1951 – The EBR-1 in Arco, Idaho becomes the first nuclear power plant to generate electricity. The electricity powered four light bulbs.

1946 – It's a Wonderful Life premieres at the Globe Theatre in New York to mixed reviews.

1924 – Adolf Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison.

1989 – The Simpsons premieres on television with the episode "Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire".

1903 – The Wright brothers make the first controlled powered, heavier-than-air flight in the Wright Flyer at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

2001 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 spent to stabilize it, without fixing its famous lean.

1973 – The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

1970 – Soviet spacecraft Venera 7 successfully lands on Venus. It is the first successful soft landing on another planet.

1944 – World War II: a single-engine UC-64A Norseman aeroplane carrying United States Army Air Forces Major Glenn Miller is lost in a flight over the English Channel.

1939 – Gone with the Wind (highest inflation adjusted grossing film) receives its premiere at Loew's Grand Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia, United States.

1893 – Symphony No. 9 ("From the New World" a.k.a. the "New World Symphony") by Antonín Dvořák premieres in a public afternoon rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in New York City, followed by a concert premiere on the evening of December 16.

 Red_Dragon wrote:



And it's still too soon to talk about gun control.

2012 – Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting: Twenty-eight people, including the gunman, are killed in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.

1948 – Thomas T. Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann are granted a patent for their cathode-ray tube amusement device, the earliest known interactive electronic game.

1940 – Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1962 – NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

1935 – The Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler.

2020 – The Food and Drug Administration issues an Emergency Use Authorization on the Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine to be approved by the agency.

1901 – Guglielmo Marconi transmits the first transatlantic radio signal from Poldhu, Cornwall, England to Saint John's, Newfoundland.