Events on December 1 41
Year 1640
End of the Iberian Union: Portugal acclaims as King João IV of Portugal, ending 59 years of personal union of the crowns of Portugal and Spain and the end of the rule of the Philippine Dynasty.
Year 1824
United States presidential election, 1824: Since no candidate received a majority of the total electoral college votes in the election, the United States House of Representatives is given the task of deciding the winner in accordance with the Twelfth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Year 1828
Argentine general Juan Lavalle makes a coup against governor Manuel Dorrego, beginning the Decembrist revolution.
Year 1834
Slavery is abolished in the Cape Colony in accordance with the Slavery Abolition Act 1833.
Year 1862
In his State of the Union Address President Abraham Lincoln reaffirms the necessity of ending slavery as ordered ten weeks earlier in the Emancipation Proclamation.
Year 1865
Shaw University, the first historically black university in the southern United States, is founded in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Year 1913
The Buenos Aires Metro, the first underground railway system in the Southern Hemisphere and in Latin America, begins operation.
Year 1913
Crete, having obtained self rule from Turkey after the First Balkan War, is annexed by Greece.
Year 1918
Transylvania unites with the Kingdom of Romania, following the incorporation of Bessarabia (March 27) and Bukovina (November 28), thus concluding the Great Union.
Year 1918
The Kingdom of Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom.
Year 1918
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed.
Year 1919
Lady Astor becomes the first female Member of Parliament to take her seat in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom. (She had been elected to that position on November 28.)
Year 1924
The National Hockey League's first United States-based franchise, the Boston Bruins, played their first game in league play at home, at the still-extant Boston Arena indoor hockey facility.[1]
Year 1934
In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergey Kirov is shot dead by Leonid Nikolaev at the Communist Party headquarters in Leningrad.
Year 1941
World War II: Emperor Hirohito of Japan gives the final approval to initiate war against the United States.
Year 1941
World War II: Fiorello La Guardia, Mayor of New York City and Director of the Office of Civilian Defense, signs Administrative Order 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.
Year 1952
The New York Daily News reports the news of Christine Jorgensen, the first notable case of sex reassignment surgery.
Year 1955
American Civil Rights Movement: In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give up her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to that city's bus boycott.
Year 1958
The Our Lady of the Angels School fire in Chicago kills 92 children and three nuns.
Year 1959
Cold War: Opening date for signature of the Antarctic Treaty, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on the continent.
Year 1960
Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested (and later deported) from Hamburg, Germany, after accusations of attempted arson.
Year 1964
Vietnam War: U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his top-ranking advisers meet to discuss plans to bomb North Vietnam.
Year 1969
Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.
Year 1971
Cambodian Civil War: Khmer Rouge rebels intensify assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray.
Year 1974
TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport, killing all 92 people on board.
Year 1974
Northwest Airlines Flight 6231, another Boeing 727, crashes northwest of John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Year 1981
Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, crashes in Corsica, killing all 180 people on board.
Year 1984
NASA conducts the Controlled Impact Demonstration, wherein an airliner is deliberately crashed in order to test technologies and gather data to help improve survivability of crashes.
Year 1989
Philippine coup attempt: The right-wing military rebel Reform the Armed Forces Movement attempts to oust Philippine President Corazon Aquino in a failed bloody coup d'état.
Year 1989
Cold War: East Germany's parliament abolishes the constitutional provision granting the Communist Party the leading role in the state.
Year 1990
Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 metres beneath the seabed.
Year 1991
Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.
Year 1997
In the Indian state of Bihar, Ranvir Sena attacked the CPI(ML) Party Unity stronghold Lakshmanpur-Bathe, killing 63 lower caste people.