1983: £25m gold heist at Heathrow
An armed gang carries out Britain's largest-ever robbery from the Brinks Mat warehouse, at London's Heathrow Airport.

Nobel Prizes established
Through the will drawn up by Alfred Bernhard Nobel—the Swedish chemist, engineer, and industrialist who invented dynamite and other, more powerful explosives—the Nobel Prizes were established on this day in 1895.

2012 Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, the first in a series of movies based on J.R.R. Tolkien's book, had its world premiere in New Zealand.

1975: Graham Hill killed in air crash
One of Britain's greatest motor racing drivers is killed in a plane crash in south-east England.

1968: Shops told to stop conning customers
Shopkeepers will face prosecution under a new trade law if they do not tell the truth about the goods they are selling from now on.

Rosa Parks's refusal to relinquish her bus seat
This day in 1955, in violation of segregation laws in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger and was arrested, sparking a 381-day bus boycott led by Martin Luther King, Jr.

2001 Following revelations of massive accounting fraud, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection; the energy-trading company was once the seventh largest corporation in the United States.

1967 Christiaan Barnard of South Africa performed the first human heart transplant, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

On this day in 1533, the three-year-old who became Ivan the Terrible was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow upon the death of his father, Grand Prince Vasily III, with his mother ruling in Ivan's name until her death in 1538.

Walt Disney
American film producer
Walt Disney

BORN
December 5, 1901
Chicago, Illinois

DIED
December 15, 1966 (aged 65)
Los Angeles, California

Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Irish Free State established
The British government and Irish leaders Arthur Griffith, Michael Collins, and others signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty, establishing the Irish Free State as an independent member of the British Commonwealth this day in 1921.

Pearl Harbor attack
On this day in 1941, Japanese bombers launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, precipitating the entry of the United States into World War II.

John Lennon fatally shot by deranged fan
On this day in 1980, British musician John Lennon—who rose to fame with the Beatles and had a successful solo career—was fatally shot by Mark David Chapman in New York City, causing a global outpouring of grief.

Encyclopædia Britannica first published
The first part of the first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, the oldest continuously published and revised work in the English language, was published and advertised for sale in Edinburgh on this day in 1768.

Abdication of King Edward VIII
Edward VIII, failing to win acceptance for his desire to marry American divorcée Wallis Warfield Simpson, became the only British sovereign to voluntarily resign the crown, his abdication formally approved this day in 1936.