📜 This Day in History
December 31
1759Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum to the St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin and began brewing Guinness.- 1862The Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, began with an engagement in which both sides would suffer their highest casualty rates in the American Civil War.
- 1961RTÉ, Ireland's first television network, began broadcasting.
- 1983Two Australian biologists published an article titled "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia", initiating the Wells and Wellington affair.
- 1999Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin became acting president upon President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation.
- 2006War in Somalia: Transitional Federal Government forces attacked the last stronghold of the Islamic Courts Union in the town of Jilib.
