1499 – Portuguese explorer Nicolau Coelho returns to Lisbon, after discovering the sea route to India as a companion to Vasco da Gama, who died on December 24 the previous year.
1519 – Zhu Chenhao declares the Ming Dynasty Zhengde Emperor as a usurper, beginning the Prince of Ning rebellion, and leads his army north in an attempt to capture Nanjing.
1882 – War of the Pacific: Chile suffers its last military defeat in the Battle of La Concepcion when a garrison of 77 men is virtually wiped out by a 1,300-strong Peruvian force, many of them armed with spears.
1913 – Death Valley, California hits 134 °F (~56.7 °C) which is the highest temperature recorded in the United States. In 2012 it is also recognized as the hottest-recorded temperature in the world after a record set in Libya in 1922 is discredited.
1921 – Belfast's Bloody Sunday: 16 people are killed and 161 houses are destroyed during rioting and gunbattles.
1925 – The Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS), the official news agency of the Soviet Union, is established.
1925 – Scopes Trial: In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" begins with John T. Scopes, a young high school science teacher, accused of teaching evolution in violation of a Tennessee state law.
1931 – Norway annexes Erik Raudes Land (Eric the Red Land) in eastern Greenland.
1997 – London, scientists report their DNA analysis findings from a Neandertal skeleton which support the out of Africa theory of human evolution placing an "African Eve" at 100,000 to 200,000 years ago.
1998 – Catholic priests' sex abuse scandal: The Diocese of Dallas agrees to pay $23.4 million to nine former altar boys who claimed they were sexually abused by former priest Rudolph Kos.
2000 – A leaking southern Nigerian petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers scavenging gasoline.
2000 – EADS, the world's second largest aerospace group, is formed by the merger of Aérospatiale-Matra, DASA, and CASA.
From 2001
2002 – At a Sotheby's auction, Peter Paul Rubens' painting "The Massacre of the Innocents" is sold for £49.5 million (US$76.2 million) to Lord Kenneth Thomson.
2003 – A Neoplan bus, owned by Kowloon Motor Bus, collides with a truck, falls off a bridge on Tuen Mun Road, Hong Kong, and plunges into the underlying valley, killing 21 people. This is the deadliest bus accident to date in Hong Kong.
2010 – A week-long manhunt comes to an end in Northumberland, England, when fugitive criminal Raoul Moat commits suicide by gunshot after a stand-off with police.
2019 – Kim Darroch resigns as Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the United States following a leak of comments criticising the administration of Donald Trump and Trump's subsequent reaction to them.