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17 December| 17 December 1187 | Italy, Holy Roman Empire [Crusades (1095–1272)] | Pope Gregory VIII dies, shortly after proclaiming the Third Crusade to liberate Jerusalem from the Muslims. Two days later, Paul Scolari is elected Pope Clement III. | | 17 December 1638 | Germany, France, Holy Roman Empire [Thirty Years War (1618–48)] | Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and his army, with French support, take Breisach after a four-month siege. The victory is strategically important, securing Alsace for the French and its allies, providing a gateway into Germany along the River Rhine, cutting road links between Milan and the Spanish Netherlands, and breaking the stranglehold which the Spanish and Austrians had secured around France. | | 17 December 1770 | Germany [births and deaths] | Ludwig van Beethoven, German classical Romantic composer, born in Bonn, Germany (–1827). | | 17 December 1819 | Colombia, Venezuela, New Granada, Spain [political events] | After a successful military campaign in New Granada against the Spanish colonial forces, the South American revolutionary leader Simón Bolívar becomes president of the newly formed Republic of Great Colombia, nominally consisting of the Spanish colonies of New Granada, Quito, and Venezuela. | | 17 December 1830 | Venezuela, Central America [births and deaths] | Simón Bolívar, Venezuelan soldier who liberated Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Bolivia from Spanish rule, dies in Santa Marta, Colombia (47). | | 17 December 1834 | UK [political parties] | The British prime minister, Robert Peel, issues the Tamworth Manifesto. Ostensibly an address to his constituents, it redefines the orientation of the Tory Party, giving it a policy of liberal conservatism, accepting the Reform Act of 1832, and agreeing to pass more equitable reforms. | | 17 December 1903 | USA [aircraft] | US aviator Orville Wright makes the first successful flight in an aeroplane with a petrol engine at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, covering 37 m/120ft in a flight lasting just 12 seconds. During the day, Orville and his brother Wilbur make a number of flights, the longest covering 260 m/852 ft and lasting 59 seconds. | | 17 December 1907 | [births and deaths] | William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), Scottish physicist who developed the absolute temperature scale, dies in Netherhall near Largs, Ayrshire, Scotland (84). | | 17 December 1909 | Belgium [political events] | Following the death of King Leopold II of Belgium, Albert I succeeds as king (–1934). | | 17 December 1943 | USA [legislation] | US president Franklin D Roosevelt signs the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, granting Chinese people resident in the USA the right to naturalization and permitting immigration of 105 Chinese citizens a year. | | 17 December 1952 | USA [musical performers] | The US soprano Dorothy Maynor sings at the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR)'s Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, making her the first black person to sing there since 1939, breaking a formal ban that went into effect when the DAR refused to let Marian Anderson sing at their headquarters. | | 17 December 1973 | UK [television] | Emergency measures introduced by the Conservative government in Britain during the energy crisis include a television blackout after 10.30 at night. | | 17 December 2007 | UK [political events] | Following revelations in November about missing personal data on child benefit recipients, the British government reveals the loss of a computer disc containing private records of more than 3 million driving test applicants by a private firm contracted to the Department of Transport. |
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