Biden offers condolences and support to Germany after Christmas market attack
The suspect in the deadly Christmas car attack criticized Islam and Germany

On December 22, 1815, the Mexican priest and insurgent was shot José María Morelos in San Cristóbal Ecatepec (Mexico), captured a month earlier in Temalaca. He was one of the heroes of the War of Independence.

Other Anniversaries:

1622.- Andrés Páez Sotomayor founded the city of Bucaramanga, in the Santander department of Nueva Granada (present-day Colombia).
1721.- Felipe V orders that the Santa Rosa de Lima Seminary College become the Royal and Pontifical University of Caracas (Venezuela).
1808.- Ludwig van Beethoven’s symphonies Nos. 5 and 6 premiere in Vienna.
1811.- Attempted independence insurrection in Granada (current territory of Nicaragua).
1849.- The Russian writer Fedor M. Dostoevsky is pardoned before the squad that was going to shoot him.
1857.- English and French allied forces take the Chinese city of Canton, which was later governed by a commission formed by the United Kingdom and France.
1894.- Captain Alfred Dreyfus is sentenced to life imprisonment for espionage and high treason and is deported to Guyana. In 1906 it was rehabilitated.
1941.- President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill meet in Washington after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in which the ‘Europe First’ strategy is adopted. The ‘Arcadia’ conference begins.
1965.- New York premiere of ‘Doctor Zhivago’ by David Lean.
1966.- Ian Smith, head of the Government of Southern Rhodesia, declares that the country becomes a Republic and leaves the Commonwealth, following the sanctions imposed by the UN.
1971.- The Austrian Kurt Waldheim, elected Secretary General of the UN.
1972._ The survivors of a plane that crashed 72 days earlier in the Andes mountain range with 45 people on board, among them members of a Montevideo rugby team, are believed to have been located. In total 16 people were saved.
1978.- Deng Xiaoping receives support at the Third Plenary Session of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China to launch the country’s economic reform.
1981.- General Leopoldo Galtieri becomes president and dictator of the Argentine Republic, replacing General Roberto Viola.
1988.- The peace agreement in Southern Africa between Angola, Cuba and South Africa is signed at the UN, ending 13 years of hostilities and promoting the independence of Namibia from South Africa.
1989.- Hans Modrow and Helmut Kohl, leaders of the two Germanys, open the Brandenburg Gate, a symbol for 28 years of the division of Europe.
1989.- Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown in Romania after 23 years of dictatorship. He was executed three days later along with his wife, Elena.
1990.- Lech Walesa becomes the first president in the history of Poland elected by universal suffrage.
1993.- A provisional Constitution that abolishes ‘apartheid’ in South Africa was approved by the tricameral Parliament by 237 votes to 45.
1997.- Acteal Massacre (Mexico): a group of hooded men shot and killed 45 Tzotzil indigenous people in that community of Chiapas with machetes.
2004.- The Spanish Congress unanimously approves the Comprehensive Law Against Gender Violence.
2010.- Jorge Rafael Videla is sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity committed during the Argentine dictatorship.
2014.- Nicaragua inaugurates the 2016.- The UN General Assembly approves the creation of a commission to investigate crimes in the Syrian war.
2018.- The Cuban Parliament unanimously approves the draft of the new Constitution, supported in a referendum in February 2019.
2022.- Former journalist Natasa Pirc Musar is sworn in as (first) president of Slovenia.
2022.- The so-called glass frogs use transparency to camouflage themselves when they sleep and scientists in the US discover that they do so by accumulating red blood cells in the liver, which contains reflective guanine crystals.

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BIRTH

1853.- Teresa Carreño, Venezuelan pianist, singer and composer.
1858.- Giacomo Puccini, Italian composer.
1859.- Manuel Gutiérrez Nájera, Mexican poet.
1876.- Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Italian poet.
1911.- Álvaro Cunqueiro, Spanish writer.
1933.- Abel Pacheco, former Costa Rican president.
1947.- Porfirio Lobo Sosa, former Honduran president.
1948.- Tom Wilkinson, British actor.
1962.- Ralph Fiennes, English actor.
1965.- Sergi López, Spanish actor.

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DEATHS

1870.- Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer, Spanish poet.
1880.- Mary Ann Evans, ‘George Eliot’, British writer.
1969.- Josef von Sternberg, American filmmaker of Austrian origin.
1987.- Carlos de Godó Valls, Spanish press editor.
1989.- Samuel Beckett, Irish writer.
1995.- Néstor Luján, Spanish journalist and writer.
2006.- Francesc Vila Rufas, ‘Cesc’, Spanish cartoonist and graphic humorist.
2007.- Julien Gracq, French writer.
2014.- Joe Cocker, British rock singer.
2018.- Roberto Suazo Córdova, former Honduran president.