TODAY IN HISTORY

1799 Death of French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais. He wrote the two comedies The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville.

1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of

France. He was crowned on December 2, 1804.

1951 The United Nations moves its headquarters to

New York City.

1977 The United States, the Soviet Union and 29 other nations sign a United Nations pact banning artificial use of the weather as a weapon of war, pledging they would never attack each other by starting man-made storms, earthquakes or tidal waves.

1990 East and West Germany sign a monetary union

treaty, the first step on the road to unification.

1991 Death of Đỗ Nhuận (born 1922), Vietnamese composer and general secretary of the Viet Nam Musicians’ Association. He is well-known for many songs, including Du Kích Ca (Guerrillas’ March), Du Kích Sông Thao (Guerrillas on the Thao River) and Giải Phóng Điện Biên (Liberation of Điện Biên). His Cô Sao (Miss Sao) and Người Tạc Tượng (The Sculptor) are the first operas ever written in Việt Nam.

2016 More than 150 people are feared dead by two landslides triggered by more than three days of heavy rain in central Sri Lanka.

2019 Australian federal elections won by Scott Morrison's coalition government in a surprise result.

2020 WHO member states agree to set up an inquiry into the global response to the pandemic, including looking at the WHO itself.

2021 India records the highest recorded daily COVID-19 death toll to date in the world with 4,529 deaths.

2022

Four European Union countries plan to speed up the continent’s green transition and help wean it off Russian energy imports through a large new project to build wind farms in the North Sea, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen says.