Events on December 20 37
Year 217
Callixtus I is elected as the sixteenth pope, although Hippolytus of Rome is soon thereafter elected as a rival pope.
Year 1192
Richard I of England is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after the Third Crusade.
Year 1522
Siege of Rhodes: Suleiman the Magnificent accepts the surrender of the surviving Knights of Rhodes, who are allowed to evacuate. They eventually settle on Malta and become known as the Knights of Malta.
Year 1606
The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
Year 1832
HMS Clio under the command of Captain Onslow arrives at Port Egmont under orders to take possession of the Falkland Islands
Year 1860
South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States.
Year 1916
World War I: The battle of Verdun results in a French victory after more than 9 months of intense fighting.
Year 1941
World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the "Flying Tigers" in Kunming, China.
Year 1946
The popular Christmas film It's a Wonderful Life is first released in New York City.
Year 1951
The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.
Year 1952
A United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington killing 87.
Year 1967
A Pennsylvania Railroad Budd Metroliner exceeds 155 mph on their New York Division, also present day Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
Year 1968
The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.
Year 1971
The international aid organization Doctors Without Borders is founded by Bernard Kouchner and a group of journalists in Paris, France.
Year 1973
The Prime Minister of Spain, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is assassinated by a car bomb attack in Madrid.
Year 1984
The Summit Tunnel fire is the largest underground fire in history, as a freight train carrying over 1 million liters of gasoline derails near the town of Todmorden, England, in the Pennines.
Year 1987
In the worst peacetime sea disaster, the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).
Year 1991
A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.
Year 1995
American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia killing 159.
Year 2004
A gang of thieves steal £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, one of the largest bank robberies in British history.
Year 2007
Elizabeth II becomes the oldest monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
Year 2007
The Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, and O Lavrador de Café by Brazilian modernist painter Cândido Portinari, are stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art.
Year 2013
China successfully launches the Bolivian Túpac Katari 1 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center.
Year ?
Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of Emperor.