| 6 December 1240 | Mongol Empire, Kiev [Mongol conquests (1206–1405)] | The Mongol leader Batu takes and sacks the Russian principality of Kiev, then ravages the principality of Galicia, also called Red Ruthenia. |
| 6 December 1463 | Hungary, Ottoman Empire, Moldavia, Holy Roman Empire, Wallachia [wars] | Matthias I Corvinus, King of Hungary, takes Jajce, the former capital of Bosnia, from the Ottoman Turks, and claims suzerainty over Bosnia, Serbia, Moldavia, and Wallachia. |
| 6 December 1491 | France [political events] | Anne of Brittany, coerced by the victory of the invasion forces of Anne of Beaujeu, regent of France, forsakes Maximilian, King of the Romans, and marries Charles VIII of France, thus incorporating the duchy of Brittany into France. Its autonomy is guaranteed through the Treaty of Laval. |
| 6 December 1648 | UK [political events] | ‘Pride's purge’ of the English House of Commons takes place under the auspices of the English parliamentarian Col Thomas Pride. Many Presbyterian members of Parliament are prevented from sitting. The remainder, about 60 independent radical members, continue to sit as the Rump Parliament. Subsequently, they reinstate the ‘Vote of No Addresses’ of 3 January and discontinue the Newport Treaty negotiations with King Charles I. The action transforms the political situation in England. |
| 6 December 1732 | UK, India [births and deaths] | Warren Hastings, British statesman and the first governor general of India, born in Churchill, Oxfordshire, England (–1818). |
| 6 December 1856 | Transvaal [political events] | The South African Republic (Transvaal) is organized under the political leadership of Marthinius Wessel Pretorius, from the four republics of Lydenburg, Potchefstroom, Zontpansberg, and Utrecht. |
| 6 December 1857 | India, UK [wars] | British forces recapture the rebel-held city of Cawnpore (now Kanpur) from Indian rebel forces. |
| 6 December 1877 | USA [communications] | US inventor Thomas Alva Edison patents the phonograph. Recording involves the transmission of sound vibrations through a large horn and a diaphragm to a stylus, which inscribes a groove on a rotating wax cylinder. Reproduction of the sound is achieved by reversing the process. The first reproduction of a human voice occurs on the 29 November when Edison utters the words ‘Mary had a little lamb’. |
| 6 December 1906 | Transvaal, Southern Africa [law and government] | Britain grants self-government to Transvaal and Orange River Colony following agitation for autonomy there. |
| 6 December 1921 | United Kingdom [treaties] | The British government and representatives of the Dáil Eireann sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty providing for an independent southern Ireland with dominion status (within the British Empire). |
| 6 December 1941 | USA [weapons] | The ‘Manhattan Project’ starts in Chicago, Illinois, and Los Angeles, California, before being concentrated at Los Alamos in 1943 under the direction of US physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer. Its aim is to develop an atomic bomb. |
| 6 December 1977–24 March 1978 | USA [work and unemployment] | One of the longest strikes in the history of the US coal industry ends when miners receive higher wages and more generous benefits. |
| 6 December 1996 | Russia [agriculture] | Cosmonauts aboard the Mir spaceship successfully harvest a small wheat crop, the first plants to be successfully cultivated from seed in space. |
