1493 - 1st sight of manatees (by Christopher Columbus)
1788 - Connecticut becomes the fifth state to be admitted to the United States.
1954 - -87°F (-66°C), Northice Station, Greenland (Greenland record)
1960 – Beginning of the construction of the Aswan dam in Egypt.
1960 - President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser opens construction on the Aswan High Dam by detonating ten tons of dynamite to demolish twenty tons of granite on the east bank of the Nile.
1968 - Surveyor 7 space probe soft lands on Moon
1973 - Luna 21 launched, to Moon
1982 - 5.9 earthquake in New England & Canada; 1st since 1855

1297 - Monaco gains its independence.
1642 - Галилео Галилеј — италијански астроном и физичар.
1679 - French explorer Rene-Robert de La Salle Kavelje discovered Niagara Falls
1780 - An earthquake of estimated magnitude 7.7 hits the city of Tabriz, Iran killing about 80,000 people and causing major damage.
1806 - Cape Colony becomes a British colony.
1994 - Russian cosmonaut Valeri Polyakov on Soyuz TM-18 leaves for Mir. He would stay on the space station until March 22, 1995, for a record 437 days in space.

1610 - Galileo discovers three satellites of Jupiter, Io, Europa & Ganymede

1785 - 1st balloon flight across English Channel (Jean Pierre Blanchard & John Jeffries)
1927 - The first transatlantic telephone service is established – from New York, New York to London, England.
1960 - Polaris missile is test launched.
1968 - Surveyor 7 the last spacecraft in the Surveyor series, lifts off from launch complex 36A, Cape Canaveral.
CHRISTMAS FOR THE ORTHODOX

1839 - The most damaging storm in 300 years sweeps across Ireland , damaging or destroying more than 20% of the houses in Dublin.
1912 - New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U.S. state.
1912 - German geophysicist Alfred Wegener first presents his theory of continental drift.
1912 - Alfred Wegener, geophysicist and meteorologist, presents his controversial theory of continental drift in a lecture at a the Geological Association (Geologischen Vereinigung) at the Senckenberg-Museum, Frankfurt.
1968 - Surveyor 7 (last of series) launched by US for soft-landing on Moon

1892 - 1st successful auroral photograph made
1895 - Austrian newspaper reports that Wilhelm Röntgen has discovered a type of radiation, which later will be known as X-ray.
1905 - Charles Perrine announces discovery of Jupiter's 7th satellite, Elara
1909 - Colombia recognizes Panama's independence
1933 - Construction of the Golden Gate Bridge begins in San Francisco Bay, San Francisco, California.
1974 - Warmest reliably measured temperature in Antarctica of +59°F (+15°C) recorded at Vanda Station.
2005 - Eris, the largest known dwarf planet in the solar system, is discovered by the team of Michael E. Brown, Chad Trujillo, and David L. Rabinowitz using images originally taken on October 21, 2003, at the Palomar Observatory.