Al Gore concedes presidential election

English seaman Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, with five ships and 164 men on a mission to raid Spanish holdings on the Pacific coast of the New World and explore the Pacific Ocean. Three years later, Drake’s return to Plymouth marked the first circumnavigation of the earth by a British explorer. After crossing […]

The Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862, involved nearly 200,000 combatants and is remembered as one of the most significant Confederate victories. The battle, which took place in and around Fredericksburg, Virginia, involved the largest concentration of troops in any Civil War battle.

On December 13, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrives in France to take part in World War I peace negotiations and to promote his plan for a League of Nations, an international organization for resolving conflicts between nations. Wilson had initially tried to keep America out of the war by claiming neutrality in 1914, when hostilities […]

During the Sino-Japanese War, Nanking, the capital of China, falls to Japanese forces, and the Chinese government flees to Hankow, further inland along the Yangtze River. To break the spirit of Chinese resistance, Japanese General Matsui Iwane ordered that the city of Nanking be destroyed. Much of the city was burned, and Japanese troops launched […]

In Atlanta on December 13, 1992, Manon Rheaume becomes the first woman to play in a regular-season professional hockey game. In the Atlanta Knights’ 4-1 loss to Salt Lake City, Rheaume enters at the start of the second period with the score tied at 1 in the International Hockey League contest.  In nearly six minutes, […]

After spending nine months on the run, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is captured on December 13, 2003. Saddam’s downfall began on March 20, 2003, when the United States led an invasion force into Iraq to topple his government, which had controlled the country for more than 20 years. Saddam Hussein was born into a […]