1652 Jan van Riebeeck writes in his diary that the first two pounds of butter have been churned at the Cape.
1915 The German gunboat, the Kingani, is captured by the British on Lake Tanganyika. It is removed by portage through the jungles of the Belgian Congo.
1924 Judy Garland, aged 2½ and billed as Baby Frances, makes her show-business debut.
1943 The German battleship Scharnhorst sinks off Norway’s North Cape after a battle with the Royal Navy.
1944 US General George Patton’s Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded US forces at the Battle of the Bulge.
1948 Cardinal József Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy.
1948 The last Soviet troops withdraw from North Korea.
1975 The Tu-144, the world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft goes into service.
1991 The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union, ending the Cold War.
1995 Spinner Paul “Gogga” Adams becomes South Africa’s youngest Test cricketer at 18 years and 340 days of age.
2000 Former Transkei prime minister George Mzivubu Mathanzima dies at Frontier Hospital in Queenstown, aged 82.
2003 An earthquake shakes south-eastern Iran leaves more than 26 000 people dead and 30 000 injured.
2004 A powerful undersea earthquake off Indonesia triggers the Boxing Day Tsunami – the deadliest in history. It kills more than 250 000 people across 14 countries, causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the Maldives. It sweeps ashore on Africa’s east coast, claiming several hundred lives. In South Africa, two drownings occur from rougher-than-normal seas and the effects of the increased wave height are felt as far as Saldanha Bay, on the Cape west coast.
2006 Aged 40 years and 268 days, Teddy Sheringham scores for West Ham United in a 2-1 loss to Portsmouth to become the oldest goalscorer in Premier League history.
2009 Political activist, poet and academic Dennis Brutus, 81, dies in Cape Town.
2015 Floods in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay displace 150 000 people.
2018 American Colin O’Brady says he is the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unassisted. Notwithstanding accomplishing an impressive physical feat, peers in the polar community have their doubts. He chats to Joe Rogan to set the record straight and defend his claim. | The Historian