December 15

December 15

December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 16 days remaining.

Table of contents

1 Events
2 Births
3 Deaths
4 Holidays and Observances
5 See Also

Events

687 - St. Sergius I becomes Pope
1702 - Forty-seven ronin, formerly in the service of Asano Naganori, assault the household of Kira Yoshinaka, and kill him in vengence for their lord. Their display of the ideals of bushido becomes a national legend.
1791 - The United States Bill of Rights is passed.
1891 - James Naismith invents basketball
1914 - Battle of Lodz ends; Russians retreat toward Moscow
1916 - France defeats Germany in Battle of Verdun
1939 - Gone With the Wind premiers in Atlanta, Georgia
1945 - General Douglas MacArthur orders end of Shinto as state religion of Japan
1961 - An Israeli war crimes tribunal sentences Adolph Eichmann to die for his part in the Jewish holocaust.
1965 - Gemini program: Launch of Gemini 6A
1994 - Netscape Navigator 1.0 first released.
1995 - The European Communities Court of Justice passes the Bosman ruling
1997 - A chartered Tupolev TU-154 from Tajikistan crashes in the desert near Sharja, United Arab Emirates airport killing 85
2002 - BBC 7, television channel launched in UK

37 - Nero, Roman emperor (d. 68)
130 - Lucius Verus, Roman emperor (d. 169)
1613 - La Rochefoucauld, writer (d. 1680)
1832 - Gustave Eiffel, civil engineer (d. 1923)
1852 - Antoine Henri Becquerel, physicist and recipient of the Nobel Prize in physics 1903 (d. 1908)
1859 - L. L. Zamenhof, initiator of Esperanto (d. 1917)
1861 - Charles Duryea, automobile pioneer (d. 1938)
1888 - Maxwell Anderson, writer (d. 1959)
1892 - J. Paul Getty, oil tycoon (d. 1976)
1910 - John Hammond, musician
1912 - Ray Eames, American designer (d. 1988)
1912 - Stan Kenton, musician (d. 1979)
1916 - Buddy Cole, pianist (d. 1964)
1918 - Jeff Chandler, actor (d. 1961)
1922 - Alan Freed, disc jockey (d. 1965)
1923 - Freeman Dyson, physicist
1928 - Friedensreich Hundertwasser, painter and graphic artist (d. 2000)
1933 - Tim Conway, actor, comedian
1938 - Michael Bogdanov, film director and theatre manager
1942 - Dave Clark, musician ("Dave Clark Five")
1949 - Don Johnson, actor