21 Azar 1387 | Thursday 11 December 2008

This day in four calendars

1913 (113 years ago) More than two years after it was stolen from the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci's painting Mona Lisa is recovered in Florence, Italy. The thief, Vincenzo Peruggia, is immediately arrested.
1917 (109 years ago) World War I: British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on foot and declares martial law.
1941 (85 years ago) World War II: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans' declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The United States, in turn, declares war on them.
1948 (78 years ago) Arab–Israeli War: The United Nations passes General Assembly Resolution 194, creating a Conciliation Commission to mediate the conflict.
1958 (68 years ago) French Upper Volta and French Dahomey gain self-government from France, becoming the Republic of Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and the Republic of Dahomey (now Benin), respectively, and joining the French Community.
1972 (54 years ago) Apollo 17 becomes the sixth and final Apollo mission to land on the Moon.
1990 (36 years ago) Demonstrations by students and workers across Albania begin, which eventually trigger the fall of communism in Albania.
2005 (21 years ago) Cronulla riots: Thousands of White Australians demonstrate against ethnic violence resulting in a riot against anyone thought to be Lebanese in Cronulla, New South Wales; these are followed up by retaliatory ethnic attacks on Cronulla.

1803 (223 years ago) Hector Berlioz, French composer, conductor, and critic (died 1869)
1810 (216 years ago) Alfred de Musset, French dramatist, poet, and novelist (died 1857)
1843 (183 years ago) Robert Koch, German microbiologist and physician, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1910)
1882 (144 years ago) Max Born, German physicist and mathematician, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1970)
1911 (115 years ago) Naguib Mahfouz, Egyptian author, playwright, and screenwriter, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2006)
1918 (108 years ago) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian novelist, historian, and short story writer, Nobel Prize laureate (died 2008)
1943 (83 years ago) John Kerry, American lieutenant, lawyer, and politician, 68th United States Secretary of State
1969 (57 years ago) Viswanathan Anand, Indian chess player

384 (1642 years ago) Pope Damasus I,
1198 (828 years ago) Averroes, Spanish astronomer, physicist, and philosopher (born 1126)
1241 (785 years ago) Ögedei Khan, Mongolian emperor (born 1186)
1282 (744 years ago) Michael VIII Palaiologos, Byzantine emperor (born 1225)
1938 (88 years ago) Christian Lous Lange, Norwegian historian and educator, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1869)
1964 (62 years ago) Sam Cooke, American singer-songwriter (born 1931)
2012 (14 years ago) Ravi Shankar, Indian-American sitar player and composer (born 1920)
2021 (5 years ago) Anne Rice, American author (born 1941)