Today in History in 1807 The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the United States Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.

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 22 is the 356th day of the year (357th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are nine days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

69 - Roman Emperor Vitellius is captured and murdered at the Gemonian Stairs in Rome.

401 - Pope Innocent I is elected.

856 - An earthquake, near Damghan, Persia, kills an estimated 200,000 people.

880 - China: Luoyang, eastern capital of the Tang Dynasty, is captured by rebel leader Huang Chao during the reign of Emperor Xizong of Tang.

1135 - Stephen of Blois becomes King of England.

1603 – Mehmed III Sultan of the Ottoman Empire dies and is succeeded by his son Ahmed I.

1622 - The city of Bucaramanga in present-day Colombia is founded.

1647 - A hurricane strikes the Canary Islands, with Fuerteventura being hit particularly hard.

1711 - Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor is crowned.

1769 - The Sino-Burmese War of 1765-1769 ends with an uneasy truce.

1789 - Revolutionary France is divided into departments.

1790 - The Turkish fortress of Izmail is stormed and captured by Alexander Suvorov and his Russian armies.

1807 – The Embargo Act, forbidding trade with all foreign countries, is passed by the United States Congress, at the urging of President Thomas Jefferson.

1809 – The Non-Intercourse Act, lifting the Embargo Act except for the United Kingdom and France, passes the United States Congress.

1849 – The execution of Fyodor Dostoevsky is canceled at the last second.

1851 – The first freight train is operated in Roorkee in India.

1857 - Mountaineering: The Alpine Club is founded in London.

1864 – Savannah, Georgia falls to General William Tecumseh Sherman during the American Civil War.

1885 – Ito Hirobumi, a samurai, becomes the first Prime Minister of Japan.

1891 - Asteroid 323 Brucia becomes the first asteroid discovered by the use of photography

1894 – The Dreyfus affair begins, in France, when Alfred Dreyfus is wrongly convicted of treason, on antisemitic grounds.

1894 - The United States Golf Association is founded.

1910 – Chicago Union Stock Yards Fire, 21 firemen were killed.

1937 – The Lincoln Tunnel opens to traffic in New York City.

1939 - Worst day in history of German train travel: Two separate accidents kill 287 people in total.

1942 - World War II: Adolf Hitler orders the development of the V-2 rocket as a weapon.

1944 – World War II: German troops demand the surrender of United States troops at Bastogne, Belgium. See Battle of the Bulge

1944 – World War II: Vietnam People's Army is formed to resist Japanese occupation of Vietnam.

1947 - The Constituent Assembly of Italy approves the country's new constitution.

1956 - Colo, the first gorilla to be bred in captivity, is born at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio.

1963 – Cruise ship Lakonia burns 180 miles north of Madeira with the loss of 128 lives.

1964 – Comedian Lenny Bruce is convicted of obscenity.

1965 – A 65 miles per hour speed limit is introduced on country roads and motorways in the United Kingdom.

1968 - Cultural Revolution: People's Daily posted the instructions of Mao Zedong that it is "The intellectual youth must go to the country, and will be educated from living in rural poverty."(Down to the Countryside Movement)

1974 – Grande Comore, Anjouan and Mohéli vote to become the independent nation of Comoros. Mayotte remains under French administration.

1974 - The house of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Edward Heath is attacked by members of the Provisional Irish Republican Army.

1979 - Catalonia is given autonomy within Spain.

1984 – Subway vigilante Bernhard Hugo Goetz shoots four African-American youths on an express train in The Bronx borough of New York City.

1988 – Chico Mendes, a Brazilian rubber tapper, unionist and environmental activist, is assassinated.

1988 – Yitzhak Shamir present his 3rd government in front of the Israeli Parliament

1989 – After a week of bloody demonstrations, Ion Iliescu takes over as president of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship.

1989 – Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, effectively ending the division of East and West Germany.

1989 – Two Tourist coaches collide on the Pacific Highway north of Kempsey NSW (Kempsey Bus Crash).

1990 – The Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia become independent after the end of their trusteeship.

1990 – Lech Wałęsa is sworn in as President of Poland.

1991 - Armed opposition groups launch a military coup against President of Georgia Zviad Gamsakhurdia.

1992 – An MiG23 and a Boeing 727 of Libyan Arab Airlines collide near Tripoli, killing 157 people.

1997 – Acteal massacre: Attendees at a prayer meeting of Roman Catholic activists for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas were massacred by paramilitary forces.

1999 – The Spanish Civil Guard finds near Calatayud (Zaragoza) another van loaded by ETA with 750 kg of explosives (see related event on December 21 1999).

1999 – Tandja Mamadou becomes President of Niger.

2001 – Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by Hamid Karzai.

2001 – Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63.

2001 – CC the cat, the first cloned pet, is born.

2002 - Janez Drnovsek becomes President of Slovenia.

2005 - Astronomers announce the discovery of two more rings around the planet Uranus.

2008 – President of Guinea Lansana Conté dies. Following his death, Moussa Dadis Camara takes power in a coup.

2010 – The end of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy regarding Homosexuals in the United States Military is signed into law by Barack Obama.

2011 – Baghdad is struck by a series of bomb explosions.

2015 - SpaceX lands a first stage Falcon 9 rocket on ground after reaching low-Earth orbit, for the first time in history.

2016 - A study finds the VSV-EBOV vaccine against the Ebola virus between 70 and 100% effective, and therefore making it the first proven vaccine against the disease.

2017 - A typhoon hits the southern Philippines, killing almost 200 people.

2017 - The United Nations Security Council votes 15-0 in favour of additional sanctions (punishments) against North Korea.