16 de diciembre

A commission under Tribonian boiled some two thousand books of Roman jurists down to fifty in three years. With the Code and the Institutes it became the Corpus Juris Civilis, the base of civil law across much of Europe.

An Lushan, a general of Sogdian and Turkic descent who commanded three frontier armies, marched south from Fanyang. He took Luoyang, then Chang’an in 756; Emperor Xuanzong fled to Sichuan, and on the way his guards forced him to have his consort Yang Guifei put to death. The war went on under An’s…

England’s answer to Reims: the ten-year-old was crowned in Notre-Dame by his great-uncle Cardinal Beaufort, not by a French bishop, and Parisians complained of the ceremony and the feast. He is the only English king crowned in France.

On the night of 16 December men disguised as Mohawks boarded the Dartmouth, the Eleanor and the Beaver at Griffin’s Wharf and dumped 342 chests of the Company’s tea into the harbour. Parliament answered with the Coercive Acts, a step towards the American war.

Men loosely disguised as Mohawks boarded the Dartmouth, Eleanor and Beaver and tipped 342 chests of the East India Company’s tea into the harbour. The Tea Act had made the tea cheaper; what they refused was the tax still on it.

George Thomas attacked Hood’s thinned army outside the city and destroyed it as a fighting force. Two brigades of Black troops took part. 6,602 casualties (NPS).

Dvořák wrote it in New York, as director of the National Conservatory. Anton Seidl conducted the New York Philharmonic in a hall opened two years before with Tchaikovsky on its podium. After the slow movement the audience applauded until Dvořák stood and bowed from his box.

Hitler’s last offensive in the west came through the snow-bound Ardennes, aiming for Antwerp. It surrounded the Americans at Bastogne, whose commander answered a German surrender demand with one word: “Nuts!”

John Bardeen and Walter Brattain made a sliver of germanium amplify a signal; William Shockley's junction transistor followed within weeks. Smaller, cooler and far more reliable than the vacuum tube, it replaced it everywhere. All three shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics.

László Tőkés, a Hungarian Reformed pastor who had criticised the regime, was to be evicted. His parishioners formed a chain around his house; Romanians joined them, and by evening the crowd was chanting against Ceaușescu.

The only one of the year’s revolutions fought with guns. The official count is 1,104 dead and 3,352 wounded, most of them after Ceaușescu fled, in fighting against “terrorists” whose identity is still disputed.

The Fed set a target range for its main rate of 0 to 0.25 per cent. It stayed there for seven years.

Chang’e 5Chang'e 5

Landed near Mons Rümker on 1 December 2020, scooped and drilled 1,731 grams of soil, launched it to lunar orbit, and sent it home to Inner Mongolia: the first Moon samples in 44 years.

The gilded rooster designed by the chief architect Philippe Villeneuve was set on the rebuilt spire. It holds relics, like the old one found battered in the rubble, and the names of the people who worked on the rebuilding.