 1st Canadian coins circulated (1 cent, 5 cent, 10 cent & 20 cent)
1901 👉🏼 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first transatlantic radio signal, from Poldhu in Cornwall to Newfoundland, Canada

1913 👉🏼 Stolen “Mona Lisa” recovered in Florence.
Two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris, Leonardo da Vinci’s masterpiece is recovered inside Italian waiter Vincenzo Peruggia’s hotel room in Florence. Peruggia had previously worked at the Louvre and had participated in the heist with a group of accomplices dressed as Louvre janitors on the morning of August 21, 1911.

1925 👉🏼 Last Qajar Shah of Iran deposed; Rezā Shāh Pahlavi takes over
1946 👉🏼 UN accepts 6 Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D. Rockefeller Jr
1957 👉🏼 Willem J Kolff and his team at Ohio’s Cleveland Clinic removed the heart from a dog and replaced it with a pneumatic pump which kept the dog alive for 90 minutes, proving the viability of the artificial heart
1963 👉🏼 Kenya declares independence from Britain
1965 👉🏼 The Beatles’ last concert in Great Britain (Capitol Theatre in Cardiff, Wales)
2000 👉🏼 US Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore, settling the recount dispute in Florida’s 2000 presidential election in George W. Bush’s favor and thus handing him the presidency
2002 👉🏼 Ballon d’Or: Inter/Real Madrid forward Ronaldo is named best football player in Europe for a second time ahead of Real Madrid left back Roberto Carlos and Bayern Munich goalkeeper Oliver Kahn
2015 👉🏼 COP21 climate change summit in Paris reaches a deal between 195 countries to limit the rise in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels
2019 👉🏼 British General Election won by Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party in landslide win with 80 seat majority. Scottish National Party also wins 48 of 59 seats in Scotland.
2019 👉🏼 Deepest point on land on earth identified under Denman Glacier, east Antarctica at 3.5km below sea level