HISTORY
1941 -- The British Eighth Army recaptured Benghazi, Libya, from the Germans.
1942 -- The German research station at Peenemunde successfully tested the V1 Flying Bomb.
1942 -- An assassin killed Admiral Francois Darlan, a senior figure in France's collaborationist Vichy government.
1943 -- General Dwight Eisenhower was named supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force preparing the invasion of German-occupied France.
1951 -- Libya proclaimed a monarchy under King Idriss I.
1953 -- An express train crashed into a river in New Zealand, killing 151 people.
1980 -- Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, commander-in-chief of the German Navy during World War II, died.
1989 -- Deposed Panamanian strongman General Manuel Antonio Noriega turned himself in to the papal envoy and asked for political asylum.
1994 -- Fundamentalist guerrillas hijacked a French airliner at Algiers airport, killing two people.
1995 -- Thousands of Palestinians gathered at Bethlehem's Manger Square to celebrate the city's first Christmas in 28 years free from Israeli occupation.
1995 -- An Islamic party, Welfare, won a general election for the first time in Turkey's 72-year secular history.
1997 -- A Paris court jailed guerrilla mastermind Carlos "The Jackal" for life for killing two French secret agents.
1999 -- Maurice Couve de Murville, longest-serving French foreign minister who later became prime minister, died at 92.
1999 -- Ivory Coast's army overthrew elected President Henri Konan Bedie in a coup.
1999 -- General Joao Batista Figueiredo, Brazil's last military ruler who restored civilian rule in 1985, died at 81.
2001 -- Israel barred Palestinian President Yasser Arafat from making his annual Christmas visit to Bethlehem, insisting he crack down on Palestinian militants.
2003 -- The Italian food giant Parmalat, embroiled in one of Europe's biggest corporate scandals, filed for bankruptcy protection after the discovery of a 7 billion euro hole in its accounts.
2004 -- New Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas celebrated Christmas in Bethlehem with prayers for peace after the death of Yasser Arafat, who was barred in the past.