The 300 Million Yen Robbery, 1968
On the morning of 10th December 1968, four bank workers from the Kokubunji branch of the Nihon Shintaku Ginko were transporting 294,307,500 yen (then over $800,000) in a company car.…
Publication of The Charge of the Light Brigade by Tennyson, 1854
On 9th December 1854, the weekly magazine The Examiner included a poem written by the poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson called “The Charge of the Light Brigade”. The narrative poem…
First trans-oceanic yacht race, 1866
At 1pm on 11th December 1866, three schooners sailed from Sandy Hook, Connecticut, their destination was the Needles, near Cowes in the Isle of Wight. The three yachts taking part…
First expedition to reach the South Pole, 1911
On 14th December, a team of arctic explorers led by Roald Amundsen arrived at the South Pole. They had beaten a rival expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott, by 34…
John Sinclair released from prison, 1971
Born in Flint, Michigan, in 1941, John Sinclair became a major figure in the late 1960s counter-culture movement. He wrote for the underground press, organised free festivals and managed the…
Fats Waller died, 1943
Thomas Wright Waller was born in New York City on 21st May 1904. His mother, Adeline, taught him to play the reed organ with which he later accompanied his father,…
First successful powered airplane flight, 1903
At the dawn of the twentieth-century, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright left their cycle manufacturing business in Dayton, Ohio and travelled to Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to undertake experiments…
Last recorded eruption of Mount Fuji, 1707
On 16th December 1707, Mount Fuji in Japan erupted. While this Hōei Eruption (as it became known) did not produce a lava flow, during its two week duration the eruption…
Emily Brontë died, 1848
Born on 30th July 1818 at the Parsonage in Thornton, near Bradford, Yorkshire, Emily Jane Brontë was the fifth of six children of Revd. Patrick Brontë and his wife Maria.…
First European landing on New Zealand, 1642
Born in 1603 in the Dutch province of Groningen, Abel Tasman entered the service of the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie (Dutch East India Company). By the mid-1630s Tasman was serving as…