📜 This Day in History

December 19

• 1154Henry II was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey, London.
• 1828Nullification crisis: American vice president John C. Calhoun's South Carolina Exposition and Protest, written to protest the Tariff of Abominations, was presented to the South Carolina House of Representatives.
• 1964The ruling junta of South Vietnam, led by Nguyễn Khánh, initiated a coup, dissolving the High National Council, a civilian advisory body.
• 1984China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997.
• 1997Titanic, the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time with a worldwide total of more than US$2.2 billion, was released in the United States.
• 2016Andrei Karlov, Russia's ambassador to Turkey, was assassinated at an art gallery in Ankara.

Born on this day

• 1852Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-American physicist, chemist, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1931)
• 1906Leonid Brezhnev, Ukrainian-Russian marshal, engineer, and politician, 4th Head of State of the Soviet Union (died 1982)
• 1915Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (died 1963)
• 1987Karim Benzema, French footballer