Today in History in 1835 Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales; in 1885 the fizzy drink Dr Pepper is first served at a drug store in Waco, Texas; and in 1953 Hugh Hefner publishes the first edition of Playboy magazine.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

December 1 is the 335th day of the year (336th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 30 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

800 – Charlemagne judges the accusations against Pope Leo III in the Vatican.

1420 - Henry V of England enters Paris.

1640 – Portugal regains its independence from Spain.

1821 – The first constitution of Costa Rica is issued.

1822 – Emperor Pedro I of Brazil is crowned.

1824 - The United States House of Representatives is given the task to decide the winner of the US Presidential Election after no candidate got an overall majority of Electoral College votes.

1828 - Argentine general Juan Lavalle carries out a coup against Governor Manuel Dorrego, beginning the Decembrist revolution.

1835 – Hans Christian Andersen publishes his first book of fairy tales.

1864 - Great Fire of Brisbane.

1865 - Shaw University, the first historically black university in the Southern United States, is founded in North Carolina.

1885 - The fizzy drink Dr Pepper is first served at a drug store in Waco, Texas.

1913 – Ford Motor Company introduces the first moving assembly line.

1913 – Crete is annexed by Greece.

1913 - The Buenos Aires Metro opens to the public.

1918 – Iceland becomes a sovereign state, yet remains a part of the Danish kingdom.

1918 – The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later known as the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed.

1918 - Transylvania unites with the Kingdom of Romania.

1919 - Nancy Astor, Viscountess Astor officially takes her seat in the House of Commons as the UK's first female Member of Parliament.

1923 – The dam of the Gleno Reservoir near Bergamo, Italy, bursts, killing around 600 people.

1934 - In the Soviet Union, Politburo member Sergey Kirov is shot dead by Leonid Nikolaev at Communist Headquarters in Leningrad.

1941 - World War II: Emperor Hirohito of Japan gives the final approval to begin war against the United States.

1941 - World War II: New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia signs the Administration Order No. 9, creating the Civil Air Patrol.

1948 - Taman Shud Case: The body of an unidentified man is found in Adelaide, South Australia, involving an undetectable poison and a secret code in a rare book. The case remains unsolved.

1953 - Hugh Hefner publishes the first edition of Playboy magazine.

1955 – In Montgomery, Alabama, seamstress Rosa Parks refuses to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws, an incident which leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

1958 – Central African Republic becomes independent from France.

1958 - The Our Lady of the Angels school fire in Chicago kills 92 children and 3 nuns.

1959 – Cold War: Antarctic Treaty signed, which sets aside Antarctica as a scientific preserve and bans military activity on that continent.

1960 - Paul McCartney and Pete Best are arrested in Hamburg after being accused of attempted arson.

1961 – The independent Republic of West Papua is proclaimed in modern-day Western New Guinea.

1963 – Nagaland becomes the 16th state of India.

1964 – Malta, Malawi and Zambia join the UN.

1965 - India's Border Security Force is founded.

1966 – Kurt Georg Kiesinger succeeds Ludwig Erhard as Chancellor of West Germany.

1969 – Vietnam War: The first draft lottery in the United States is held since World War II.

1971 – Khmer Rouge rebels intensify assaults on Cambodian government positions, forcing their retreat from Kompong Thmar and nearby Ba Ray.

1971 – The Indian Army occupies part of Kashmir.

1973 – Papua New Guinea gains self-government from Australia.

1974 - TWA Flight 514, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of Dulles International Airport near Washington, DC, killing all 92 people on board.

1974 - Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 6231, a Boeing 727, crashes northwest of JFK International Airport outside New York City, killing all 3 crew members. There were no passengers on board at the time.

1976 – Angola joins the UN.

1981 - Inex-Adria Aviopromet Flight 1308, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, crashes in Corsica, killing all 180 people on board.

1986 - The Musee d'Orsay art museum in Paris opens.

1988 - Benazir Bhutto becomes Prime Minister of Pakistan.

1989 - A right-wing rebel group attempts to remove then-President of the Philippines Corazon Aquino from power in a failed coup attempt.

1990 – Channel Tunnel sections started from the United Kingdom and France meet 40 meters beneath the seabed.

1991 – Cold War: Ukrainian voters overwhelmingly approve a referendum for independence from the Soviet Union.

2000 – Vicente Fox becomes President of Mexico.

2006 – Felipe Calderon becomes President of Mexico.

2006 – A typhoon causes landslides on the Mayon Volcano in the Philippines, burying about 1,000 people.

2009 – The European Union's Lisbon Treaty takes effect.

2012 - Enrique Peña Nieto becomes President of Mexico.

2013 - A train derails in the Bronx, New York City, on the banks of the Hudson River, killing four people and injuring around 60.

2014 - The Somali terrorist group Al-Shabaab rounds up and kills 36 Non-Muslims in northeastern Kenya.

2016 - Vajiralongkorn officially becomes King of Thailand.

2017 - Japanese Emperor Akihito's abdication date is set for April 30, 2019.

2017 - The groups are drawn for the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia.

2018 - Andrés Manuel López Obrador becomes President of Mexico.

2019 - Ursula von der Leyen takes office as the first female President of the European Commission.