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1154 - Henry II is crowned King of England.
1843 - A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is published.
1885 - Settlement of the dispute between England and Spain over the Caroline Islands.
1914 - Hussein Kamel, son of Khedive Ismail, assumes the throne of Egypt under the name of Sultan, succeeding his nephew, Khedive Abbas Helmy II.
1915-The Germans invent the deadly phosgene gas for use in artillery shells.
1916 - The start of the Battle of Verdun during World War I, in which the French were able to stop the German advance in their country, and after that they launched a counterattack that achieved great success.
1930-The beginning of the revolution in Vietnam against French colonialism led by Ho Chi Minh.
1941 - Adolf Hitler proclaims himself Commander-in-Chief of the German armies, and calls himself the Fuhrer.
1944 - The first issue of the French newspaper Le Monde is published.
1946 First Indochina War breaks out.
1963 - Zanzibar becomes independent from Britain.
1965 Charles de Gaulle is re-elected as President of France.
1971 - Pakistan's President Muhammad Ayub Khan resigns after his country's defeat by
India.
1983 The FIFA World Cup “Jules Rimet Cup” was stolen from the safes of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.
1984 - The United Kingdom signs a formal agreement under which Hong Kong will be transferred to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
1989 - East Germany and West Germany sign a cooperation agreement.
2010 - Alexander Lukashenko wins a fourth term as President of Belarus.
Born on this day…
1852 - Albert Michelson, an American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1907.
1934 - Pratibha Patil, the 12th President of India.
1941 - Lee Myung-bak, the tenth president of South Korea.
Of the deaths today...
1915 - Alois Alzheimer, a German psychologist and neuropathologist known for discovering Alzheimer's disease.
1954 – Frans Jenr Bengtsson, Swedish writer, novelist, poet and historian (b.
2004 - Herbert Brown, an American chemist who won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979.
Holidays and events..
Liberation Day in Goa, India.
