01011231 This Day In History, December 31

406: Germanic Vandals and Suebians crossed the Rhine River, thereby beginning an invasion of Roman-occupied Gaul (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation).

535: Byzantine general Belisarius completed his conquest of Sicily.

1229: James I of Aragon ("the Conqueror") entered Medina Mayurqa (Palma, Spain), thereby culminating Rome's reconquest of Majorca.

1384: English religious reformer and Bible translator John Wycliffe died at age 56. Among His teachings were that The Scriptures are the supreme authority in all doctrinal matters, and that Jesus Christ is anyone's only overlord.

1492: Jews were expelled from Sicily.

1600: Queen Elizabeth I granted a charter to the "company of merchants of London trading to the East Indies" - the East India Company.

1687: The first shipload of emigrating Huguenots (French Protestants) left France for South Africa.

1719: English astronomer John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, died at age 73. The Greenwich Observatory was built for him.

1775: The Battle of Quebec began. British forces repulsed an attack by New England rebel forces under General Richard Montgomery.

1857: Queen Victoria chose Ottawa, Ontario (on the Ottawa River between Ontario and Quebec) as the new capital of Canada. The earlier choice, Kingston, Ontario (located on the north shore of Lake Ontario), was by then regarded as too convenient and vulnerable to attack by the U.S. (a lesson learned and never forgotten during the Wars of 1776 and 1812).

1911: Marie Curie received her second Nobel Prize for her work on radioactive elements.

1923: The chimes of Big Ben in London were broadcast for the first time by the BBC.

1923: The Sahara Desert was crossed by an automobile for the first time.

1930: Brewery heir Aldolphus Busch was kidnapped ("Bush" is an abbreviated form of the German name Busch).

1938: Dr. R.N. Harger's "drunkometer," the first breath test for car drivers, was officially introduced, in Indianapolis.

1968: Russia's TU-144 supersonic airliner made its first flight, several months ahead of the Anglo-French Concorde which it closely resembled.

1971: Austrian Kurt Waldheim took over as United Nations secretary-general, succeeding U Thant.

1973: A three-day work week was introduced in Britain to conserve energy during a miners' strike.

1980: Canadian communications theorist and educator Marshall McLuhan died at age 69. He is most well-known for his statements that electronic media were turning the world into a "global village" in which "the medium is the message." Among his lesser-known statements, referring to the drivel that dominates TV programming, was "TV sucks the brain right out of your skull."

1987: One second was added to that year to compensate for precession of earth's axis.

1991: the Soviet Union was officially