December 26 ⇒Back
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1887 - ★(birth) Arthur Percival, British Army officer.
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1893 - ★(birth) Mao Zedong, Chinese military leader and politician.
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1935 - ◆Saito Makoto becomes Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal (Japan).
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1935 - ◆(birth) Gnassingbe Eyadema, President of Togo.
He is a dictator for 38 years, the longest-period dictator in Africa.
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1941 - ▲Briefings on the "Pearl Harbor Attack" are given for "Emperor Showa".
In an audience with Hirohito, "Mitsuo Fuchida", Admiral "Nagumo", Captain "Osami Nagano", and the leader of the second wave of attackers at Pearl Harbor, "Shigekazu Shimazaki", present the emperor with photographs of the cataclysmic destruction of the Pacific Fleet.
The audience is supposed to last for thirty minutes, but Hirohito is so fascinated by the photographs that he extends it to almost two hours.
“Are there any other questions, Your Majesty?” Nagano asked.
“Not particularly . . . ” the emperor replied.
Then, after a few moments, he asked: “Are you going to take these pictures with you when you go?”
“We’ll put a cover on it and present it to Your Majesty later,” Nagano said.
“Oh, you could put the cover on later,” Hirohito replied.
“I’d like to show this to the empress now.”
The emperor shuffled away clutching ten photographs, and the warriors bowed obediently.
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1941 - ▲US President Roosevelt signs the "Thanksgiving Day" bill.
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1947 - ◆Hideki Tojo takes the witness stand at the War Crimes Trial (Tokyo, Japan).
Tojo was the prime minister of Japan at the time of Pearl Harbor.
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1947 - ◆An intense typhoon hits the Philippines. Forty-nine people are killed.
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1949 - ★(birth) Jose Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor, Nobel laureate.
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1953 - ★(birth) Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia.
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1972 - ★(death) Harry S. Truman, President of the United States.
He makes the decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan.
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1991 - ▲The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the USSR.
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1996 - ★Murder of JonBenet Ramsey.
Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado. JonBenet has been killed the previous day on December 25.
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2003 - ▲Bam earthquake: a magnitude 6.6 earthquake devastates southeast Iranian city of Bam, killing tens of thousands and destroying the citadel of Arg-e Bam.
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2004 - ▲Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.
A 9.3 magnitude earthquake creates a tsunami causing devastation in many areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing over 250,000 people.
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2006 - ▲(death) Gerald Ford, President of the United States.
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2006 - ▲Earthquake near Sado Island, Japan.
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2006 - ▲The Hengchun earthquake with 7.1 magnitude hits Taiwan.
December 26 ⇒Back
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February 6, 940 - ★Fujiwara no Sumitomo revolts against his fellows.
He is included in the Fujiwara clan, a powerful family of regents in Japan.
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February 2, 1266 - ◇Shokukokin Wakashu, a Japanese imperial anthology, is completed.
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January 31, 1543 - ★(birth) Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate.
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February 12, 1836 - ◆(birth) Godai Tomoatsu, samurai from Satsuma Domain.
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February 11, 1847 - ★(birth) Thomas Alva Edison, American inventor.
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February 4, 1872 - ▲The Tokyo Court is created in the Department of Justice. The first Western style court in Japan.
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January 26, 1948 - ◆Teigin Case: a robber poisoned 16 workers at a bank in Tokyo. He took 160,000 yen.
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January 17, 1966 - ◇Palomares B-52 crash.
A B-52 bomber collides with a KC-135 Stratotanker over Spain, dropping three 70-kiloton nuclear bombs near the town of Palomares and another one into the sea.
The day is the 42nd birthday (taiyaku unlucky year) of Zimbabwean President Mugabe (January 17, 1924 in the Japanese calendar).
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January 17, 2004 - ▲The Japanese Communist Party adopts a new platform. (timeline)
The day is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard (January 17, 1904).
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