13 dicembre

Twenty-five sessions in three stretches, 1545–1547, 1551–1552 and 1562–1563, with long breaks for war and papal politics. It answered the Protestants on doctrine and reformed the clergy, ordering a seminary in every diocese. Its decrees shaped Catholicism until the Second Vatican Council.

A raid on Spain's Pacific coast dressed up as a voyage of discovery. The Golden Hind came back to Plymouth so full of treasure that the Queen's share was larger than a year of her ordinary revenue.

Father and son alone this time, over the Brenner to Verona, Milan, Bologna, Florence, Rome and Naples. Italy made opera composers, and the point of the journey was to come home with a commission from an Italian house. Wolfgang’s postscripts to Nannerl mix German, Italian and nonsense.

Brigade after brigade charged uphill across open ground at Confederates behind a stone wall. None reached it. The wounded lay on the frozen field through the night.

A division stormed the earthwork guarding the Ogeechee River in about fifteen minutes, opening Sherman’s line to the navy’s supply ships. 205 casualties (NPS).

For some six weeks after they took China’s capital, Japanese troops murdered prisoners and civilians and raped tens of thousands of women. The Tokyo war crimes tribunal put the dead at more than 200,000; China’s official figure is 300,000, and some historians give lower numbers. Westerners who…

Endeavour’s crew made five spacewalks, a record at the time. They fitted COSTAR, a box of small corrective mirrors on arms, and a new camera with the error ground into its own optics. The before-and-after pictures in January showed that the fix had worked.

Five spacewalks by Story Musgrave, Jeffrey Hoffman, Kathryn Thornton and Tom Akers put in COSTAR, a set of corrective mirrors, and a new Wide Field and Planetary Camera with the correction built in. The first pictures came back sharp in January 1994.

The first global stocktake of the Paris Agreement called on countries to contribute to “transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner”. It was the first COP decision to name fossil fuels as a whole.