21st December

The events happened on 21st December are :

1898 : Radium discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie : On this day in 1898, having recently discovered polonium, future Nobel Prize winners Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the radioactive chemical element radium, a silvery white metal that would be used to treat cancer.

1988 : Pan Am Flight 103 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, apparently because of a terrorist bombing; in 2003 the government of Libya accepted responsibility for the explosion and in 2004 agreed to compensate the families of the victims.

1968 : Apollo 8 was launched from Cape Kennedy (Cape Canaveral) and eventually completed 10 lunar orbits.

1958 : Charles de Gaulle was elected president of the French Fifth Republic.

1913 : The New York World published the first modern crossword puzzle.

1864 : General William Tecumseh Sherman captured Savannah, Georgia, during his “March to the Sea” in the American Civil War.

1845 : The Battle of Fīroz Shāh began between British and Sikh forces during the First Sikh War.

1804 : Benjamin Disraeli, British statesman and novelist who was twice prime minister (1868, 1874–80), was born.

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