| 4 December 963 | Italy, Holy Roman Empire [administration] | The Holy Roman Emperor, Otto I of Germany, deposes Pope John XII for corruption and appoints Leo VIII as his successor. |
| 4 December 1131 | Persia [births and deaths] | Omar Khayyam, Persian poet, mathematician, and astronomer, famous for his Rubaiyat, dies in Nishapur, Persia (83). |
| 4 December 1154 | England, Papal States, Italy [administration] | Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear is elected Pope Adrian IV (the first and only English pope) following the death of Pope Anastasius IV. |
| 4 December 1259 | France, England [treaties] | King Louis IX of France and King Henry III of England make peace in the Treaty of Paris. Henry renounces Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and other lost Angevin territories in France and does homage for Gascony to Louis, who cedes lands on its eastern borders which cannot be precisely defined. |
| 4 December 1533 | Muscovy, Russia [political events] | Ivan IV (‘the Terrible’), aged three, succeeds as Grand Prince of Moscow on the death of his father Vassily III. His mother, Yelena Glinskaya, becomes regent, assisted by her lover, Prince Obolensky-Telepniev. |
| 4 December 1642 | France [political events] | Following the death of Cardinal Richelieu, chief minister of King Louis XIII of France, he is succeeded by Cardinal Jules Mazarin. |
| 4 December 1642 | France [births and deaths] | Armand-Jean du Plessis, French cardinal and duc de Richelieu, (‘Cardinal Richelieu’), chief minister (1624–42) to King Louis XIII of France, who defeated the Habsburg hegemony in Europe, dies in Paris, France (57). |
| 4 December 1644 | Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, United Netherlands, Sweden [diplomacy] | A peace conference formally opens in the two towns of Münster and Osnabrück, aimed at securing an agreement between the opposing sides in the Thirty Years' War. Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, initiates and opens negotiations, however, full discussions do not get under way until mid-1645. The negotiations ultimately lead to the Peace of Westphalia of 1648. |
| 4 December 1679 | England [births and deaths] | Thomas Hobbes, major English philosopher and political theorist, whose best-known work is Leviathan (1651), dies at Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, England (91). |
| 4 December 1691 | Transylvania, Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Monarchy [administration] | After the battle of Zalánkemén, the Estates of Transylvania recognize the Habsburg kings as their ruler. The principality is not reincorporated into Hungary but is controlled directly from Vienna, in Austria. It is administered by an appointed governor and council, a situation that continues until 1848. |
| 4–6 December 1745 | UK [wars] | The Jacobite army of Charles Edward Stuart (‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’), the ‘Young Pretender’, advances as far south as Derby, England, in his attempt to regain the Scottish and English thrones, but with three Hanoverian British armies in the field against him he is forced to retreat. |
| 4 December 1798 | Italy [births and deaths] | Luigi Galvani, Italian physician who investigated electrical conduction in living tissues, dies in Bologna, Italy (61). |
| 4 December 1844 | USA [elections] | Americans elect Democrats James K Polk president and George M Dallas president and vice-president, respectively. |
| 4 December 1892 | Spain [births and deaths] | Francisco Franco, Spanish leader of the right-wing nationalist forces in the Spanish Civil War 1936–39, then dictator for life, born in El Ferrol, Spain (–1975). |
| 4 December 1918 | Serbia, Croatia, Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of the Serbs Croats and Slovenes [political events] | A national council proclaims the formation of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, with Alexander I (son of King Peter of Serbia) as prince-regent. The country will be renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. |
| 4 December 1979 | French Guiana [space exploration] | The European Space Agency's first Ariane rocket is launched from the Guiana Space Centre in Kourou, French Guiana; it is designed to deploy satellites into orbit. |
