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Explore 9 December

Explore 9 December: Tanganyika raises its own flag, Sucre’s army wins at Ayacucho, the United Nations outlaws genocide and Jerusalem changes hands. Meet John Milton, Grace Hopper and Judi Dench, born on this date.

This day through time →11 verified events across 2 eras

⌛11Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙8Born
Today ✦4Lives
Remembered ◉2Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
Julius Nyerere, the first prime minister of independent Tanganyika.
Julius Nyerere, the first prime minister of independent Tanganyika.
Image creditRob Mieremet / Anefo · CC0Resized and cropped for display.
1961

Tanganyika becomes independent

Tanganyika became independent of Britain on 9 December 1961, with Julius Nyerere as its first prime minister. His party, the Tanganyika African National Union, had swept the Legislative Council elections of 1960, and the transfer of power came without the long armed struggle seen elsewhere in Africa.

Nyerere stepped down the following month to think and write about government and African unity, returning as president when Tanganyika became a republic in 1962. In April 1964 the country joined with Zanzibar; by October that year it had been renamed the United Republic of Tanzania.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Tanzania — Independence ↗
The Battle of Ayacucho, painted by the Venezuelan artist Martín Tovar y Tovar.
The Battle of Ayacucho, painted by the Venezuelan artist Martín Tovar y Tovar.
Image creditMartín Tovar y Tovar · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1824

Ayacucho ends Spanish rule in South America

On 9 December 1824 a republican army under Antonio José de Sucre, Simón Bolívar’s ablest lieutenant, destroyed the royalist forces of the viceroy José de la Serna on the plain of Quinua, high in the Peruvian Andes. Roughly 6,000 men — Venezuelans, Colombians, Argentines, Chileans and Peruvians — faced an army half as large again, with far more artillery.

A cavalry charge led by the Colombian José María Córdova broke the royalist line, and the viceroy signed a capitulation the same day. The victory secured the independence of Peru and, with it, the end of Spanish power on the South American mainland.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Battle of Ayacucho ↗
A plaque in Warsaw honouring Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the word genocide.
A plaque in Warsaw honouring Raphael Lemkin, the lawyer who coined the word genocide.
Image creditWuj Mat · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1948

The world agrees to call genocide a crime

On 9 December 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, by resolution 260 A (III). It was the first human rights treaty the Assembly ever adopted, and it committed the states that joined it to prevent and punish a crime that had no name in law a decade earlier.

The word itself had been coined in 1944 by the Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who campaigned for the treaty for the rest of his life. The convention came into force on 12 January 1951. Since 2015 the United Nations has kept 9 December as a day of commemoration for its victims.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: United Nations: The 1948 Genocide Convention ↗
General Allenby's formal entry into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate on 11 December 1917, two days after the city's surrender.
General Allenby’s formal entry into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate on 11 December 1917, two days after the city’s surrender.
Image creditUnderwood & Underwood · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1917

Jerusalem surrenders after four centuries of Ottoman rule

Shortly before nine o’clock on the morning of 9 December 1917 the mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim al-Husseini, walked out of the city under a white flag carrying the Ottoman governor’s letter of surrender. The first British soldiers he met, two sergeants of the London Regiment scouting ahead of the main force, refused to take it; the letter was eventually accepted by a brigade commander.

Four hundred years of Ottoman rule ended that morning. General Edmund Allenby made his formal entry two days later, dismounting and walking through the Jaffa Gate on foot, and read a proclamation placing the city under martial law while guaranteeing its holy places.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Imperial War Museums: flag used at the surrender of Jerusalem, 9 December 1917 ↗
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PEOPLE

Born Today

John Milton
Image creditMary Beale or Peter Lely · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1608

John Milton

English poet and polemicist, author of Paradise Lost and a defender of a free press in Areopagitica.

Peter Kropotkin
Image creditNadar · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1842

Peter Kropotkin

Russian prince who became a geographer and the leading theorist of anarchist communism.

Fritz Haber
Image creditUnknown authorUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1868

Fritz Haber

German chemist whose process for fixing nitrogen fed billions, and who also directed Germany’s chemical weapons programme in the First World War.

Grace Hopper
Image creditJames S. Davis · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1906

Grace Hopper

American mathematician and rear admiral who designed one of the first compilers and shaped the COBOL programming language.

Judi Dench
Image creditRaph_PH · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1934

Judi Dench

English actress of stage and screen, from Shakespeare at the Old Vic to M in the James Bond films.

John Malkovich
Image creditElena Ternovaja · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1953

John Malkovich

American actor and director, a founding member of Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

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IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

The wooden prototype mouse built at SRI International, shown publicly for the first time at the 1968 demonstration.
The wooden prototype mouse built at SRI International, shown publicly for the first time at the 1968 demonstration.
Image creditSRI International · CC BY-SA 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
1968

The Mother of All Demos

On 9 December 1968 Douglas Engelbart sat on a stage in San Francisco and, in ninety minutes, showed an audience of computer professionals almost everything a modern computer does. Working with seventeen colleagues from the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute, he demonstrated the mouse, windows, hypertext links, cut-and-paste editing, two people editing the same document at once, and video conferencing.

The machine itself was thirty miles away in Menlo Park. Engelbart’s team, led by Bill English, had spent months building a microwave link and camera rig so the audience could watch the screen live. The event became known as the Mother of All Demos.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Smithsonian Lemelson Center: The Mother of All Demos ↗
A vial of smallpox vaccine with the bifurcated needle used to give it.
A vial of smallpox vaccine with the bifurcated needle used to give it.
Image creditPhoto Credit: James Gathany Content Providers(s): CDC · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1979

Smallpox is certified eradicated

On 9 December 1979 the members of the Global Commission for the Certification of Smallpox Eradication, an independent panel of scientists from nineteen countries, signed a statement at the World Health Organization in Geneva declaring that smallpox had been eradicated from the world.

The campaign had begun in earnest in 1967, combining mass vaccination with relentless tracing of every case. The last known naturally occurring case was in Somalia in 1977. In May 1980 the World Health Assembly made the formal declaration that the world was free of the disease — the only human disease ever eliminated.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: World Health Organization: commemorating the 40th anniversary of smallpox eradication ↗
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MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

The outdoor Coronation Street set at Granada Studios in Manchester, photographed in 2007.
The outdoor Coronation Street set at Granada Studios in Manchester, photographed in 2007.
Image creditJordan 1972 · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1960

Coronation Street reaches the screen

The first episode of Coronation Street went out on 9 December 1960, made by Granada Television in Manchester for the ITV network. Tony Warren, then twenty-four, had written it and would write the first thirteen episodes; the opening half-hour introduced Florrie Lindley taking over the corner shop and Ken Barlow falling out with his father.

The reviews were unkind — one newspaper called the programme doomed the next morning — but it went out twice a week from the start and became the longest-running television soap opera in the world.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: ITV: Tony Warren, MBE ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
Image creditFormerly attributed to Pisanello · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1437

Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor

Emperor and king of Hungary and Bohemia who summoned the Council of Constance to end the papal schism.

Pope Pius IV
Image creditCircle of Scipione Pulzone · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1565

Pope Pius IV

Pope who reconvened and closed the Council of Trent, the centrepiece of the Catholic Reformation.

Anthony van Dyck
Image creditAnthony van Dyck · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1641

Anthony van Dyck

Flemish painter whose portraits of Charles I and his court shaped English painting for a century.

Natsume Sōseki
Image creditOgawa Kazumasa · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1916

Natsume Sōseki

Japanese novelist, author of Kokoro and I Am a Cat, and one of the founders of modern Japanese fiction.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

United Nations headquarters in New York, seen from across the East River.
United Nations headquarters in New York, seen from across the East River.
Image creditKidfly182 · CC BY-SA 4.0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

International Anti-Corruption Day

The United Nations keeps 9 December as International Anti-Corruption Day. The date was chosen by the General Assembly when it adopted the United Nations Convention against Corruption on 31 October 2003; the convention opened for signature the following December and came into force in 2005. It now has 190 parties, and the day is used to press governments and businesses on transparency and accountability.

Source: United Nations: International Anti-Corruption Day ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 9 December chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 11 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading