December 8 might not really ring a bell in your mind as far as history is concerned.
Below is a compilation of some of the events that happened on this day and made it to the history books:
- 1863 – U.S. President Abraham Lincoln announced his plan for the Reconstruction of the South.
- 1941 – The United States entered World War II when it declared war against Japan.
- 1941 – London: Dutch government-in-exile declared war on Japan.
- 1953 – Los Angeles became the third-largest city in the United States.
- 1962 – There was an attempted coup in British-controlled Brunei.
- 1966 – US and USSR signed a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space.
- 1976 – UN General Assembly re-elected Kurt Waldheim Secretary-General.
- 1978 – Golda Meir, the 4th Prime Minister of Israel, died.
- 1981 – France performed a nuclear test.
- 1987 – U.S. President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed a treaty agreeing to destroy their nations’ arsenals of intermediate-range nuclear missiles.
- 1989 – Great Britain performed a nuclear test.
- 1991 – The Belavezha Accords, which disbanded the USSR and replaced it with the Commonwealth of Independent States, was signed.
- 1991 – The Romanian Constitution came into force.
- 1991 – The Commonwealth of Independent States was created.
- 1992 – Americans got to see live television coverage of U.S. troops landing on the beaches of Somalia during Operation Restore Hope.
- 1993 – U.S. President Clinton signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement.
- 1997 – Jenny Shipley was sworn in as the first female prime minister of New Zealand.
- 1982 – Nicki Minaj was born.
- 2018 – U.S. President Donald Trump announced John Kelly would be stepping down as White House Chief of Staff at the end of the year.
- 2020 – The UK began vaccinating for COVID-19 using the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine.