17th December 497 BCE: The first Saturnalia festival celebrated in ancient Rome
The Saturnalia festival was dedicated to Roman god, ...
17 Dec 20250s
16th December 1431: Henry VI became the only English monarch to be crowned King of France
Henry was crowned by the Bishop of Paris, as the Archbishop of Reims was aligned with the French crown. Attendance was limited, and the event failed to generate significant support among the French .....
16 Dec 20250s
15th December 1851: The Forest Creek Monster Meeting of Australian gold miners protests taxes
Over 14,000 Australian gold miners gathered at Forest Creek in Victoria for a protest known as the Monster ...
15 Dec 20250s
14th December 1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first to reach the South Pole
Amundsen’s team arrived five weeks ahead of British explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova ...
14 Dec 20250s
13th December 1577: Francis Drake departs Plymouth on his circumnavigation of the globe
Drake’s fleet consisted of five ships, with the flagship Pelican later renamed Golden Hind, and it departed Plymouth on 13 ...
13 Dec 20250s
12th December 1935: The Lebensborn registered association established in Nazi Germany by the SS
Literally translated as ‘Fount of Life’, Lebensborn was designed to harness apparent racial purity through the birth of children conceived between Aryan women and members of the SS, often as a result ...
12 Dec 20250s
11th December 1936: King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom announces his abdication in a worldwide radio broadcast
King Edward VIII Edward abdicated in order to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson, and became known as the Duke of ...
11 Dec 20250s
10th December 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris
Drafted in the aftermath of the Second World War and the revelations of mass atrocities committed by totalitarian regimes, the declaration aimed to provide a shared framework for human dignity applica...
10 Dec 20250s
