USS Indiana bombarding Kamaishi

Allied naval bombardments of Japan during the last weeks of World War II in 1945 targeted industrial and military facilities. Warships of the United States Navy, the British Royal Navy, and the Royal New Zealand Navy, mostly cruisers and battleships, caused heavy damage to several factories, as well as nearby civilian areas. One goal was to provoke the Japanese military into committing some of its reserve force of aircraft into battle, but the Allied forces were not attacked, and none of their warships suffered damage. US Navy ships attacked the cities of Kamaishi and Muroran, a joint American and British force bombed targets around the city of Hitachi, and cruisers and destroyers shelled areas including Nojima Saki and Shionomisaki. In the final bombardment on 9 August, Kamaishi was hit again by American, British and New Zealand warships. Up to 1,739 Japanese were killed, and as many as 1,497 were wounded. The Allies lost 32 prisoners of war during the bombardments of Kamaishi. (Full article...)

Dawn Mabalon

• ... that professor Dawn Mabalon (pictured) is credited with helping to get Little Manila, Stockton, listed as one of America's Most Endangered Places?
• ... that the saliva of the common clubhook squid contains a toxin which helps subdue its prey?
• ... that baseball player Kyle Regnault signed with the New York Mets after meeting one of their coaches on a golf course?
• ... that an angry artist walked into the SoHo Weekly News offices and chopped off two of his fingers as a "protest"?
• ... that Z was ordered as France's first diesel-powered submarine, but lost this distinction because Aigrette was launched before her?
• ... that the title of the poem "Sozusagen grundlos vergnügt" by Mascha Kaléko can be translated as "Call it causelessly merry"?
• ... that Clare Faulds, the first woman admitted to the Manx bar, later served as the Vicar General of Sodor and Man?
• ... that Lord Byron was called a "melancholy rat" for writing the Hebrew Melodies?

Damage from the Sunda Strait tsunami

• A tsunami hits Sunda Strait, Indonesia, killing at least 429 people and injuring more than 1,400 others (aftermath pictured).
• In field hockey, the World Cup concludes with Belgium defeating the Netherlands in the final.
• The Balangiga bells, taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.
• Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.

December 26: Boxing Day in Commonwealth countries; Kwanzaa begins in Canada and the United States

Pierre and Marie Curie

• 1606 – The first known performance of the play King Lear, a tragedy by William Shakespeare based on the legendary King Lear of the Britons, was held.
• 1811 – Seventy-two people died when a theater in Richmond, Virginia, U.S., was destroyed by fire—the worst urban disaster in American history at the time.
• 1871 – Thespis, the first comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan, made its debut at the Gaiety Theatre, London, UK.
• 1898 – At the French Academy of Sciences, physicists Pierre and Marie Curie (both pictured) announced the discovery of a new element, naming it radium.
• 1996 – Six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenét Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, a murder that generated extensive coverage from the American media.

Reginald Fitz Jocelin (d. 1191) · Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm (b. 1723) · Ram Swarup (d. 1998)