Today in History in 1732 Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanack

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 19 is the 353rd day of the year (354th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 12 days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

324 – Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor.

1154 - Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1187 – Pope Clement III is elected.

1490 - Anne, Duchess of Brittany marries Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor by proxy.

1666 - Lund University in southern Sweden is founded.

1732 – Benjamin Franklin publishes Poor Richard's Almanack

1777 – George Washington's army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1783 - At age 24, William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest-ever Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1828 – John C. Calhoun pens South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

1835 – The Toledo Blade newspaper begins publishing.

1842 – The United States recognizes the independence of Hawaii.

1907 - 239 coal miners die in a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

1909 - The German football club Borussia Dortmund is founded.

1912 – William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which killed over 1,000 people was pardoned by President Taft after ​3 1⁄2 years in Sing Sing prison.

1916 – The Battle of Verdun ended during World War I.

1920 - King Constantine I of Greece is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son, Alexander of Greece, and a vote.

1927 - Indian activists Ashfaqulla Khan, Ram Prasad Bismil and Roshan Singh are executed by British colonial authorities.

1928 – First autogiro flight in the United States.

1932 - The BBC World Service begins broadcasting, as the BBC Empire Service.

1941 - World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sink the HMS Valiant and HMS Elizabeth in Alexandria harbor.

1944 – The Soviet Union completely occupies Estonia (Ruhnu island).

1944 - French newspaper Le Monde is founded.

1945 – Austria becomes a republic for the second time, the first having been founded in 1918 and interrupted by the Austro-fascist dictatorship from 1934 onwards and the Nazi invasion of Austria in 1938.

1946 – Ho Chi Minh attacks French in Hanoi.

1956 - Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of over 160 patients. Eventually, he is only convicted of minor charges.

1961 – The Indian Army invades the Portuguese province of Estado da India Portuguesa (Portuguese State of India) which will become part of India.

1962 – Nyasaland secedes from Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

1963 – Zanzibar received its independence from the United Kingdom to become a constitutional monarchy under the sultan.

1964 - The South Vietnamese military junta of Nguyen Khanh dissolves the High National Council and arrest some of the members.

1965 – Prisoners Ronald Ryan and Peter Walker escape from HM Prison Pentridge, Melbourne. During the escape a guard is killed. Ryan would hang for his death, in 1967.

1967 – Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt is declared dead, two days after going missing.

1972 – Apollo 17, the last manned lunar flight, returns to Earth.

1974 – The Altair 8800, the first personal computer, goes on sale.

1975 - John Paul Stevens is appointed as a justice of the United States Supreme Court.

1980 – Anguilla is made a dependency of the United Kingdom separate from Saint Kitts and Nevis.

1982 - A tanker fire in Tacoa, Venezuela, kills 150 people.

1983 - The Jules Rimet FIFA World Cup trophy is stolen from the Headquarters of the Brazilian Football Federation in Rio de Janeiro and is never seen again.

1984 – The United Kingdom and People's Republic of China sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which handed Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

1984 - Ted Hughes becomes Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

1986 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife, Yelena Bonner, from exile in Gorky.

1997 – A Silkair Boeing 737-300 crashes into the Musi River, in Sumatra, Indonesia killing 104

1997 – Titanic (the highest-grossing movie ever as of 2005) opens in U.S. theaters.

1998 – The U.S. House of Representatives passes articles of impeachment against President Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.

2000 – The Leninist Guerrilla Units attack a party office of the far-right MHP in Istanbul, Turkey. One MHP member is killed and several wounded.

2001 – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, the first movie in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, opens in theaters.

2001 – A new world-record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is set at Tosontsengel, Hövsgöl Aymag, Mongolia.

2001 – The Argentine economic crisis bursts into street riots after the announcement by the economy minister of the measures of holding back the bank deposits.

2005 – Prime Minister of Israel Ariel Sharon suffers a minor stroke.

2007 – Marcus Stephen becomes President of Nauru.

2007 - Lee Myung-bak is elected President of South Korea.

2011 – North Korean state television announces that Kim Jong-il died two days earlier. His son Kim Jong-un has been named as his successor, as North Korea's leader.

2012 - Park Geunhye is elected President of South Korea, as the first woman elected to lead South Korea.

2016 - Russian Ambassador to Turkey Andrei Karlov is assassinated at an art gallery in Ankara by an off-duty police officer.

2016 - A lorry is driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in central Berlin, killing at least 12 people.