December 31: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1600 - The British East India Company is chartered.
2. 1790 - Efimeris, the oldest Greek newspaper of which issues have survived till today is published for the first time.
3. 1862 - American Civil War: Abraham Lincoln signs an act that admits West Virginia to the Union, thus dividing Virginia in two.
4. 1879 - Thomas Edison demonstrates incandescent lighting to the public for the first time, inMenlo Park, New Jersey.
5. 1907 - The first New Year's Eve celebration is held in Times Square (then known as Longacre Square) in New York, New York.
6. 1951 - The Marshall Plan expires after distributing more than US$13.3 billion in foreign aid to rebuild Europe.
7. 1998- The European Exchange Rate Mechanism freezes the values of the legacy currencies in the Eurozone, and establishes the value of the euro currency.
8. 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.
9. 2009 - Both a blue moon and a lunar eclipse occur.
10. 2011 - NASA succeeds in putting the first of two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory satellites in orbit around the moon.
11. Famous Birthdays: Jacques Cartier (French explorer), Johann Spurzheim (German physician), Robert Grant Aitken (American astronomer), Henri Matisse (French painter), Avram Hershko (Israeli biologist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: December 30

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: January 1

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.