On this day in history

December 15

30 births · 12 deaths · 5 events

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Anniversary highlights

Event anniversary

Romanian Revolution (1989)

36 years ago

Born this day

1859

L. L. Zamenhof

Died aged 57

Oldest record

1988th

Nero

birth anniversary

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Famous births30

AD 37 · 1988 yrs

Nero

Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus; 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68) was Roman emperor from AD 54 until his suicide in AD 68, as the final emperor of the Julio-Claudian dynasty.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 30

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Photo: Jastrow · Public domain

AD 130 · 1895 yrs

Lucius Verus

Lucius Aurelius Verus (15 December 130 – January/February 169) was Roman emperor from 161 until his death in 169, alongside his adoptive brother Marcus Aurelius. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

RoyaltyDied aged 38

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Photo: PierreSelim · CC0

1802 · 223 yrs

János Bolyai

János Bolyai (Hungarian:; 15 December 1802 – 27 January 1860) or Johann Bolyai, was a Hungarian mathematician who developed absolute geometry—a geometry that includes both Euclidean geometry and hyperbolic geometry.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 57

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Photo: Halmágyi Zsolt · CC BY-SA 4.0

1832 · 193 yrs

Gustave Eiffel

Alexandre Gustave Eiffel ( EYE-fəl; French:; né Bonickhausen dit Eiffel; 15 December 1832 – 27 December 1923) was a French civil engineer. A graduate of École Centrale des Arts et Métiers, he made his name with various bridges for the French railway network, most famously the Garabit Viaduct.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

TechnologyDied aged 91

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Photo: Nadar · Public domain

1852 · 173 yrs

Antoine Henri Becquerel

Antoine Henri Becquerel (15 December 1852 – 25 August 1908) was a French experimental physicist who shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in Physics with Marie and Pierre Curie for his discovery of radioactivity.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 55

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Photo: Paul Nadar / Adam Cuerden · Public domain

1859 · 166 yrs

L. L. Zamenhof

L. L. Zamenhof (15 December 1859 – 14 April 1917) was the creator of Esperanto, the most widely used constructed international auxiliary language. Zamenhof published Esperanto in 1887, although his initial ideas date back as far as 1873.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 57

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1860 · 165 yrs

Niels Ryberg Finsen

Niels Ryberg Finsen (15 December 1860 – 24 September 1904) was a physician and scientist.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceDied aged 43

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1861 · 164 yrs

Pehr Evind Svinhufvud

Pehr Evind Svinhufvud af Qvalstad (Finland Swedish:, 15 December 1861 – 29 February 1944) served as the president of Finland from 1931 to 1937.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsDied aged 82

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1892 · 133 yrs

J. Paul Getty

Jean Paul Getty Sr. (December 15, 1892 – June 6, 1976) was an American petroleum industrialist who founded the Getty Oil Company in 1942 and was the longtime patriarch of the Getty family.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

BusinessWould be 133

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Photo: Publication:Los Angeles Daily News · Public domain

1907 · 118 yrs100 Club

Oscar Niemeyer

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho (15 December 1907 – 5 December 2012), known as Oscar Niemeyer (Brazilian Portuguese:), was a Brazilian architect considered to be one of the key figures in the development of modern architecture.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ArtWould be 118

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Photo: Roger Pic · Public domain

1916 · 109 yrs

Maurice Wilkins

Maurice Hugh Frederick Wilkins (15 December 1916 – 5 October 2004) was a New Zealand-born British biophysicist and Nobel laureate whose research spanned multiple areas of physics and biophysics, contributing to the scientific understanding of phosphorescence, isotope separation, optical microscopy, and X-ray…

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 109

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Photo: Unknown author · Public domain

1923 · 102 yrs

Freeman Dyson

Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was a British-American theoretical physicist and mathematician who worked in quantum field theory, astrophysics, random matrices, mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, and engineering.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 102

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Photo: ioerror · CC BY-SA 2.0

Showing 12 of 30

Famous deaths12

1072 · 953 yrs

Alp Arslan

Alp Arslan (Persian: آلپ ارسلان; full name: Muhammad Alp Arslan bin Dawud Chaghri) was the second sultan of the Seljuk Empire and great-grandson of Seljuk, the eponymous founder of the dynasty and the empire. He reigned from 1063 until his assassination in 1072.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MilitaryDied aged 43

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Photo: Hafiz-i Abru · Public domain

1909 · 116 yrs

Francisco Tárrega

Francisco de Asís Tárrega y Eixea (21 November 1852 – 15 December 1909) was a Spanish composer and classical guitarist of the late Romantic period. He is known for such pieces as Capricho Árabe, Recuerdos de la Alhambra and Gran Vals.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MusicDied aged 57

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Photo: Unknown · Public domain

1950 · 75 yrs

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel

Vallabhbhai Patel (31 October 1875 – 15 December 1950), commonly known as Sardar Patel, was a Gandhian Indian independence activist, lawyer and statesman who served as the first Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister of India from 1947 to 1950.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 150

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Photo: Government of India work · Public domain

1958 · 67 yrs

Wolfgang Pauli

Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (25 April 1900 – 15 December 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist and a pioneer of quantum mechanics. In 1945, after having been nominated by Albert Einstein, Pauli received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the Exclusion Principle, also called the Pauli Principle".

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

ScienceWould be 126

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Photo: Bettina Katzenstein · CC BY-SA 4.0

1962 · 63 yrs

Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton (1 July 1899 – 15 December 1962) was an English actor and director. Over his career he received an Academy Award and a Grammy Award as well as nominations for two BAFTAs and a Golden Globe.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 127

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Photo: Clarence Sinclair Bull · Public domain

1966 · 59 yrs

Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney ( DIZ-nee; December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 124

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Photo: Boy Scouts of America · Public domain

1991 · 34 yrs

Vasily Zaytsev

Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev (Russian: Васи́лий Григо́рьевич За́йцев, IPA:; 23 March 1915 – 15 December 1991) was a Soviet sniper who served in World War II.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

MilitaryWould be 111

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Photo: Министерство обороны Российской Федерации · CC BY 4.0

2010 · 15 yrs

Blake Edwards

Blake Edwards (born William Blake Crump; July 26, 1922 – December 15, 2010) was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Often thought of as primarily a director of comedies, he also directed several drama, musical, and detective films.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 104

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Photo: Photo by G. K. Austin, Burbank, CA · Public domain

2011 · 14 yrs

Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Eric Hitchens (13 April 1949 – 15 December 2011) was a British and American author and journalist. Known as one of the "Four Horsemen" of New Atheism (along with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Daniel Dennett), he gained prominence as a columnist and speaker.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureWould be 77

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Photo: ensceptico · CC BY 2.0

2013 · 12 yrs

Joan Fontaine

Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland (October 22, 1917 – December 15, 2013), known professionally as Joan Fontaine, was a British-American actress best known for her film roles during the Golden Age of Hollywood. Fontaine appeared in more than 45 films in a career that spanned five decades.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

FilmWould be 109

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Photo: Whitey Schafer · Public domain

2018 · 7 yrs

Girma Wolde-Giorgis

Girma Wolde-Giorgis (Amharic: ግርማ ወልደ ጊዮርጊስ; 28 December 1924 – 15 December 2018) was an Ethiopian politician who was the president of Ethiopia from 2001 to 2013. He was the second person to hold the office of president since the founding of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1995.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

PoliticsWould be 101

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Photo: Unknown author Unknown author / Government of Ethopia · Public domain

2021 · 4 yrs

bell hooks

Gloria Jean Watkins (September 25, 1952 – December 15, 2021), better known by her pen name bell hooks (stylized in lowercase), was an American philosopher, educator, author, and social critic; she was a Distinguished Professor in Residence at Berea College in Kentucky.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

LiteratureWould be 74

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Photo: Cmongirl · Public domain

Events5

1788 · 237 yrs

1788–89 United States presidential selection

Presidential elections were held in the United States from December 15, 1788 to January 7, 1789, under the new Constitution ratified in 1788. George Washington was unanimously elected for the first of his two terms as president and John Adams became the first vice president.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Politics

1894 · 131 yrs

First Italo-Ethiopian War

The First Italo-Ethiopian War, also referred to as the First Italo-Abyssinian War, or simply known as the Abyssinian War in Italy (Italian: Guerra d'Abissinia), was fought between Italy and Ethiopia from 1895 to 1896.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

War

1989 · 36 yrs

Romanian Revolution (1989)

The Romanian revolution (Romanian: Revoluția română) was a period of violent civil unrest in the Socialist Republic of Romania during December 1989 as a part of the revolutions of 1989 that occurred in several countries around the world, primarily within the Eastern Bloc.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Politics

2013 · 12 yrs

South Sudanese Civil War

The South Sudanese Civil War was a multi-sided civil war in South Sudan fought from 2013 to 2018 between government and opposition forces. The civil war caused rampant human rights abuses, including forced displacement, ethnic massacres, and killings of journalists by various parties.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

War

2014 · 11 yrs

2014 Sydney hostage crisis

The Lindt Café siege (also known as the Sydney siege) was a terrorist hostage-taking that occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt Chocolate Café hostage in the APA Building in Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.

Source: Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Tragedy

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