1742 Gebhard Lebrecht von Blucher, Prussian field marshal, born. In 1815 he was defeated by Napoleon at Ligny but played a crucial role in British Commander Wellington's victory over the French at Waterloo.
1835 A huge fire spread through New York City, destroying over 600 buildings.
1859 Wilhelm Grimm, one of the German brothers famous for their "Grimm's Fairy Tales", died.
1920 One of the worst earthquakes of all time occurred in Kansu Province, China. Estimated at over eight points on the Richter scale, it killed 180,000 people.
1921 Camille Saint-Saens, French composer, died. Among his best known works were "Carnaval des Animaux" and his opera "Samson et Dalila".
1944 In World War II, the battle of the Bulge began when the German forces broke through Allied lines in the rugged Ardennes region, taking U.S. troops by surprise.
There were 77,000 Allied and 130,000 German casualties. A German counteroffensive failed.
1945 Prince Fumimaro Konoe, twice Japanese prime minister, committed suicide rather than face war crimes charges.
1949 Sukarno, Indonesian nationalist, was elected as his country's first president after the Netherlands gave up sovereignty. He became president for life in 1966; he was replaced by Suharto.
1960 A total of 136 people were killed when a United Airlines DC-8 and a TWA super constellation collided in midair over New York; 128 were aboard the aircraft and eight were killed on the ground.
1963 Zanzibar and Kenya were admitted to the United Nations.
1971 Bangladesh, formerly East Bengal and the Sylhet Province of Assam in British India, came into existence.
Mainly Muslim, the region became an eastern province of Pakistan after India's partition in 1947. Civil war broke out in 1971 and West Pakistani forces in East Pakistan surrendered after India intervened on the side of the secessionists.
1987 A Palermo court struck the heaviest ever legal blow against Sicily's criminal society, sending 19 mobsters, including "boss of bosses" Michele Greco, to jail for life and handing sentences totaling nearly 2,700 years to 319 others.
1996 A South Korean appeals court commuted the death sentence on ex-president Chun Doo Hwan to life imprisonment.
1997 President Nelson Mandela bade farewell as leader of his ruling African National Congress with a call for racial transformation of South Africa's economy to mirror the political change he led.
1999 Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl admitted he made mistakes by taking secret campaign donations, but denied it was bribery.