Events in History
- Dec 1 Exxon announces a $73.7 billion USD deal to buy Mobil, creating Exxon-Mobil, the world's largest company.
- Dec 4 The Unity Module, the second module of the International Space Station, is launched
Election of Interest
Dec 6 Hugo Chávez is elected President of Venezuela
Hugo Chávez
- Dec 8 Tadjena massacre: 81 people are killed by armed groups in Algeria.
Nobel Prize
Dec 10 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine presented to Gertrude B. Elion, George H. Hitchings and James W. Black for development of new drugs
Gertrude B. Elion
Nobel Prize
Dec 10 Indian Professor Amartya Sen is awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economics for his contributions to welfare economics
Amartya Sen
Impeachment Trial of Bill Clinton
Dec 19 US House of Representatives votes to impeach President Bill Clinton, forwarding the articles of impeachment to the Senate for a trial
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- Dec 26 Iraq announces its intention to fire upon U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones
- Dec 26 Severe gales over Ireland, northern England, and southern Scotland cause widespread disruption and widespread power outages in Northern Ireland and southern Scotland
- Dec 29 Leaders of the Khmer Rouge apologize for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed over a million people
- Dec 31 Exchange rates between the euro and legacy currencies in the Eurozone become fixed.
Weddings in History
Wedding of Interest
Dec 30 Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel (44) weds quantum chemist Joachim Sauer (49) in Bonn, Germany
Angela Merkel
Deaths in History
- Dec 5 Al Gore, Sr., American politician (b. 1907)
- Dec 9 Shaughnessy Cohen, Canadian politician (b. 1948)
- Dec 11 André Lichnerowicz, Polish-French physicist (b. 1915)
- Dec 12 Marco Denevi, Argentine writer (b. 1922)
- Dec 12 Mo Udall, American politician (Rep-D-AZ, 1961-91), dies at 76
- Dec 12 Lawton Chiles, U.S. Senator from Florida (1971-89) and Governor of Florida (1991-98), dies at 68
- Dec 14 Annette Strauss, American philanthropist, dies at 74
- Dec 14 Aloyisus Leon Higginbotham, Jr., American civil rights activist & author, dies at 70
- Dec 16 William Gaddis, American writer (b. 1922)
- Dec 18 Lev Demin, Soviet cosmonaut (b. 1926)
- Dec 19 Antonio Ordóñez, Spanish bullfighter (b. 1932)
- Dec 19 Mel Fisher, American treasure hunter (b. 1922)
- Dec 20 Chester P. Lyons, Canadian naturalist and author (b. 1915)
- Dec 20 Alan Lloyd Hodgkin, British biophysicist (Nobel 1963), dies at 84
- Dec 21 Ernst Gunther Schenck, German doctor who joined the Sturmabteilung in 1933 {b. 1904)
Raemer Schreiber
Dec 24 Raemer Schreiber, American Physicist (Manhattan Project) who helped develop the first atomic bomb during World War II and prepared the Fat Man bomb that was used in the bombing of Nagasaki, dies at 88
Raemer Schreiber