History of the Day for:
December 2
- 1697: St Paul's Cathedral opened in London.
- 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned emperor of France in Paris by Pope Pius VII.
- 1816: The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opened.
- 1823: U.S. President James Monroe introduced his "Monroe Doctrine" under which it was held that the American continents were not to open to future colonization by any European power.
- 1859: John Brown, an American anti-slavery campaigner, was hanged after an abortive raid on the federal arsenal in Virginia.
- 1859: Georges Seurat, the French artist and founder of the school of neo-impressionism, was born.
- 1887: Charles Dickens' first public reading took place in U.S. in New York City.
- 1901: King Camp Gillette patented the first safety razor, which had a double-edged disposable blade.
- 1908: Pu Yi (Hsuan-T'ung) became China's Last Emperor At age 3.
- 1927: Ford Motor Company unveiled the Model A automobile, the successor to its Model T; it sold for $385.
- 1932: "The Adventures of Charlie Chan" was first heard on the NBC-Blue radio network.
- 1933: The first transatlantic telephone wedding took place as Bertil Clason of Detroit wed Sigrid Carlson of Stockholm, Sweden.
- 1933: Fred Astaire's first film, "Dancing Lady," was released. His dancing partner for the movie was Joan Crawford.
- 1939: New York's La Guardia Airport began operations, as an airliner from Chicago landed at 12:01 a.m.
- 1942: The world's first nuclear chain reaction took place at the University of Chicago.
- 1952: Denver's KOA-TV transmitted the first human birth to be seen on TV. It was a part of the program "The March of Medicine."
- 1954: Sen. Joseph McCarthy was condemned by the U.S. Senate for misconduct after his ruthless investigations of thousands of suspected communists.
- 1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared in a nationally broadcast speech that he was a Marxist-Leninist and would lead Cuba to communism.
- 1968: President Nixon named Henry Kissinger security advisor.
- 1969: The Boeing 747 jumbo jet got its first public preview as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, flew from Seattle to New York City.
- 1970: The Environmental Protection Agency began operating under its first director, William Ruckelshaus.
- 1971: The unmanned Soviet spacecraft Mars 3 landed on Mars.
- 1982: The first permanent artificial heart was implanted in Dr. Barney Clark, a Seattle dentist, by Dr. William De Vries at the University of Utah.
- 1990: After German reunification, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition won Germany's first free all-German elections since 1932.
- 1991: Joseph Cicippio, U.S. hostage in Lebanon, was freed after being held for 1,906 days by the Revolutionary Justice Organization. He was kidnapped on Sept. 12, 1986.
- 1994: "Hollywood Madam" Heidi Fleiss was convicted in Los Angeles of three counts of pandering.
- 1999: Glenbrook rail accident near Sydney, New South Wales.
- 1999: The United Kingdom devolves political power in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Executive.
- 2001: Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
- 2008: Thai Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat resigns after the 2008 Thailand political crisis.