Highlights in history on this date:

1790: Austrian troops re-enter Brussels and suppress the revolution.

1804: Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself emperor of France in Paris, taking the crown from attending Pope Pius VII.

1815: Britain signs a peace treaty with the Rajah of Nepal.

1816: The first savings bank in the United States, the Philadelphia Savings Fund Society, opens for business.

1848: Austria’s Emperor Ferdinand I abdicates in favour of Franz Joseph I.

1851: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, president of France, suspends the constitution during a coup. Street fighting breaks out in Paris.

1852: Second French Empire is proclaimed with Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte as Emperor Napoleon III.

media_camera Napoleon III rules as Emperor over the second French Empire.

1854: Austria concludes alliance with Britain and France.

1942: Nuclear chain reaction is demonstrated for the first time by scientists working on the Manhattan Project underneath the University of Chicago’s football stadium.

1960: The Archbishop of Canterbury visits Pope John XXIII, breaking a 400-year- old tradition set in the 1500s by Britain’s King Henry VIII and Pope Leo X.

1969: The Boeing 747 jumbo jet makes its debut as 191 people, most of them reporters and photographers, fly from Seattle to New York City.

1971: Britain terminates all treaties with crucial states in Gulf, leading to the formation of the United Arab Emirates.

1982: In the first operation of its kind, doctors at the University of Utah Medical Centre implant a permanent artificial heart into retired dentist Barney Clark, who lives 112 days with the device.

1993: Drug lord Pablo Escobar is killed in a gunfight with security forces in Colombia, 16 months after escaping from prison.

1995: A Singapore court sentences former trader Nick Leeson to six-and-a-half years in prison over the crash of Britain’s oldest merchant bank.

2001: Enron, the largest US energy-trading company, files for bankruptcy protection, the largest bankruptcy in the nation’s history.

2006: Fidel Castro fails to attend a military parade marking the 50th anniversary of the date he and his rebels launched their revolution, fuelling speculation the ailing Cuban leader may not return to power.

2008: Former Whitlam government minister Frank Crean dies aged 92.

2010: Swedish authorities win a court ruling in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning in a rape case.

media_camera Swedish authorities win a court ruling in their bid to arrest the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

2014: Indonesian President Joko Widodo rules out granting clemency to convicted drug traffickers sentenced to death in a major blow to the two members of the Australian Bali Nine on death row in Bali.

2015: Two people open fire in San Bernardino, California in a terrorist attack at a centre for people with developmental disabilities, killing at least 14.

2016: More than $500 million is wiped from the market value of organic infant formula maker Bellamy’s after it warned of a fall in revenue due to worse-than-expected sales in China.

2017: The Kangaroos win the Rugby League World Cup in a tense final against England.

2018: A man’s body is found in a wheelie bin in Yeronga on Brisbane’s southside, prompting a police investigation.

media_camera Happy birthday Britney Spears!

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS:

Georges Seurat, French artist (1859-1891); George Richards Minot, US physician/Nobel laureate (1885-1950); Maria Callas, US opera singer (1923-1977); Gianni Versace, Italian fashion designer (1946-1997); Paul Watson, founder of the Sea Shepherd (1950-); Lucy Liu, US actress (1968-); Monica Seles, Yugoslav- American tennis player (1973-); Britney Spears, US pop singer (1981-); Tal Wilkenfeld, Australian singer, songwriter and guitarist (1986-).

THOUGHT FOR TODAY:

“When we cannot find contentment in ourselves it is useless to seek it elsewhere.” – Francois, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, French author (1613-1680).

Originally published as Today in history: December 2