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Explore 31 December

Explore New Year’s Eve: Boris Yeltsin hands Russia to Vladimir Putin, the Central African Federation is dissolved, Queen Victoria picks a logging town for Canada’s capital and the Americans are beaten in a snowstorm at Quebec. Meet Henri Matisse, Anthony Hopkins and Alex Ferguson, born on 31 December.

This day through time →8 verified events across 4 eras

⌛8Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙8Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉2Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia.
Boris Yeltsin, the first president of Russia.
Image creditPresidential Press and Information Office · CC BY 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
1999

Yeltsin resigns and hands power to Putin

Shortly after midday on 31 December 1999 Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s first elected president, announced on television that he was stepping down. Russia, he said, should enter the new millennium with new politicians and new faces, and he asked forgiveness for the hopes that had not come true.

Under the constitution his powers passed to the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer he had appointed only that August. Putin won the presidential election held in March 2000.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: President of Russia: President Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation and appointed Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acting president ↗
The flag of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953-1963.
The flag of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953-1963.
Image creditUnknownUnknown , vector version by Lupin, Greentubing, Fenn-O-maniC and NikNaks · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1963

The Central African Federation is dissolved

In 1953 Britain had joined the self-governing, white-ruled colony of Southern Rhodesia with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in a Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Most Africans in the three territories opposed it from the start, fearing rule by the white settlers of the south.

After years of protest, Britain agreed to break it up, and the federation came to an end at midnight on 31 December 1963. Within a year Nyasaland became independent as Malawi and Northern Rhodesia as Zambia, while Southern Rhodesia’s white government declared independence on its own in 1965.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland ↗
The new Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, painted in watercolour by James Duncan about 1866.
The new Parliament Buildings in Ottawa, painted in watercolour by James Duncan about 1866.
Image creditJames Duncan · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1857

Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as Canada’s capital

For years the Province of Canada’s parliament had moved between Kingston, Montreal, Toronto and Quebec City, because the English- and French-speaking halves could not agree on a permanent capital. In the end the question was put to Queen Victoria, and on 31 December 1857 her choice was announced: Ottawa, a small lumber town once called Bytown.

It stood on the border between the two language communities and further from the United States than its rivals. Parliament met there from 1866, and it became the capital of the new Dominion of Canada in 1867.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: City of Ottawa Archives: Ottawa becomes the capital ↗
John Trumbull's painting The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775, painted in 1786.
John Trumbull’s painting The Death of General Montgomery in the Attack on Quebec, December 31, 1775, painted in 1786.
Image creditJohn Trumbull · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1775

The Americans attack Quebec in a snowstorm

In the first months of the American Revolution, Congress sent two small armies north to take Canada from the British. On the night of 31 December 1775, in a blinding snowstorm, the Americans under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold attacked the walled city of Quebec.

The defenders, British troops and Canadian militia under Governor Guy Carleton, were ready. Montgomery was killed by a volley, Arnold was wounded and hundreds of Americans were taken prisoner. Quebec stayed British, and so in the end did Canada.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Quebec (1775) ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Andreas Vesalius
Image creditJan van Calcar · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1514

Andreas Vesalius

Flemish physician whose book On the Fabric of the Human Body (1543) founded modern anatomy.

Henri Matisse
Image creditAlvin Langdon Coburn · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1869

Henri Matisse

French painter, a leader of the Fauves, famous for bold colour and, late in life, paper cut-outs.

George C. Marshall
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1880

George C. Marshall

US Army chief of staff in the Second World War and author of the Marshall Plan, Nobel Peace Prize 1953.

Alex Ferguson
Image creditRichardpell79 · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1941

Alex Ferguson

Scottish football manager who won 13 league titles with Manchester United.

Ben Kingsley
Image creditGage Skidmore · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1943

Ben Kingsley

English actor who won an Oscar for playing Gandhi.

Donna Summer
Image creditHarry Langdon. · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1948

Donna Summer

American singer, the ‘Queen of Disco’, of I Feel Love and Hot Stuff.

Val Kilmer
Image creditGeorges Biard · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1959

Val Kilmer

American actor of Top Gun, The Doors and Batman Forever.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

Thomas Edison.
Thomas Edison.
Image creditLouis Bachrach, Bachrach Studios, restored by Michel Vuijlsteke · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1879

Edison lights up Menlo Park

After months of experiments with carbonised filaments, Thomas Edison showed off his electric lighting system at his laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey, over New Year’s Eve 1879. Dozens of lamps lit the laboratory, the office, nearby houses and a line of street lamps, all fed from a generator in the machine shop.

Crowds of curious visitors came to see it. It was not the first electric light, but it was the first complete system of generator, wiring and long-lasting bulbs, and within three years Edison was lighting part of New York.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: The Henry Ford: first public demonstration of incandescent lighting by Thomas A. Edison, Menlo Park, 31 December 1879 ↗
A Tupolev Tu-144 at the Central Air Force Museum, Monino, near Moscow.
A Tupolev Tu-144 at the Central Air Force Museum, Monino, near Moscow.
Image creditMaarten from Netherlands · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
1968

The first supersonic airliner takes off

On 31 December 1968 the prototype of the Soviet Tupolev Tu-144 made its first flight near Moscow, two months before the Anglo-French Concorde. It was the first supersonic passenger aircraft to fly.

It broke the sound barrier in June 1969, but its career was short and troubled: a Tu-144 crashed at the Paris Air Show in 1973, and passenger flights, begun in 1977, ended after only a few months. In the 1990s one was used by NASA for supersonic research.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Tupolev Tu-144 ↗
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MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

Taipei 101 seen from the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, 2009.
Taipei 101 seen from the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, 2009.
Image creditAngMoKio · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
2004

Taipei 101 opens as the world’s tallest building

Taipei 101 was officially opened on New Year’s Eve 2004. Rising 508 metres over 101 floors, and shaped like a stack of bamboo sections, it took the title of the world’s tallest building from the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur.

A giant steel ball hung near the top steadies it against typhoon winds. It remained the tallest until Dubai’s Burj Khalifa opened in 2010, and its fireworks are now a regular part of New Year’s Eve in Taipei.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Taipei 101 ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

John Wycliffe
Image creditThomas Kirkby · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1384

John Wycliffe

Oxford theologian who challenged the power of the Church; his followers made the first complete English Bible.

Gustave Courbet
Image creditNadar · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1877

Gustave Courbet

French painter who led the Realist movement; he died in exile in Switzerland.

Marshall McLuhan
Image creditJosephine Smith · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1980

Marshall McLuhan

Canadian thinker who coined the phrases ‘the medium is the message’ and ‘the global village’.

Betty White
Image creditAlan Light · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Died 2021

Betty White

American actress of The Golden Girls, whose television career lasted more than eighty years.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

Hogmanay fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.
Hogmanay fireworks over Edinburgh Castle.
Image creditkim traynor · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

New Year’s Eve and Hogmanay

The last night of the year is celebrated across the world with parties, fireworks and the countdown to midnight. In Scotland it is Hogmanay, long the main winter festival, when the Kirk frowned on Christmas; its customs include ‘first-footing’, visiting friends just after midnight with a gift, and singing Robert Burns’s Auld Lang Syne, now sung around the world.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Hogmanay ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 31 December chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 8 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading