December 1, 1934: Leningrad mayor Sergey Kirov is assassinated. Stalin uses it as an excuse to begin the Great Purge of 1934-38 

December 2, 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned Emperor of France in Paris. 

December 3, 1736: Astronomer Anders Celsius takes measurements that confirm Newton's theory that the earth was an ellipsoid rather than the previously accepted sphere. 

December 4,1918: US President Woodrow Wilson sails for Versailles Peace Conference in France, 1st President to travel outside US while in office 

December 5, 777:  Charlemagne becomes the sole King of the Franks after the death of his brother Carloman 

December 6, 1921: Anglo-Irish Treaty signed; Ireland receives dominion status; partition creates Northern Ireland 

December 7, 1941:  Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attack US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people 

December 8, 1941: US President Franklin D.Roosevelt delivers "Day of Infamy" speech to US Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. 

December 9, 536: Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire. 

December 10, 1903: Nobel Prize for physics awarded to Pierre and Marie Curie who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity, chemical element radium and polonium.

December 11, 1964: Che Guevarra speaks at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City. An unknown terrorist fires a mortar shell at the building during the speech. 

December 12, 1694: The Royal Society censures Edmond Halley for suggesting in a paper titled 'Some considerations about the cause of the universal deluge' that the story of Noah's flood could be an account of a cometary impact. 

December 13, 1636: The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. This organization is recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard. 

December 14, 1981: Israel annexes Golan Heights (seized from Syria in war of 1967) 

December 15, 1488: Bartolomeu Dias returns to Portugal after becoming 1st known European to sail round the Cape of Good Hope