History of the Day for:
December 31
- 1744: James Bradley announced the discovery of Earth's motion of nutation, or wobbling.
- 1783: The import of African slaves was banned by all of the Northern states.
- 1857: Britain's Queen Victoria decided to make Ottawa the capital of Canada.
- 1862: The Union ironclad ship "Monitor" sank off Cape Hatteras, N.C.
- 1862: President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill admitting West Virginia to the Union.
- 1879: The cornerstone was laid for Honolulu's Iolani Palace, the only royal palace in the United States.
- 1879: Inventor Thomas Edison publicly demonstrated his electric incandescent light in Menlo Park, N.J.
- 1890: Ellis Island opened.
- 1911: Marie Curie received her second Nobel prize for her work on radioactive elements.
- 1923: The first transatlantic radio broadcast of a voice occurred between Pittsburgh and Manchester, England.
- 1935: Charles Darrow of Pennsylvania patented the game of Monopoly.
- 1938: Dr R.N. Harger's "drunkometer," the first breath test for car drivers, was officially introduced in Indianapolis.
- 1946: President Truman officially proclaimed the end of World War II.
- 1961: The Marshall Plan expired after distributing more than $12 billion in foreign aid; The Beach Boys played their debut gig under that name at a Ritchie Valens memorial concert in Calif.
- 1962: "The Match Game" debuted on NBC with host Gene Rayburn.
- 1963: Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir played music together for the first time.
- 1972: Pittsburgh Pirates star outfielder Roberto Clemente was killed in a plane crash near Puerto Rico while flying relief supplies to Nicaraguan earthquake victims.
- 1974: Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks joined Fleetwood Mac.
- 1976: The Cars played their first gig.
- 1981: CNN Headline News debuted.
- 1984: The nation's first mandatory seat belt law went into effect in New York state at midnight.
- 1984: Rajiv Gandhi took office as India's sixth prime minister, succeeding his mother, Indira.
- 1984: Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen was involved in a serious motor accident that tore off his left arm.
- 1985: Singer Rick Nelson, 45, and six other people were killed when fire broke out aboard a privately owned DC-3 that was taking the group to a New Year's Eve performance in Dallas.
- 1990: The Sci-Fi Channel began transmitting.
- 1995: Cartoonist Bill Watterson ended his popular "Calvin and Hobbes" comic strip after 10 years.
- 1998: The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.
- 1999: Boris Yeltsin resigns as President of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting President.
- 1999: Five hijackers, who had been holding 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane, leave the plane with two Islamic clerics that they had demanded be freed.
- 1999: The United States Government hands control of the Panama Canal (as well all the adjacent land to the canal known as the Panama Canal Zone) to Panama. This act complied with the signing of the 1977 Torrijos-Carter Treaties.
- 2004: The official opening of Taipei 101, currently the tallest skyscraper in the world, standing at a height of 509 metres (1,670 ft).
- 2007: Bocaue Fire: Seven people are injured when a fire results in the explosions of several fireworks stores in the municipality of Bocaue, Bulacan, Philippines.
- 2007: The massive Big Dig construction project in Boston, Massachusetts ends.
Happy New Year!
