22 december

A benefit concert for Beethoven in an unheated theatre premiered the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy, among other pieces. The composer Johann Friedrich Reichardt sat through four hours in bitter cold and complained of it.

Sherman telegraphed Lincoln: “I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition, also about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton.”

A ten-minute prelude to Mallarmé’s poem, opening with a solo flute that slides down and back through a tritone. The audience of the Société Nationale called for it again at once. Pierre Boulez later said modern music was awakened by it.

The first supporting party, Atkinson, Cherry-Garrard, Wright and Keohane, turned back at the top of the glacier on 22 December. Eight men went on in two teams of four, man-hauling at around 3,000 metres in thin, cold air.

Enver Pasha sent the Ottoman Third Army over mountain passes in midwinter to encircle the Russians. Most of his men were killed, captured or froze to death; estimates of the losses run from about 60,000 to 90,000.

After the fighting around Cuito Cuanavale in Angola, South Africa, Angola and Cuba signed at the UN: Cuban troops would leave Angola, and South Africa would let Namibia, which it had ruled since 1915, go to elections and independence.

The hardest regime in the bloc fell fastest once it cracked: seven months from a rigged local election to the Brandenburg Gate opening. Free elections followed in March 1990 and unification in October.

In the rain, Helmut Kohl and the East German prime minister Hans Modrow walked through a new crossing at the symbol of the divided city, shut since August 1961.

That morning the defence minister, Vasile Milea, was found shot, and the army went over to the crowds. Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu lifted off from the roof of the Central Committee building as protesters broke in below.

Shortly before 21:00 local time the south-western flank of Anak Krakatau slid into the sea. The wave struck the Java and Sumatra coasts without warning and killed more than 400 people.