29 Azar 1387

Events

• 1793 (233 years ago) War of the First Coalition: The Siege of Toulon ends when Napoleon's French artillery forces the British to abandon the city, securing southern France from invasion.
• 1941 (85 years ago) World War II: Adolf Hitler appoints himself as head of the Oberkommando des Heeres.
• 1972 (54 years ago) Apollo program: The last crewed lunar flight, Apollo 17, carrying Eugene Cernan, Ronald Evans, and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.
• 1983 (43 years ago) The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• 1986 (40 years ago) Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from exile in Gorky.
• 1997 (29 years ago) SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.
• 2001 (25 years ago) Argentine economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
• 2005 (21 years ago) A passenger train from Sucha Beskidzka to Żywiec in Poland loses its brakes while on a steep downhill part of the route. It is stopped in a controlled collision in Świnna by a train travelling in opposite direction. 2 drivers and 6 passengers are injured.

Births

• 1683 (343 years ago) Philip V of Spain,
• 1852 (174 years ago) Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-American physicist, chemist, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1931)
• 1906 (120 years ago) Leonid Brezhnev, Ukrainian-Russian marshal, engineer, and politician, 4th Head of State of the Soviet Union (died 1982)
• 1915 (111 years ago) Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (died 1963)
• 1934 (92 years ago) Pratibha Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, 12th President of India
• 1941 (85 years ago) Lee Myung-bak, South Korean businessman and politician, 10th President of South Korea
• 1980 (46 years ago) Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor and producer
• 1987 (39 years ago) Karim Benzema, French footballer

Deaths

• 401 (1625 years ago) Pope Anastasius I,
• 1111 (915 years ago) Al-Ghazali, Persian jurist, philosopher, theologian, and mystic (born 1058)
• 1370 (656 years ago) Pope Urban V,
• 1741 (285 years ago) Vitus Bering, Danish-born Russian explorer (born 1681)
• 1848 (178 years ago) Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (born 1818)
• 1915 (111 years ago) Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist (born 1864)
• 1953 (73 years ago) Robert Andrews Millikan, American physicist and eugenicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1868)
• 1996 (30 years ago) Marcello Mastroianni, Italian-French actor and singer (born 1924)

All 380 events, births and deaths of December 19