December History Events
Important Historical Events That Happened in December
December is one of the most powerful months on the historical calendar.
It is a month shaped by protest and war, constitutional rights, invention, sacrifice, faith, and traditions that still define American life.
For the United States, December includes the Boston Tea Party, the ratification of the Bill of Rights, George Washington crossing the Delaware, the Wright brothers' first flight, the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the tragedy at Wounded Knee.
Beyond American history, December includes the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Battle of the Bulge, the Treaty of Ghent, the first humans to orbit the Moon, the race to the South Pole, and events that changed politics, science, and culture around the world.
If you searched for December history events, December historical events, or what happened in December in history, this page is designed to give you a strong starting point.
It provides an overview of why December matters while directing you toward individual dates throughout the December historical events archive and deeper stories across Chronicles of History's American history collection.
Why December Matters in History
December has often been a month of decisions made in the cold.
Colonists refused to pay a tax.
An army crossed an icy river at night.
States ratified the rights Americans still claim today.
Two brothers left the ground for 12 seconds.
A nation was pulled into a world war on a Sunday morning.
Americans gathered at the end of the year to remember faith, family, soldiers far from home, and the hard choices that built the country they inherited.
Throughout history, December has been associated with:
the American Revolution
constitutional rights and the Bill of Rights
George Washington's leadership
World War II
invention and the birth of flight
the American West and Native American history
the Civil War and Reconstruction
the civil rights movement
the Cold War
Christmas and American traditions
exploration, science, and space
That range makes December one of the strongest months to study for anyone interested in both major American history events and larger turning points in world history.
Major December History Events to Explore
The December archive at Chronicles of History contains daily pages covering events throughout the month.
A few important dates include:
December 1st in History
December 1 is closely associated with one of the most important acts of courage in the civil rights movement.
On December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, after refusing a bus driver's order to give up her seat. Her arrest became the rallying point for a bus boycott that lasted 381 days and helped bring Martin Luther King Jr. to national attention.
December 7th in History
December 7 connects the founding of the United States with its entry into World War II.
On December 7, 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the U.S. Constitution, by a unanimous vote of 30 to 0. On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, killing 2,403 American service members and civilians and bringing the United States into the war.
December 15th in History
December 15 belongs to American constitutional history.
On December 15, 1791, Virginia's approval gave three-fourths of the states the votes needed to ratify ten amendments to the Constitution. Those ten amendments became the Bill of Rights, protecting freedoms of religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition, along with the rights of the accused.
December 16th in History
December 16 includes a protest that helped start a revolution and the largest battle the U.S. Army fought in World War II.
On December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Indians dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into Boston Harbor. On December 16, 1944, more than 200,000 German troops attacked American lines in the Ardennes, beginning the Battle of the Bulge.
December 17th in History
December 17 includes one of the great turning points in the history of invention.
On December 17, 1903, at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright flew the Wright Flyer about 120 feet in 12 seconds. It was the first of four flights that day, and the last, flown by Wilbur, covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.
December 20th in History
December 20 marks both the growth of the United States and the beginning of its greatest crisis.
On December 20, 1803, France formally transferred Lower Louisiana to the United States in a ceremony at New Orleans. On December 20, 1860, South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union, setting the country on the road to civil war.
December 25th in History
December 25 is Christmas Day, and it also holds one of the most daring nights of the American Revolution.
On the night of December 25, 1776, George Washington led about 2,400 Continental soldiers across the ice-choked Delaware River at McConkey's Ferry in rain, sleet, and snow, setting up a surprise attack on Trenton.
December 26th in History
December 26 includes a victory that saved the American cause and one of the darkest days in Minnesota history.
On the morning of December 26, 1776, Washington's army defeated the Hessian garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, capturing nearly 900 soldiers. On December 26, 1862, 38 Dakota men were hanged at Mankato, Minnesota, after the U.S.-Dakota War, the largest mass execution in U.S. history.
December 29th in History
December 29 is one of the most painful dates in the history of the American West.
On December 29, 1890, soldiers of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry opened fire on Lakota people at Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota while trying to disarm them. Hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children were killed.
December in American History
December carries unusual weight in American history.
The month connects the protests that started the American Revolution to the Constitution, the Civil War, the American West, two World Wars, the civil rights movement, and traditions still observed by millions of Americans.
Some December events were victories.
Others were tragedies.
Some reshaped the meaning of the United States itself.
Bostonians used December to tell Parliament they would not be taxed without consent.
The states used December to write freedom of speech, religion, and the press into the Constitution.
George Washington used December to save a failing army and, years later, to hand his power back to Congress.
Americans entered World War II in December after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
And every December, Americans continue to observe Christmas and Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, two traditions with histories that stretch far deeper than a modern holiday calendar.
For a broader look at the turning points that built the country, explore the most important dates in U.S. history and why they still matter.
December 16, 1773: The Boston Tea Party
One of the most famous protests in American history took place on a cold December night in Boston.
In May 1773, Parliament passed the Tea Act to rescue the struggling East India Company. The tea would be cheaper, but it still carried a tax that the colonists had never agreed to.
For many Americans, the price of the tea was never the point. The principle was.
By mid-December, three ships, the Dartmouth, the Eleanor, and the Beaver, sat at Griffin's Wharf with tea in their holds. Under the law, customs officers could seize the Dartmouth and its cargo if the duty was not paid by December 17.
On December 16, a large crowd met at the Old South Meeting House and voted that the tea would not be landed, stored, sold, or consumed.
That night, somewhere between 30 and 60 men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and dumped 342 chests of tea into the harbor.
John Adams called it an intrepid exertion of popular power.
Parliament answered by closing the port of Boston until the tea was paid for, and the conflict that followed led to Lexington and Concord less than a year and a half later.
The Massachusetts Historical Society preserves the newspapers, diaries, and broadsides behind the Boston Tea Party.
December 16, 1773 was not simply the night tea went into the water.
It was the night ordinary colonists decided that self-government was worth the risk, and that lesson still applies to every generation that inherits a free country.
December 15, 1791: The Bill of Rights Is Ratified
When the Constitution was sent to the states in 1787, many Americans worried that it said too little about the rights of the people.
Several states ratified it on the understanding that amendments would follow.
In 1789, the First Congress, led in large part by James Madison, proposed 12 amendments.
On December 15, 1791, ten of them were ratified by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
Those ten amendments became the Bill of Rights.
They protect freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly, and petition. They protect the right to keep and bear arms, the right to be secure against unreasonable searches, the right to a fair and speedy trial, and the principle that powers not given to the federal government are reserved to the states or to the people.
One of the two amendments that failed in 1791 was finally ratified more than 200 years later, in 1992, as the 27th Amendment.
The National Archives preserves the original text of the Bill of Rights.
December 15 remains one of the most important dates in American constitutional history because it turned promises into law.
Rights written down can be defended, and the people who wrote them knew that a free country depends on citizens who know what those rights are.
Washington Crosses the Delaware: Trenton, December 1776
By December 1776, the American Revolution was close to collapse.
Washington's army had been driven out of New York and chased across New Jersey. Enlistments were about to expire. Many soldiers were sick, hungry, and poorly clothed.
Washington chose to attack.
On the night of December 25, 1776, about 2,400 Continental soldiers crossed the Delaware River at McConkey's Ferry, north of Trenton. Ice, rain, sleet, and snow slowed the crossing for hours.
Shortly after eight o'clock on the morning of December 26, the army struck the Hessian garrison at Trenton.
In about an hour of fighting, the Americans captured nearly 900 Hessian officers and soldiers, along with muskets, swords, and cannons. The Hessian commander, Colonel Johann Rall, was mortally wounded.
Washington ordered that the prisoners be treated humanely.
The victory at Trenton, followed days later by Princeton, gave the Revolution new life when it needed it most.
George Washington's Mount Vernon offers a detailed history of the crossing of the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton.
December also holds two of the most important moments in Washington's later life. On December 23, 1783, he resigned his commission to Congress at Annapolis and went home to Mount Vernon. On December 14, 1799, he died there.
You can read more about the young officer who became that leader in Fort Necessity, Lawrence Washington, and George Washington.
Washington's December shows a leader who would not quit when the cause looked lost, and who gave up power when he could have kept it.
December 7, 1941: Pearl Harbor and the Date Which Will Live in Infamy
Early on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor and military bases across Oahu, Hawaii.
The attack began just before 8 a.m.
The battleships USS Arizona and USS Utah were lost for good. The USS Oklahoma capsized. 188 American aircraft were destroyed.
In all, 2,403 American service members and civilians were killed, and 1,178 more were wounded.
The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went before a joint session of Congress and called December 7 a date which will live in infamy.
The Senate voted unanimously for war. In the House, only one member voted no. Roosevelt signed the declaration of war against Japan that afternoon.
On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.
The country that had tried to stay out of the war was now fully in it.
The National Park Service honors those who died through National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day, and the National Archives preserves the draft of Roosevelt's Day of Infamy speech.
It is also why December 7 belongs on any serious list of the most consequential dates in United States history.
December 17, 1903: The Wright Brothers Take Flight
For four years, Wilbur and Orville Wright had worked on the problem of flight, largely out of the public eye.
They were bicycle makers from Dayton, Ohio, not famous scientists. But they had made more than a thousand glides from the sand dunes at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, and they understood something others had missed: a flying machine had to be controlled by a skilled pilot, not simply pushed into the air with a bigger engine.
They built their own engine and designed their own propellers.
On December 14, 1903, Wilbur won a coin toss and made the first attempt. The Flyer stalled and dropped into the sand.
Three days later, it was Orville's turn.
At 10:35 a.m. on December 17, flying into a 27-mile-per-hour wind, Orville kept the Flyer in the air for 12 seconds and about 120 feet. A man from the nearby lifesaving station took the photograph that became one of the most famous images in American history.
The brothers flew three more times that day. Wilbur's last flight covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.
The National Park Service tells the full story of the first flight at Wright Brothers National Memorial.
December 17 is a reminder that patient, careful work done without applause can change the world.
December 29, 1890: Wounded Knee and the Complicated History of the American West
Few events in the history of the American West are more painful than Wounded Knee.
By 1890, the Lakota had lost most of their land and their way of life. Many turned to the Ghost Dance, a religious movement that promised renewal.
Government officials saw the Ghost Dance as a threat and sent troops onto the reservations.
On December 15, 1890, Sitting Bull was killed during an attempt to arrest him at Standing Rock.
Two weeks later, soldiers of the Seventh Cavalry stopped a band of Minneconjou Lakota led by Big Foot and held them at a camp near Wounded Knee Creek.
On the morning of December 29, as soldiers tried to take the Lakota's weapons, a gun went off and the troops opened fire.
When the shooting stopped, hundreds of Lakota men, women, and children were dead.
It was long called a battle. Today it is widely remembered as the Wounded Knee Massacre.
The Library of Congress offers a research guide to how newspapers covered the Wounded Knee Massacre.
December also holds an earlier chapter of the same conflict. On December 21, 1866, Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors wiped out Captain William Fetterman's command near Fort Phil Kearny, a story told in the Fetterman Massacre. To understand the people on the other side of those fights, read what daily life was like for the Lakota on the frontier.
Remembering Wounded Knee does not make the history of the American West less worth studying.
It makes it more worth studying.
December 25, 1991: The Soviet Union Comes to an End
For more than four decades, the Soviet Union stood as the great rival of the United States.
It dominated Eastern Europe.
It built one of the largest nuclear arsenals on earth.
And it represented a much larger division between communism and the free world.
Then, in 1991, it came apart.
A failed coup by hard-line Communists in August weakened Mikhail Gorbachev. Ukraine, Belarus, and other republics declared independence. In early December, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus formed the Commonwealth of Independent States.
On December 25, 1991, Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union.
Later that day, the Soviet hammer and sickle flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time and replaced by the Russian tricolor.
The Soviet Union formally dissolved the next day.
The U.S. State Department's Office of the Historian explains the collapse of the Soviet Union and how the United States responded.
December 1991 reminds us that systems that seem permanent can end quietly, on a holiday, with the lowering of a flag.
War, Independence, Rights, and Political Change
December repeatedly appears at moments when Americans were forced to decide what kind of country they would be.
The month includes:
the Boston Tea Party
Washington crossing the Delaware and the Battle of Trenton
the Continental Army's arrival at Valley Forge
Delaware becoming the first state
the ratification of the Bill of Rights
the Treaty of Ghent ending the War of 1812
South Carolina's secession
the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery
Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott
the attack on Pearl Harbor
the Battle of the Bulge
the end of the Soviet Union
That gives December a different feeling from many other historical months.
It is often less about comfort than about endurance.
What do people do when the cause looks lost?
What rights are worth writing down?
How does a nation answer an attack?
How do soldiers keep going in the cold, far from home?
How does one generation pass on courage to the next?
December history repeatedly returns to those questions.
Flight, Exploration, and the American Frontier
December also contains some remarkable stories of exploration and discovery.
The Wright brothers left the ground in December 1903.
Roald Amundsen's expedition became the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911.
On December 24, 1968, the crew of Apollo 8 became the first humans to orbit the Moon, and Bill Anders photographed the Earth rising over the lunar horizon.
Closer to home, the United States took possession of Lower Louisiana on December 20, 1803, completing a purchase that roughly doubled the size of the country. Two years later, on December 25, 1805, the Lewis and Clark Expedition moved into Fort Clatsop near the mouth of the Columbia River for the winter.
The Lewis and Clark story is especially important because it connects December history directly to the larger history of the American frontier. Read the case for why the Lewis and Clark Expedition deserves a national holiday.
Those stories should never be reduced to the idea that explorers entered an empty wilderness.
They did not.
Native nations had lived across those landscapes for generations, and the Clatsop people the expedition wintered beside gave their name to the fort.
Exploration brought mapping, science, trade, and new knowledge, but it also preceded waves of American expansion that transformed Native homelands.
History becomes more useful when we resist turning complicated people and events into simple heroes and villains and instead try to understand the world they actually inhabited.
Browse More Historical Events in December
Readers who want to go deeper can browse the complete December historical events archive.
Start with:
From there, continue through the rest of December to discover the wars, explorers, presidents, inventions, treaties, political movements, ordinary people, and decisions that shaped history.
Frequently Asked Questions About December History Events
What are some important historical events that happened in December?
Important December historical events include the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 1773, Washington crossing the Delaware on December 25, 1776, the ratification of the Bill of Rights on December 15, 1791, the Wright brothers' first flight on December 17, 1903, the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the end of the Soviet Union on December 25 and 26, 1991.
What happened on December 7 in history?
Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, killing 2,403 American service members and civilians. The next day, Congress declared war on Japan. December 7 is also Delaware Day, marking Delaware's ratification of the Constitution on December 7, 1787, which made it the first state.
What major Revolutionary War event happened in December?
On the night of December 25, 1776, George Washington led about 2,400 soldiers across the Delaware River. The next morning, December 26, they defeated the Hessian garrison at Trenton, New Jersey, and captured nearly 900 prisoners.
When was the Bill of Rights ratified?
The Bill of Rights was ratified on December 15, 1791, when ten of the 12 amendments proposed by Congress in 1789 were approved by three-fourths of the state legislatures.
What happened on December 17, 1903?
Orville Wright made the first successful powered, controlled airplane flight at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The flight lasted 12 seconds and covered about 120 feet. Wilbur Wright made the longest flight of the day, 852 feet in 59 seconds.
What happened at the Boston Tea Party?
On December 16, 1773, colonists disguised as Indians boarded three ships in Boston Harbor and dumped 342 chests of East India Company tea into the water to protest the tax on tea. Parliament responded by closing the port of Boston.
What important Cold War event happened in December?
Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as president of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, and the Soviet flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time. The Soviet Union formally dissolved the following day, ending the Cold War rivalry that had shaped American foreign policy for more than four decades.
Why is December important in American history?
December includes important events involving the American Revolution, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, George Washington, the Civil War, the American West, invention, the civil rights movement, World War II, and the Cold War. It contains both moments of national courage and some of the country's most significant tragedies.
Final Thoughts on December History Events
December is more than Christmas and the end of the year.
It is a month of resolve.
A month when colonists refused to pay a tax they never agreed to.
When a nearly beaten army crossed a frozen river and won.
When the states wrote the rights of free people into the Constitution.
When two brothers from Ohio proved that people could fly.
When Americans woke up to war on a Sunday morning and answered it.
When a Lakota camp at Wounded Knee became a place the country should never forget.
When a superpower that had seemed permanent lowered its flag for the last time.
December history events show us courage, sacrifice, faith, invention, tragedy, endurance, and change.
Most importantly, they remind us that history is not simply a collection of dates.
It is the record of human beings making decisions under pressure, and the consequences the rest of us inherit.
If you are researching December history events or looking for historical events that happened in December, this page is your starting point.
From here, explore individual dates, follow the people behind them, and keep learning the stories that shaped the world we live in.