17th December

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive and referred to by the Germans as Unternehmen Wacht am Rhein, was an offensive campaign on the Western Front during the Second World…

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many engaging in total war…

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States…

Fernando Affonso Collor de Mello is a Brazilian politician who served as the 32nd president of Brazil from 1990 to 1992, when he resigned in a failed attempt to stop his impeachment trial by the…

The Second Congo War, also known as Africa's World War or the Great War of Africa, was a major conflict that began on 2 August 1998, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, just over a year after…

Blood transfusion is the process of transferring blood products into a person's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used for various medical conditions to replace lost components of the…

The American Revolution (1765–1789) was a political movement in the Thirteen Colonies of Great Britain. It began as a rebellion and turned into a revolution eventually creating the sovereign United…

Tarek El-Tayeb Mohamed Bouazizi was a Tunisian street vendor who, in response to the confiscation of his wares as well as the harassment and humiliation inflicted by municipal officials and their…

Saturnalia is an ancient Roman festival and holiday in honour of the god Saturn, held on 17 December in the Julian calendar and later expanded with festivities until 19 December. By the 1st century…

In December 1973, Fatah, a Palestinian military organization executed a series of attacks originating at Rome-Fiumicino Airport in Italy, resulting in the deaths of 34 people. The attacks began with…

SpaceShipOne is an experimental air-launched rocket-powered aircraft with sub-orbital spaceflight capability at speeds of up to 3,000 ft/s (2,000 mph) / 910 m/s (3,300 km/h) using a hybrid rocket…

The Romanian revolution was a period of violent civil unrest in the Socialist Republic of Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around…

Dieter Grau was a German-born American aerospace engineer and member of the "von Braun rocket group", at Peenemünde (1939–1945) working on the V-2 rockets in World War II. He was…

Don Van Vliet, known by his stage name Captain Beefheart, was an American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and visual artist. Conducting a rotating ensemble known as the…

Janet Davison Rowley was an American human geneticist and the first scientist to identify a chromosomal translocation as the cause of leukemia and other cancers, thus proving that…

Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī, commonly known as Rumi, was a Sufi mystic, poet, and founder of the Islamic brotherhood known as the Mevlevi Order. His family hailed from Balkh. Rumi…

Nzinga or Njinga Ana de Sousa Mbande was a southwest African paramount ruler who ruled as queen of the Ambundu Kingdoms of Ndongo (1624–1663) and Matamba (1631–1663), located in…