01011221 This Day In History, December 21

68: Vespasian (see Vespasian), a Roman general, entered Rome and was proclaimed Emperor by the Senate (see The Politics Of Rome and A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars).

640: Muslims captured the "Babylon Fortress" in the Nile Delta after a seven-month siege (see also A History Of Jerusalem: Constantine and Muhammad).

1140: Conrad III of Germany (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation) besieged Weinsberg.

1620: 103 English "Pilgrims" of the Mayflower made landfall in "New England" to establish royal colonies there (see also The Pilgrims and Thanksgiving In History and Prophecy).

1872: The HMS Challenger, commanded by Captain George Nares, sailed from Portsmouth, England on the Challenger expedition.

1883: The Royal Canadian Dragoons and the Royal Canadian Regiment, the first permanent force cavalry and infantry regiments of the Canadian Army, were established.

1898: Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium.

1908: Klara Hitler, mother of Adolf Hitler, died of breast cancer at age 47. It was after his mother's death that Adolf Hitler began his homeless hobo years in Vienna, Austria (Hitler was born in Austria, not Germany) where he developed his warped psychological basis of his supposed "socialist" (NAZI is the abbreviation for his National Socialist party) and anti-Semitic (his resentment toward Jewish shopkeepers, while he was living on the street and in homeless shelters) attitudes (see also Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1910: 2,500,000 plague victims were reported in the An-Hul province of China (see also Leviticus 13: Bacteria).

1946: An earthquake and tidal wave killed hundreds of people in Japan.

1948: Ireland declared itself a republic, rather than a dominion, and withdrew from the British Commonwealth.

1958: Charles de Gaulle was elected the first President of the France's Fifth Republic.

1967: Louis Washkansky, the first human heart transplant patient, died 18 days after the operation by Dr. Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa.

1975: Terrorists of the "Arm of the Arab Revolution" led by "Carlos the Jackal" raided the OPEC headquarters in Vienna and held 11 oil ministers and their staff hostage.

1986: 500,000 Chinese students gathered in Shanghai's People's Square calling for democratic reforms, including freedom of the press.

1988: Pan-Am flight 103, a Boeing 747, was blown up by on-board bomb over Lockerbie, Scotland; 259 passengers and crew, and 11 other people on the ground killed.

1991: 11 of the former 15 Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States and the death of the USSR. Of the other 4 former Soviet republics, 3 Baltic states were already independent and Georgia chose not to join the Commonwealth.

1993: President Boris Yeltsin abruptly abolished the former KGB security police, saying the huge force Russian citizens feared for decades was "incapable of being reformed."

1995: Bethlehem was transferred from Israeli to "Palestinian" control (see also Bethlehem In History And Prophecy).