On This Day

Reconquest of Spain

2 January 1492.

Haitian independence proclaimed

1 January 1804

Archbishop Thomas à Becket is murdered

29 December 1170

Tsunami devastates Indian Ocean coast

The tsunami was the deadliest in recorded history, taking 230,000 lives in a mat...

Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the USSR

Mikhail Gorbachev announces that he is resigning as president of the Soviet Unio...

Soviet Union invades Afghanistan

24 December 1979

Vincent van Gogh chops off his ear

23 December 1888

Fyodor Dostoevsky spared from execution

22 December 1849

Pan Am Flight 103 explodes over Scotland

21 December 1988

Berlin Wall opened for first time

20 December 1963

Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov released from internal...

19 December 1986. Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (1921-1989) was a Soviet nuclear p...

First airplane flies

17 December 1903