HISTORY
On this day December 8-14, 2019 (week 50)
December 8, 2019 - December 14, 2019 - Graphics show birthdays and anniversaries for each day of the week. This week features the Chinese Nationalist Chiang Kai-Shek, the British actress Judi Dench, the Australian aviators Ross and Keith Smith, the aurora borealis, the music of Ludwig van Beethoven, the second Sino-Japanese War and the Panama Canal.
December 8, 1949: Chinese Nationalist forces under Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Formosa, now known as Taiwan, after defeat by the Communists in the Chinese Civil War
December 9, 1934: Oscar-winning British actress Judi Dench was born. A star of stage and screen for 60 years, she reached mass audiences as spy chief M in seven James Bond films
December 10, 1919: Australian aviators Ross and Keith Smith successfully completed the first flight from England to Australia in their Vickers Vimy biplane, a converted WWI bomber
December 11, 1719: The first recorded sighting in the United States of the aurora borealis occurred in New England. The oldest known auroral citing was written in China in 2600BC
December 12, 1792: Ludwig van Beethoven, aged 22 and newly arrived in Vienna, noted in his diary he had 15 ducats, enough for his first music lesson with Franz Joseph Haydn
December 13, 1937: Japanese forces captured the Chinese city of Nanking. Over the next six weeks they killed around 300,000 Chinese in what became known as the “Rape of Nanking”
December 14, 1999: The U.S. formally ceded the Panama Canal to Panama, having maintained control of the channel connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans since 1904