Historical Events in Indian and World History on December 31.
1492: 100,000 Jews evacuated from the Sicily region of Italy.
1781: The first bank of America ‘Bank of North America’ opened.
1600: Establishment of the British East India Company.
1802: A treaty of Vasai signed between the British and the second Bajirao Peshwa.
1879: Thomas Edison demonstrated the first electric lamp in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
1929: Purna Swaraj (Complete Independence) announced at the Lahore session of the Congress.
1944: In World War II, Hungary declared war on Germany.
1955: General Motors became the first US Company to earn 1 billion a year.
1964: Indonesia was expelled from the United Nations.
1984: Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister of India and Congress President for the first time.
1985: United Kingdom became a member of UNESCO.
1999: Indian Airlines Flight 814 hijacking ended after seven days with the release of 190 survivors at Kandhar Airport, Afghanistan.
2003: Foreign secretaries of India and other SAARC countries began talks before the summit.
2019: The World Health Organization was informed of cases of pneumonia with an unknown cause, detected in Wuhan. This later turned out to be COVID – 19, the cause of the COVID -19 pandemic.
Famous birthdays and birth anniversaries– December 31 in Indian history
1869: Henri Émile Benoît Matisse, a French artist.
1898: Krishna Ballabh Sahay, an Indian freedom fighter, and politician.
1910: Mallikarjun Mansur, an Indian classical singer from Karnataka.
1925: Shrilal Shukla, a Hindi writer, notable for his satire.
1934: Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan, an Islamic scholar and spiritual leader of the Naqshbandi Owaisiah order of Sufism.
1937: Anthony Hopkins, a Welsh actor, composer, director, and film producer.
1956: Prabhu, an Indian film actor, businessman, and film producer.
1977: Psy, a South Korean singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer.
Death anniversaries of famous people– December 31
1953: Albert Plesman, a Dutch pioneer in aviation and the first administrator and later director of the KLM.
1956: Ravishankar Shukla, a leader of the Indian National Congress, and Indian independence movement activist.
1986: Raj Narain, an Indian freedom fighter and politician.
1993: Zviad Gamsakhurdia, a Georgian politician, and the first democratically elected President of Georgia.
1703: An earthquake in Tokyo, the capital of Japan, killed 37,000 people.
1803: The East India Company of Britain took Delhi, Agra, and Bharuch under its control.
1893: Russia and France signed a military agreement.
1906: Establishment of All India Muslim League at Dhaka. It was in this incident that the seeds of India’s partition laid.
1924: Edwin Hubble announced the existence of galaxies other than the Milky Way.
1943: Subhash Chandra Bose hoisted the Indian Independence Flag at Port Blair.
2006: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was executed.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries December 30
39AD: Titus, the Roman emperor.
1865: Joseph Rudyard Kipling, an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
1879: Ramana Maharshi, an Indian Hindu sage and jivanmukta.
1887: Ghanshyam Vyas, an Indian independence movement activist, politician, writer, and educationist.
1916: Esther Victoria Abraham (Pramila), a Jewish Indian model, actress, and first woman film producer in the Hindi film industry. She is also well known for winning the first Miss India pageant in 1947.
1934: John Norris Bahcall, an American astrophysicist.
1950: Bjarne Stroustrup, a Danish computer scientist, creator and developer of the C++ programming language.
1983: Kevin Systrom, an American computer programmer, entrepreneur, and co‑founder of Instagram.
1984: LeBron Raymone James Sr., an American professional basketball player.
Death Anniversaries of Famous People– December 30
1944: Romain Rolland, a French dramatist, novelist, essayist, art historian, and Nobel Prize Literature.
1947: Alfred North Whitehead, an English mathematician, and philosopher.
1971: Vikram Sarabhai, an Indian physicist, and astronomer.
1990: Raghuvir Sahay, a Hindi poet, short-story writer, essayist, literary critic, translator, and journalist.
2006: Saddam Hussein, the fifth President of Iraq.
2015: Mangesh Padgaonkar, an Indian poet, playwright, and translator.
2018: Mrinal Sen, an Indian film director and a nominated Member of the Indian parliament.
1530: Humayun, son of Mughal emperor Babur, succeeded him.
1778: British forces captured the US state of Georgia.
1911: Mongolia became independent from the rule of the Qing dynasty.
1922: The Netherlands adopted the constitution.
1930: Sir Muhammad Iqbal introduced the two-nation theory and the vision for the creation of Pakistan.
1959: Nobel laureate Richard Feynman delivered the famous speech “There is plenty of room at the bottom” at CALTECH. This is considered to be the beginning of nanotechnology.
1975: The law on equal rights for women and men came into force in Britain.
1977: The world’s largest open-air theatre drive opened in Bombay (now Mumbai).
1985,: Sri Lanka granted citizenship to 43,000 Indians.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries– December 29
1800: Charles Goodyear, an American self-taught chemist, and manufacturing engineer.
1808: Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States.
1809: William Ewart Gladstone, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
1844: Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee, an Indian barrister. He was the co-founder and first president of the Indian National Congress.
1904: Kuvempu, an Indian novelist, poet, playwright, and critic.
1917: Ramanand Sagar, an Indian film director.
1942: Rajesh Khanna, an Indian actor, film producer, and politician.
1949: Syed Kirmani, an Indian cricketer.
1960: David Boon, an Australian cricket match umpire, former cricket commentator and international cricketer.
1973: Twinkle Khanna, an Indian author, newspaper columnist, interior designer, film producer, and a former film actress.
Death Anniversaries of Famous People – December 29
1938: Mahavir Prasad Dwivedi, an Indian Hindi writer and editor.
1967: Pt. Omkarnath Thakur, an Indian music teacher, musicologist and Hindustani classical singer.
1971: Dadasaheb Gaikwad, an Indian politician and social worker from Maharashtra.
1986: Harold Macmillan, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
2012: Anthony William Greig, an England Test cricket captain turned commentator.
2013: Jagadish Mohanty, a renowned Indian-Odia writer.
2014: Hari Naroomal Harilela, a Hong Kong Indian businessman, hotelier, and philanthropist.
2015: General Om Prakash Malhotra, the 13th Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army.
1904: The country’s first cross country motorcar rally inaugurated between Delhi and Mumbai.
1976: Establishment of the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist).
1978: Former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was released from prison.
1982: TIME’s Man of the Year award was given for the first time to a personal computer (PC).
1991: The Soviet Union formally dissolved.
1997: Naveen Patnaik founded the Biju Janata Dal (BJD).
2004: A magnitude 9.3 earthquake shook India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Maldives, and many other countries, killing at least 230,000 people.
2006: Shane Warne made history in international Test cricket with 700 wickets.
2012: The world’s longest high-speed rail route between Beijing and Guangzhou was launched in China.
Famous Birthdays and Birth Anniversaries– December 26
1791: Charles Babbage, an English polymath.
1893: Mao Zedong, a Chinese communist revolutionary, and the founding father of the People’s Republic of China.
1899: Udham Singh, an Indian revolutionary belonging to the Ghadar Party.
1914: Murlidhar Devidas Amte (Baba Amte), an Indian social worker and social activist.
1914: Sushila Nayyar, an Indian physician, veteran Gandhian, and politician.
1919: Naushad Ali, an Indian music director for Hindi films.
1929: Tarak Mehta, an Indian columnist, humorist, writer, and playwright.
1935: Dr. Mabelle Arole, Ramon Magsaysay Award winner, director of the Multipurpose Rural Health Project.
1948: Prakash Baba Amte, a social worker from Maharashtra, India.
Death Anniversaries of Famous People– December 26
1530: Babur, the founder of the Mughal Empire and first Emperor of the Mughal dynasty in the Indian.
1972: Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States.
1981: Savitri Ganesan, an Indian film actress, playback singer, dancer, director, and producer.
1999: Shankar Dayal Sharma, the ninth President of India.
2006: Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., the 38th president of the United States.
2011: Sarekoppa Bangarappa, an Indian politician, and the 12th Chief Minister of Karnataka.
