12 décembre

Heraclius struck deep into Mesopotamia and broke the Persian army by the ruins of Nineveh. Khosrow II was overthrown weeks later, and the True Cross came back to Jerusalem.

Raymond of Toulouse’s army took the Syrian town after a winter siege and killed or enslaved its people. Fulcher of Chartres and other Latin chroniclers wrote that starving crusaders ate the bodies of the dead, a story Arabic writers remembered too.

Maria Theresa to Archduke Ferdinand, who had asked about taking the young Salzburger into his service: he had no need of a composer or of “useless people”, and it degraded a service when such people “go about the world like beggars”. The Mozarts never learned why the post did not come.

On a kite-borne aerial at Signal Hill, Guglielmo Marconi and his assistant George Kemp listened for the letter S — three dots — sent from Poldhu in Cornwall, some 3,500 kilometres away. Only they heard it, and some experts still doubt they did. Within weeks the Anglo-American Telegraph Company,…

At the Delhi Durbar, King George V, the only British monarch to visit India as its emperor, announced that the capital would move from Calcutta to Delhi. New Delhi was built for it and inaugurated in 1931.

Armstrong’s studio bands for OKeh, with Lil Hardin Armstrong, Kid Ory, Johnny Dodds and Johnny St. Cyr, hardly ever played in public. In about three years of sessions they made jazz a soloist’s art: most jazz musicians of the next generation learned the solos by heart.

Answering new Soviet SS-20 missiles aimed at Western Europe, NATO decided to station 572 American missiles in Europe from 1983, and to offer talks to make them unnecessary. Millions would march against them.

The Supreme Court halted Florida’s recount, leaving George W. Bush ahead in the state by 537 votes and with 271 electoral votes. Al Gore led the national popular vote and conceded the next day.

Every party agreed to hold warming “well below 2 °C” and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C. In place of Kyoto’s imposed targets, each country sets its own and must raise it every five years. It came into force on 4 November 2016.

The first election in which Saudi women could vote or stand, announced by King Abdullah in 2011. Women candidates could not address male voters face to face. About 20 women won seats, the first Salma bint Hizab al-Oteibi in Madrakah.