December 19

Events

• 1732 - Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanack
• 1777 - George Washington's army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania
• 1842 - United States recognizes the independence of Hawaii
• 1928 - First autogiro flight in the United States
• 1945 - Austria becomes a republic for the second time, the first having been interupted by the Nazi invasion of Austria in the mid 1930s.
• 1946 - Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi
• 1962 - Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia and Nyasaland
• 1972 - Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight, returns to Earth.
• 1974 - The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, goes on sale
• 1978 - John Wayne Gacy is arrested for the killings of 33 boys and young men
• 1980 - Anguilla is made a dependency of the United Kingdom separate from St. Kitt's
• 1984 - The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which handed Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.
• 1997 - A SilkAir Boeing 737-300 crashes into the Musi River, in Sumatra, Indonesia killing 104

Births

• 1813 - Thomas Andrews, chemist (d. 1885)
• 1820 - Mary Ashton Livermore, suffragist, women's rights activits (d. 1905)
• 1894 - Ford Frick, commissioner of baseball
• 1900 - Géza von Cziffra, film director (d. 1989)
• 1901 - Rudolf Hell, inventor (d. 2002)
• 1906 - Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician (d. 1982)
• 1910 - Jean Genet, novelist (d. 1986)
• 1915 - Edith Piaf, singer, actress (d. 1963)
• 1916 - Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann, publicist
• 1918 - Professor Longhair, musician (d. 1980)
• 1920 - David Susskind, movie, stage and television producer (d. 1987)
• 1925 - Tankred Dorst, dramatist
• 1933 - Cicely Tyson, actress
• 1934 - Al Kaline, Baseball Hall of Famer
• 1939 - Gwynn Dowell, teacher
• 1940 - Phil Ochs, singer, songwriter (d. 1976)
• 1941 - Maurice White, musician
• 1944 - Richard Leakey, anthropologist
• 1944 - Alvin Lee, musician
• 1946 - Robert Urich, actor (d. 2002)
• 1946 - Stan Smith, tennis player
• 1949 - Claudia Kolb, swimming star
• 1960 - Mike Lookinland, actor
• 1972 - Alyssa Milano, actress

Deaths

• 401 - St. Anastasius I, Pope
• 1737 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (b. 1667)
• 1848 - Emily Brontë, author (b. 1818)
• 1968 - Norman Thomas, Leading American socialist (b. 1884)
• 1989 - Stella Gibbons, English author (b. 1902)
• 1996 - Marcello Mastroianni, actor (b. 1924)
• 1999 - Desmond Llewelyn, actor (b. 1914)

Holidays and observances

• Feast of Saint Boniface

See Also

December 18 - December 20 - November 19 - January 19 -- listing of all days

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December

Referenced By