About December 20
December 20, 2024 is the 355th day of the year 2024 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 11 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Friday.
You can browse the full year calendar in case you need it.
Is this your birthday? Are you not curious to learn who shares your special day? Find out the December 20 famous birthdays and expand your knowledge today. (Sponsored link)
Sagittarius is the sun sign of a person born on this day. Turquoise is the modern birthstone for this month. Onyx is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.
According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 40 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.
What Happened On December 20
- 69 –Vespasian, formerly a general under Nero, enters Rome to claim the title of emperor.
- 217 –The papacy of Zephyrinus ends. Callixtus I is elected as the sixteenth pope, but is opposed by the theologian Hippolytus who accuses him of laxity and of being a Modalist, one who denies any distinction between the three persons of the Trinity.
- 1192 –Richard the Lion-Heart is captured and imprisoned by Leopold V of Austria on his way home to England after signing a treaty with Saladin ending the Third crusade.
- 1606 –The Virginia Company loads three ships with settlers and sets sail to establish Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.
- 1860 –South Carolina becomes the first state to attempt to secede from the United States.
- 1917 –Cheka, the first Soviet secret police, is founded.
- 1924 –Hitler is released from Landsberg Prison
- 1952 –United States Air Force C-124 crashes and burns in Moses Lake, Washington killing 87.
- 1959 –The Walker family murders are committed.
- 1968 –The Zodiac Killer kills Betty Lou Jenson and David Faraday in Vallejo, California.
- 1973 –The Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is assassinated by a car bomb attack in Madrid.
- 1977 –Djibouti and Vietnam join the United Nations.
- 1987 –History’s worst peacetime sea disaster, when the passenger ferry Doña Paz sinks after colliding with the oil tanker Vector 1 in the Tablas Strait in the Philippines, killing an estimated 4,000 people (1,749 official).
- 1989 –United States invasion of Panama: The United States sends troops into Panama to overthrow government of Manuel Noriega. This is also the first combat use of purpose-designed stealth aircraft.
- 1991 –A Missouri court sentences the Palestinian militant Zein Isa and his wife Maria to death for the honor killing of their daughter Palestina.
- 1995 –American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, crashes into a mountain 50 km north of Cali, Colombia killing 160.
- 2004 –A gang of thieves steal £26.5 million worth of currency from the Donegall Square West headquarters of Northern Bank in Belfast, Northern Ireland, one of the largest bank robberies in UK history.
- 2005 –US District Court Judge John E. Jones III rules against mandating the teaching of “intelligent design” in his ruling of Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.
- 2007 –Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days.
- 2007 –The painting Portrait of Suzanne Bloch (1904), by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, is stolen from the São Paulo Museum of Art, along with O Lavrador de Café by the major Brazilian modernist painter Candido Portinari.
Are you looking for a day of the week calculator? Try it on any date like anniversaries, birthday of someone you know, or any other date that is special to you. You can even try it on historical dates. For example: December 20
(Sponsored by DayOfTheWeek.org)
Share or Link to This Page: