1st December
1761 Marie Tussaud, the French founder of Madame Tussaud’s wax museum, born in Strasbourg (d. 1850)
1941 Japanese Emperor Hirohito signs declaration of war
2nd December
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of France in Paris
1939 British Imperial Airways & British Airways merge to form BOAC
3rd December
1967 1st human heart transplant performed in South Africa by Dr. Christiaan Barnard on Louis Washkansky
1984 Bhopal disaster: Union Carbide pesticide plant leak 45 tons of methyl isocyanate and other toxic compounds in Bhopal, India, kills 2,259 (official figure)
4th December
1534 Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent occupies Baghdad
1829 Britain outlaws “suttee” in India (widow burning herself to death on her husband’s funeral pyre)
5th December
1791 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer, dies in Vienna Austria at 35
1950 Sikkim becomes a protectorate of India
6th December
1849 Harriet Tubman escapes from slavery in Maryland for the 2nd and final time
1998 Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela
7th December
1856 First Hindu widow married officially.
1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people
1982 In Texas, Charles Brooks, Jr. becomes the first person to be executed by lethal injection in the US.
8th December
1864 George Boole, English mathematician (Boolean algebra), dies at 49
1983 9th Space Shuttle Mission, Columbia 6, lands at Edwards AFB
