The Piltdown Man is announced by Charles Dawson. It was a hoax.

The Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt disappears while swimming and is assumed to have drowned.

Victory Day is commemorated every 16 December in India to mark its military victory over Pakistan in 1971.

A boat carrying over ninety asylum seekers crashes into rocks off the coast of Christmas Island, Australia, killing more than 30 passengers.

An earthquake severely damages Constantinople.

Japanese troops start carrying out several weeks of raping and killing of civilians and suspected Chinese resistance after the fall of Nanjing.

Japanese aircraft bomb and sink US gunboat USS Panay on the Yangtze River in China.

In revenge for an IRA ambush, the British forces burn and loot numerous buildings in Cork city.

Imperial Japanese forces land on the Philippine mainland.

Rod Blagojevich, The Governor of Illinois, is arrested for attempting to sell the United States Senate seat being vacated by President Barack Obama.