^B{^#!16!17 December^N! Feast day of St Lazarus, St Sturmi, St Begga, St Wivina, and St Olympias.
^B{1843^B} ^I{A Christmas Carol^I} by Charles Dickens was published. ^B{1892^B} Tchaikovsky's ^I{The Nutcracker^I} was first performed, in St Petersburg by the Russian Imperial Ballet. ^B{1903^B} Orville Wright made the first successful controlled flight in a powered aircraft, at Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, US. ^B{1939^B} The German battleship ^I{Graf Spee^I} was scuttled by British warships off Montvideo, Uruguay, after the Battle of the River Plate. ^B{1973^B} Thirty-one people were killed at Rome airport after Arab guerillas hijacked a German airliner. ^B{1986^B} At Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, Davina Thompson became the world's first recipient of a heart, lungs, and liver transplant. ^B{1992^B} Israel deported over 400 Palestinians to Lebanese territory in an unprecedented mass expulsion of suspected militants.
^B{^I{^#!14!Born ^N}Domenico Cimarosa, Italian composer, ^B{1749^B}; Humphry Davy, English chemist and inventor, ^B{1778^B}; William Lyon MacKenzie King, Canadian statesman, ^B{1874^B}; Erskine Caldwell, US novelist, ^B{1903^B}; Tommy Steele, British singer and actor, ^B{1936^B}; Peter Snell, New Zealand athlete, ^B{1938^B}.
^B{^I{^#!14!Died ^N}Sim≤n Bolφvar, South American revolutionary leader, ^B{1830^B}; Alphonse Daudet, French novelist, ^B{1897^B}; Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, first English woman physician, ^B{1917^B}; Harold Holt, Australian politician, ^B{1967^B}; Sy Oliver, US composer, ^B{1988^B}.
