14th December 1911: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen becomes the first to reach the South Pole

13th December 1577: Francis Drake departs Plymouth on his circumnavigation of the globe

12th December 1935: The Lebensborn registered association established in Nazi Germany by the SS

11th December 1936: King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom announces his abdication in a worldwide radio broadcast

10th December 1948: Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris

9th December 1921: Lead identified as a fuel additive to reduce engine knocking in automobiles

8th December 1980: John Lennon murdered outside his New York apartment block by Mark David Chapman

7th December 1995: NASA’s Galileo spacecraft becomes the first to enter orbit around Jupiter

6th December 1956: The ‘Blood in the Water’ Olympic water polo match between the USSR and Hungary

5th December 1934: The Walwal Incident lays the foundations for the Abyssinia Crisis

4th December 1676: Battle of Lund fought between Denmark–Norway and Sweden, one of the bloodiest battles in Scandinavia

3rd December 1910: The world’s first neon light was turned on for the public at the Paris Motor Show

2nd December 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of the French at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris

1st December 1934: Assassination of Sergei Kirov, one of the most prominent figures in the Soviet Communist Party

30th November 1982: Michael Jackson releases Thriller, the best-selling album of all time

29th November 1850: The Declaration of Olmütz signed by Prussia and Austria

28th November 1660: The Royal Society founded at Gresham College in London by a group of notable natural philosophers

27th November 1809: The Berners Street hoax causes chaos in central London

26th November 1922: Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon enter the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings

25th November 1940: Nikolai Yezhov, former head of the Soviet secret police, executed in Moscow