TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2017

On this day in history:

1154 - Henry II became King of England.

1562 - The Battle of Dreux was fought between the Huguenots and the Catholics, beginning the French Wars of Religion. 1842 - Hawaii’s independence was recognised by the US. 1843 - Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol was first published in England.

1865 - Chinese bushranger Sam Poo is hanged in Bathurst, Australia.

1932 - The British Broadcasting Corp. began transmitting overseas with its Empire Service to Australia.

1957 - Air service between London and Moscow was inaugurated.

1964 - The newly-built town of Jindabyne, relocated for the building of the Snowy Mountain Hydro-electric scheme, is opened.

1984 - Britain and China signed an accord returning Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty on July 1, 1997.

1986 - The Soviet Union announced it had freed dissident Andrei Sakharov from internal exile, and pardoned his wife, Yelena Bonner.

1986 - Independent counsel Lawrence Walsh was appointed to investigate the Iran-Contra issue.

1989 - US. troops invaded Panama to overthrow the regime of General Noriega. 1998 - A four-day bombing of Iraq by British and American forces ended.

2000 - The UN Security Council voted to impose sanctions on Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers unless they closed all terrorist training camps and surrender U.S. embassy bombing suspect Osama bin Laden.

2001 - Argentine economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

2012 - Park Geun-hye is elected the first female president of South Korea.

2016- Russian ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated while at an art exhibition in Ankara. The assassin, Mevlüt Mert Altıntas, is shot and killed by Turkish guards.

2016 – A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills and injures multiple people at a Christmas market.