On this day: December 19

Events on December 19

• 653 Pope Martin I, having been abducted by Byzantine authorities from Rome for his opposition to Monothelitism, is tried in Constantinople. Wikipedia
• 1154 Henry II was crowned king of England in Westminster Abbey, London. Wikipedia
• 1187 Pope Clement III is elected. Wikipedia
• 1776 Thomas Paine published the first in a series of pamphlets entitled The American Crisis, opening with the line: "These are the times that try men's souls." Wikipedia
• 1783 William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at 24. Wikipedia
• 1793 War of the First Coalition: The Siege of Toulon ends when Napoleon's French artillery forces the British to abandon the city, securing southern France from invasion. Wikipedia
• 1828 Nullification crisis: American vice president John C. Calhoun's South Carolina Exposition and Protest, written to protest the Tariff of Abominations, was presented to the South Carolina House of Representatives. Wikipedia
• 1843 A Christmas Carol, a novella by Charles Dickens about the miser Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation after being visited by ghosts, was published. Wikipedia
• 1900 French parliament votes amnesty for all involved in scandalous army treason trial known as Dreyfus affair. Wikipedia
• 1920 King Constantine I is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son Alexander of Greece and a plebiscite. Wikipedia
• 1932 BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service. Wikipedia
• 1946 Start of the First Indochina War. Wikipedia
• 1956 British physician and suspected serial killer John Bodkin Adams was arrested in connection with the death of Edith Alice Morrell. Wikipedia
• 1961 India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India. Wikipedia
• 1964 The ruling junta of South Vietnam, led by Nguyễn Khánh, initiated a coup, dissolving the High National Council, a civilian advisory body. Wikipedia
• 1983 The Jules Rimet Trophy, awarded to the winner of the FIFA World Cup, was stolen from the offices of the Brazilian Football Confederation. Wikipedia
• 1984 China and the United Kingdom signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, agreeing to the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong to China on 1 July 1997. Wikipedia
• 1985 Aeroflot Flight 101/435 was hijacked by its co-pilot; it landed in a cow pasture in China, where he was apprehended. Wikipedia
• 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from exile in Gorky. Wikipedia
• 1997 SilkAir Flight 185 crashed into the Musi River in Indonesia, killing 104 people. Wikipedia
• 1997 Titanic, the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time with a worldwide total of more than US$2.2 billion, was released in the United States. Wikipedia
• 1998 President Bill Clinton is impeached by the United States House of Representatives, becoming the second president of the United States to be impeached. Wikipedia
• 1999 Space Shuttle Discovery is launched on STS-103, the third Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Wikipedia
• 2013 The European Space Agency's spacecraft Gaia was launched with the goal of constructing the largest and most precise star catalogue ever made. Wikipedia
• 2016 Andrei Karlov, Russia's ambassador to Turkey, was assassinated at an art gallery in Ankara. Wikipedia
• 2016 A vehicular attack in Berlin, Germany, kills 12 and injures 56 people at a Christmas market. Wikipedia

Born on December 19

• 1683 Philip V of Spain (died 1746) Wikipedia
• 1778 Marie Thérèse of France (died 1851) Wikipedia
• 1852 Albert Abraham Michelson, Prussian-American physicist, chemist, and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1931) Wikipedia
• 1861 Italo Svevo, Italian author and playwright (died 1928) Wikipedia
• 1875 Mileva Marić, Serbian physicist (died 1948) Wikipedia
• 1906 Leonid Brezhnev, Ukrainian-Russian marshal, engineer, and politician, 4th Head of State of the Soviet Union (died 1982) Wikipedia
• 1910 Jean Genet, French novelist, playwright, and poet (died 1986) Wikipedia
• 1915 Édith Piaf, French singer-songwriter and actress (died 1963) Wikipedia
• 1924 Cicely Tyson, American actress (died 2021) Wikipedia
• 1934 Pratibha Patil, Indian lawyer and politician, 12th President of India Wikipedia
• 1941 Lee Myung-bak, South Korean businessman and politician, 10th President of South Korea Wikipedia
• 1961 Eric Allin Cornell, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate Wikipedia
• 1963 Til Schweiger, German actor, director, and producer Wikipedia
• 1963 Jennifer Beals, American model and actress Wikipedia
• 1964 Arvydas Sabonis, Lithuanian basketball player Wikipedia
• 1972 Alyssa Milano, American actress, television personality, and activist Wikipedia
• 1980 Jake Gyllenhaal, American actor and producer Wikipedia
• 1985 Gary Cahill, English footballer Wikipedia
• 1986 Ryan Babel, Dutch footballer Wikipedia
• 1987 Karim Benzema, French footballer Wikipedia
• 1988 Alexis Sánchez, Chilean footballer Wikipedia
• 1996 Franck Kessié, Ivorian footballer Wikipedia

Died on December 19

• 401 Pope Anastasius I Wikipedia
• 1111 Al-Ghazali, Persian jurist, philosopher, theologian, and mystic (born 1058) Wikipedia
• 1370 Pope Urban V (born 1310) Wikipedia
• 1741 Vitus Bering, Danish-born Russian explorer (born 1681) Wikipedia
• 1848 Emily Brontë, English novelist and poet (born 1818) Wikipedia
• 1851 Joseph Mallord William Turner, English painter (born 1775) Wikipedia
• 1915 Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist (born 1864) Wikipedia
• 1940 Kyösti Kallio, Finnish politician, the 4th President of Finland (born 1873) Wikipedia
• 1944 Abbas II of Egypt (born 1874) Wikipedia
• 1946 Paul Langevin, French physicist and academic (born 1872) Wikipedia
• 1953 Robert Andrews Millikan, American physicist and eugenicist, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1868) Wikipedia
• 1996 Marcello Mastroianni, Italian-French actor and singer (born 1924) Wikipedia
• 2004 Herbert C. Brown, English-American chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (born 1912) Wikipedia
• 2016 Andrei Karlov, Russian diplomat, Ambassador to Turkey (born 1954) Wikipedia

Holidays and observances

• Christian feast day: Lillian Trasher (Episcopal Church) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: O Radix Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Pope Anastasius I Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Pope Urban V Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: December 19 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics) Wikipedia
• Christian feast day: Saint Nicholas Day Wikipedia
• Goa Liberation Day (Goa, India) Wikipedia
• National Heroes and Heroines Day (Anguilla) Wikipedia

Sources

• Wikipedia — “December 19” — events, births, deaths and observances (text under CC BY-SA 4.0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikipedia — “Selected anniversaries/December 19” — the anniversaries editors chose for the date and the article each one is about (checked 2026-10-15)
• Wikidata — in how many language editions each entry's own article exists, used to fill the lists (CC0) (checked 2026-10-15)
• vacanza/holidays (open-source holiday rules, MIT licence) — holiday rules used to build the lists (checked 2026-10-15)

The events, births, deaths and observances above are from the English Wikipedia article “December 19” and the articles it links to (authors and history), retrieved 2026-10-15 through the Wikimedia “On this day” feed. They are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; this selection is shared under the same licence. Every anniversary that Wikipedia's editors selected for December 19 stays on the list; the remaining places, up to 26 events, 22 births and 14 deaths, go to the entries whose own article — about the event itself, or else the person or thing it is about — appears in the most language editions (counted from Wikidata); an article about a person or thing, which covers far more than one day, counts half. An entry with no article of its own counts, also at half, by the least covered article it links, and one that links only places counts for nothing. Each list runs by year, and the wording is unchanged apart from removing references to pictures, audio and video.