On December 21, 1826, a small group of American settlers in Nacogdoches, then part of Mexican Texas, issued a bold declaration of independence from Mexico. Their action marked the opening act of the Fredonian Rebellion, an ill-fated but historically significant uprising that foreshadowed the…
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On December 20, 1803, in a modest ceremony in New Orleans, American officials formally took possession of the Louisiana Territory, completing what would become one of the most consequential land transfers in world history: the Louisiana Purchase. With that act, the United States doubled…
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On December 19, 1606, three small ships slipped their moorings in England and headed west into the Atlantic, carrying with them an experiment whose consequences would reshape world history. The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery departed under the authority of the Virginia…
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On December 18, 2019, the United States House of Representatives voted to impeach President Donald J. Trump, marking only the third time in American history that a sitting president had been formally charged with “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The vote followed a bitter, fast-moving…
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On December 17, 1903, on a cold, wind-swept stretch of sand near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, two bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio quietly altered the trajectory of human history. Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved what generations of inventors, engineers, and dreamers had failed to…
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On December 17, 1983, London witnessed one of its darkest days when a car bomb exploded outside Harrods Department Store, killing six people and injuring nearly 100 others. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), a paramilitary group advocating for Irish unification, orchestrated the attack.…
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On December 16, 1653, Oliver Cromwell formally assumed the title of Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland, marking the beginning of the English Protectorate and one of the most paradoxical chapters in British constitutional history. Less than four years after…
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On December 15, 1869, in the far northern reaches of Japan, a fragile and unprecedented political experiment briefly took shape. In the Ezo region—modern-day Hokkaido—a group of former Tokugawa loyalists proclaimed the Republic of Ezo, marking Japan’s first attempt to establish a government modeled,…
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On December 14, 1542, the crown of Scotland passed to an infant scarcely a week old. Mary Stuart—known to history as Mary, Queen of Scots—became monarch upon the death of her father, James V, a king not yet 31, worn down by military defeat,…
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On December 13, 1623, the small and precarious Plymouth Colony took a step whose significance far exceeded its population or power. That winter, the colony formally established trial by a jury of twelve men, marking the first known adoption of the English common-law jury…
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