December 30 in History

Year 534 (DXXXIV) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Iustinianus and Paulinus. The denomination 534 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years.

The Lancastrian War was the third and final phase of the Hundred Years' War between England and France. It lasted from 1415, when Henry V of England invaded Normandy, to 1453, when the English were definitively defeated in Aquitaine. It followed a long period of peace from the end of the Caroline War in 1389. The phase is named after the House of Lancaster, the ruling house of the Kingdom of England, to which Henry V belonged. The early years of the Lancastrian War were dominated by the forces of the House of Plantagenet, who held the English throne and also claimed that of France. Initial English successes, notably at the Battle of Agincourt, coupled with divisions among the French ruling class, allowed Henry V to win the allegiance of large parts of France. Under the terms of the Treaty of Troyes of 1420, Henry V married the French princess Catherine of Valois and was made regent of the kingdom and heir to the throne of France. A victory on paper was thus achieved by the English, with their claims now having legal standing. Some of the French nobility refused to recognise the agreement, however, and so military conflict continued. Henry V and, after his death, his brother John, Duke of Bedford, brought the English to the height of their power in France, with a Plantagenet crowned in Paris.

The Wars of the Roses, known at the time and in the following centuries as the Civil Wars, were a series of armed confrontations, machinations, battles and campaigns fought for control of the English throne from 1455 to 1487. The conflict was fought between supporters of the House of York and the House of Lancaster, two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet. The conflict resulted in the end of Lancaster's male line in 1471, leaving the Tudor family to inherit, through the female line, the Lancaster claim to the throne. The conflict was largely brought to an end upon the union of the two houses through marriage, creating the Tudor dynasty that would subsequently rule England.

Queen Anne's War (1702–1713) was the second in a series of French and Indian Wars fought in North America involving the colonial empires of Great Britain, France, and Spain. In the United States, it is regarded as a standalone conflict. Elsewhere it is viewed as the American theater of the War of the Spanish Succession. It is also known as the Third Indian War. In France it was known as the Second Intercolonial War.

The War of 1812 was a conflict initiated by the United States against the United Kingdom and its allies fought mainly in North America and at sea during the wider Napoleonic Wars. The United States declared war on Britain on 18 June 1812. Although peace terms were agreed upon in the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the war did not officially end until the peace treaty was ratified by the United States Senate on 17 February 1815.

The Gadsden Purchase (Spanish: Venta de La Mesilla, lit. 'La Mesilla sale'), also known as the Treaty of Mesilla, is a 29,640-square-mile (76,800 km2) region of present-day southern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico that the United States acquired from Mexico. The first draft was signed on December 31, 1853, by James Gadsden, US Minister to Mexico, and by Antonio López de Santa Anna, president of Mexico. The treaty took effect on June 8, 1854. The purchase included lands south of the Gila River and west of the Rio Grande, where the United States wanted to build what is now known as the Sunset Route, a transcontinental railroad which the Southern Pacific Railroad later completed in 1881–1883. These lands allowed the railroad to follow a flatter and more direct route, lowering its anticipated costs and allowing faster completion, and particularly encouraging a route to a southern port. The purchase also clearly defined the current Mexico–United States border. The Santa Anna government, in financial distress, accepted the sale, which brought Mexico 10 million dollars (equivalent to 270 million dollars in 2023). Following the devastating loss of Mexican territory to the U.S. in the Mexican-American War (1846–48) and the ongoing unauthorized military expeditions in the region led by the territorial governor of New Mexico and known filibuster William Carr Lane, some historians argue that Santa Anna may have calculated that it was better to cede territory through a treaty and receive payment rather than having the United States simply seize the territory. The Gadsden Purchase was the last substantial territorial enlargement of the contiguous United States. The Arizona cities of Yuma, Tucson, Nogales, Sierra Vista, Tombstone, and Douglas, as well as the New Mexico city of Deming are on territory acquired by the U.S. in the Gadsden Purchase.

The Wounded Knee Massacre, also known as the Battle of Wounded Knee, was an 1890 armed conflict between Native Americans and the United States Army. It was part of the U.S. Army’s Pine Ridge Campaign. Between 250 and 300 Lakota people were killed, and 51 were wounded (four men and 47 women and children, some of whom died later). Twenty-five U.S. soldiers were killed and 39 were wounded (six of the wounded later died). Nineteen soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor specifically for Wounded Knee, and 31 overall for the campaign. The event occurred on December 29, 1890 near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, following a failed attempt to disarm the Lakota people at the camp. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside approached Spotted Elk's band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them five miles (eight kilometers) westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns. The Army was catering to the anxiety of settlers who called the conflict the Messiah War and were worried the ceremonial Ghost Dance signified a potentially dangerous Sioux resurgence. Historian Jeffrey Ostler wrote in 2004: "Wounded Knee was not made up of a series of discrete unconnected events. Instead, from the disarming to the burial of the dead, it consisted of a series of acts held together by an underlying logic of racist domination." On the morning of December 29, U.S. Cavalry troops went into the camp to disarm the Lakota. One version of events maintains that during the process of disarming the Lakota, a deaf tribesman named Black Coyote was reluctant to give up his rifle, claiming he had paid a lot for it. Black Coyote's rifle went off at that point, and at the same moment, another Lakota man threw some dust into the air, and approximately five young Lakota men with concealed weapons threw aside their blankets and fired their rifles at the American military. After this initial exchange, the firing became indiscriminate, and the soldiers began firing on the Lakota. The Lakota warriors fought back, but many had already been disarmed. In 2001, the National Congress of American Indians passed two resolutions condemning the military awards and called on the federal government to rescind them. The Wounded Knee Battlefield, the site of the massacre, was designated a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1965. In 1990, both houses of the U.S. Congress passed a resolution on the historical centennial formally expressing "deep regret" for the massacre.

José Protasio Rizal Mercado y Alonso Realonda (Spanish: [xoˈse riˈsal, -ˈθal], Tagalog: [hoˈse ɾiˈsal]; June 19, 1861 – December 30, 1896) was a Filipino nationalist, writer, and polymath active at the end of the Spanish colonial period of the Philippines. He is popularly considered to be a national hero of the Philippines. An ophthalmologist by profession, Rizal became a writer and a key member of the Filipino Propaganda Movement in the 1880s, which advocated political reforms for the colony under Spain. By the early 1890s, amidst the Calamba land dispute, Rizal grew more separatist in his stance, conflicting with several colleagues in the Propaganda Movement. On July 6, 1892, a few days after establishing the secret society La Liga Filipina within Manila, Rizal was arrested by Spanish authorities for alleged possession of a seditious document, being banished to Dapitan in the island of Mindanao. During his exile, Rizal met Josephine Bracken, an Irish woman who later became his common-law wife. After four years in exile, Rizal left Dapitan for Cuba in August 1896 with the permission of Governor General Ramón Blanco, intending to serve as a doctor in the Spanish territory. At a stopover in Barcelona, he was arrested on October 6, 1896 after the Philippine Revolution broke out; the revolution was inspired by his writings. In December 1896, he was executed by the Spanish colonial government for the crime of rebellion. Though he was not actively involved in its planning or conduct, he ultimately approved of its goals, which eventually resulted in Philippine independence. Rizal is widely considered one of the greatest and most influential figures in the Philippines, and has been recommended to be so honored by an officially empaneled National Heroes Committee. However, no law, executive order or proclamation has been enacted or issued officially proclaiming any Filipino historical figure as a national hero. He wrote the novels Noli Me Tángere (1887) and El filibusterismo (1891), which together are taken as a national epic, in addition to numerous poems and essays.

Ice hockey, known simply as hockey in North America and parts of Europe, is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. The two opposing teams score by using their sticks to control and advance a vulcanized rubber hockey puck, and then shooting it into the net of the other team. Each goal is worth one point. The team with the highest score after an hour of gameplay, broken down into three 20-minute periods, is declared the winner; ties are broken in overtime or a shootout. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, including a goaltender. It is a full contact game and one of the more physically demanding team sports.

The Colony of Natal was a British colony in south-eastern Africa. It was proclaimed a British colony on 4 May 1843 after the British government had annexed the Boer Republic of Natalia, and on 31 May 1910 was combined with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa as one of its provinces. It is now the KwaZulu-Natal province of South Africa.

The Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904, known officially as the British National Antarctic Expedition, was the first official British exploration of the Antarctic regions since the voyage of James Clark Ross sixty years earlier (1839–1843). Organized on a large scale under a joint committee of the Royal Society and the Royal Geographical Society (RGS), the new expedition carried out scientific research and geographical exploration in what was then largely an untouched continent. It launched the Antarctic careers of many who would become leading figures in the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Robert Falcon Scott who led the expedition, Ernest Shackleton, Edward Wilson, Frank Wild, Tom Crean and William Lashly.

The Iroquois Theatre fire was a catastrophic building fire in Chicago, Illinois, that broke out on December 30, 1903, during a performance attended by 1,700 people. The fire caused 602 deaths and 250 non-fatal injuries. It ranks as the worst theater fire in the United States, surpassing the carnage of the Brooklyn Theatre fire of 1876, which claimed at least 278 lives. For nearly a century, the Iroquois Theatre fire was the deadliest single-building disaster in American history. Only the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, has claimed more lives among United States disasters impacting a single building or complex. Despite being billed as "absolutely fireproof", the Iroquois Theatre, which opened a month before the fire, exhibited numerous deficiencies in fire readiness that contributed to the high death toll. Some of these deficiencies were known by city officials tasked with public safety. The resulting scandal resulted in changes in building safety codes and code enforcement in the United States and throughout the world. The fire broke out at about 3:15 p.m. while the Iroquois presented a matinee performance of the musical Mr. Blue Beard starring Eddie Foy. A broken arc lamp ignited some muslin curtains, which stage managers were unable to douse. Stagehands tried to lower the safety curtain to contain the fire, but the curtain jammed part way down. Despite attempts by Foy to calm the crowd, audience members frantically rushed for the exits, only to find that fire exits were locked or hidden. The largest death toll was at the base of stairways, where hundreds of people were trampled, crushed or asphyxiated; some people jumped to their deaths from the fire escapes. The Iroquois had no fire-alarm box or telephone, which hampered initial rescue efforts. It is estimated that 575 people were killed on the day of the fire, with dozens dying afterward; the vast majority of those killed were audience members. Two features, the safety curtain and fire dampers, were either not present or not working at the time of the fire. Other contributing factors included a lack of exit signs, emergency lighting, or fire preparedness; doors that opened inward or were locked shut; confusing exit routes; icy or improperly installed fire escapes; and the presence of ornamental doors. The Iroquois Memorial Hospital was built as a memorial to the fire, and Chicago held an annual memorial service. The Iroquois fire prompted widespread implementation of the panic bar, asbestos fire curtains, and doors that open outward. The theater was rebuilt and operated until 1925, when it was replaced by the Oriental Theatre.

Idaho is a landlocked state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West subregions of the Western United States. It borders Montana and Wyoming to the east, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Washington and Oregon to the west; the state shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border to the north with the Canadian province of British Columbia. Idaho's state capital and largest city is Boise. With an area of 83,569 square miles (216,440 km2), Idaho is the 14th-largest state by land area. The state has a population of approximately two million people; it ranks as the 13th-least populous and the seventh-least densely populated of the 50 U.S. states.

The All-India Muslim League (or AIML) was a political party in British India active between 1906 and 1947 that advocated for Muslim interests. The party emerged from the Aligarh Movement and the broader Islamic modernist and communalist traditions, which sought to preserve the distinct social and political identity of Muslims against the more secular policies of the Indian National Congress. In December 1906, following the successful Simla Deputation in October, the All-India Muslim League was founded in the 20th session of the All-India Muhammadan Educational Conference in Dacca (modern-day Dhaka). It created and spearheaded the movement for the creation of Pakistan based upon the two-nation theory of the Indian scholar Syed Ahmad Khan. The party arose out of the need for the political representation of Muslims in British India, especially during the Indian National Congress-led opposition to the 1905 partition of Bengal. During the 1906 annual meeting of the All-India Muhammadan Education Conference held in Ahsan Manzil Palace in Dacca, the Nawab of Dacca, Khwaja Salimullah, forwarded a proposal to create a political party which would protect the interests of Muslims in British India. He suggested the political party be named the 'All-India Muslim League'. The motion was unanimously passed by the conference, leading to the official formation of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca. It remained an elitist organisation until 1937, when the leadership, under the command of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, began mobilising the Muslim masses, which turned the League into a popular organisation. The Muslim League played a decisive role in the 1940s, becoming a driving force behind the partition of India along religious lines and the creation of Pakistan as a Muslim state in 1947. After the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan, the All-India Muslim League was formally disbanded. The party was succeeded by Muslim League in Pakistan and Indian Union Muslim League in India. The Muslim League in Pakistan was banned in 1958 but revived as the Pakistan Muslim League in 1962 and has since split into several political parties. In India, the Indian Union Muslim League remains active in the state of Kerala. In East Pakistan, now Bangladesh, it was succeeded by the All Pakistan Awami Muslim League now the Awami League.

Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin (21 January [O.S. 9 January] 1869 – 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916) was a Russian mystic and faith healer. He is best known for having befriended the imperial family of Nicholas II, the last Emperor of Russia, through whom he gained considerable influence in the final years of the Russian Empire. Rasputin was born to a family of peasants in the Siberian village of Pokrovskoye, located within Tyumensky Uyezd in Tobolsk Governorate (present-day Yarkovsky District in Tyumen Oblast). He had a religious conversion experience after embarking on a pilgrimage to a monastery in 1897 and has been described as a monk or as a strannik (wanderer or pilgrim), though he held no official position in the Russian Orthodox Church. Eventually gaining a reputation as a starets, in 1903 or in the winter of 1904–1905, he travelled to Saint Petersburg and captivated several religious and social leaders, eventually becoming a prominent figure in Russian society. In November 1905, Rasputin met Nicholas II and his empress consort, Alexandra Feodorovna. In late 1906, Rasputin began acting as a faith healer for Nicholas and Alexandra's only son, Alexei Nikolaevich, who suffered from haemophilia. He was a divisive figure at court, seen by some Russians as a mystic, visionary, and prophet, and by others as a religious charlatan. The extent of Rasputin's power reached an all-time high in 1915, when Nicholas left Saint Petersburg to oversee the Imperial Russian Army as it was engaged in the First World War. In his absence, Rasputin and Alexandra consolidated their influence across the Russian Empire. However, as Russian military defeats mounted on the Eastern Front, both figures became increasingly unpopular. In the early morning of 30 December [O.S. 17 December] 1916, Rasputin was assassinated by a group of conservative Russian noblemen who opposed his influence over the imperial family. Historians often suggest that Rasputin's scandalous and sinister reputation helped discredit the Tsarist government, thus precipitating the overthrow of the House of Romanov shortly after his assassination. Accounts of his life and influence were often based on common rumors; he remains a mysterious and captivating figure in popular culture.

The coronation of the Hungarian monarch was a ceremony in which the king or queen of the Kingdom of Hungary was formally crowned and invested with regalia. It corresponded to the coronation ceremonies in other European monarchies. While in countries like France and England the king's reign began immediately upon the death of his predecessor, in Hungary the coronation was absolutely indispensable: if it were not properly executed, the Kingdom stayed "orphaned". All monarchs had to be crowned as King of Hungary in order to promulgate laws and exercise his royal prerogatives in the Kingdom of Hungary. Starting from the Golden Bull of 1222, all new Hungarian monarchs had to take a coronation oath, by which they had to agree to uphold the constitutional arrangements of the country, and to preserve the liberties of their subjects and the territorial integrity of the realm.

The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from its formation in 1922 until its dissolution in 1991. It was the world's third-most populous country, the largest by area, and bordered twelve other countries. A diverse multinational state, it was organized as a federal union of national republics, with the largest and most populous being the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (SFSR). The world's flagship communist state, it was governed by the Communist Party under Marxism–Leninism, through soviet councils. The Soviet economy was also centrally planned. Its capital and largest city was Moscow. The Soviet Union's roots lay in the October Revolution of 1917. The new government, led by Vladimir Lenin, established the Russian SFSR, the world's first constitutionally communist state. Following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War, the Russian SFSR and its subordinate republics were merged into the Soviet Union in 1922. Following Lenin's death in 1924, a six-year power struggle saw Joseph Stalin emerge as the country's undisputed personalist ruler. He initiated rapid industrialization and forced collectivization that led to significant growth, but contributed to a devastating famine in the 1930s that killed millions. The Soviet forced labour camp system, known as the Gulag, was expanded. During the late 1930s, Stalin's government conducted the Great Purge to eliminate opposition, resulting in deportations, executions, and the Moscow trials. Failing to build an anti-Nazi coalition in Europe, the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939. However, in 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the largest land invasion in history, opening the Eastern Front of World War II. The Soviet Union played a decisive role in defeating the Axis powers as part of the Allies, while extending its sphere of influence to Central and Eastern Europe. With around 27 million casualties, it suffered the most deaths of any country in World War II. In the war's aftermath, the Soviet Union consolidated the territories occupied by the Red Army into satellite states and undertook rapid economic development, cementing its status as a superpower. Geopolitical tensions with the United States led to the Cold War. The US-led Western Bloc coalesced into the NATO military alliance in 1949, prompting the Eastern Bloc to form the Warsaw Pact in 1955. With little direct combat, the blocs engaged in ideological and proxy wars. In 1953, following Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev initiated a campaign of de-Stalinization, which led to ideological tensions with communist China, under Mao Zedong, and culminated in an acrimonious split. The Soviet military suppressed uprisings in East Germany, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, while the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis narrowly averted a global conflict. Under Leonid Brezhnev, prosperity shifted toward stagnation, although relations with the US eased. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev sought reform through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. In 1989, most Warsaw Pact countries overthrew their Soviet-backed regimes, effectively ending the Eastern Bloc. Nationalist movements across the Soviet republics declared sovereignty, and in 1991, a successful referendum to establish a renewed federation was followed by a failed coup by hardliners. This prompted Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus to secede. On 26 December, Gorbachev officially recognized the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, president of the Russian SFSR, oversaw its reconstitution into the Russian Federation, the Soviet Union's successor state. All fifteen republics became independent states; all except the Baltic states joined the Commonwealth of Independent States. The post-Soviet states experienced a humanitarian disaster and continuing wars and insurgencies. The Soviet Union was one of the world's two superpowers, with hegemony in Eastern Europe, global diplomacy, ideological influence (particularly in the Global South), military might, economic strength, and scientific and technological accomplishments. Its space program made significant achievements in the Space Race. It had the world's second-largest economy and the largest standing military. As a nuclear state, it wielded the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world. As an Allied nation, it was a founding member of the United Nations and one of five permanent members of its Security Council.

The Ginza Line (銀座線, Ginza-sen), officially designated as Line 3 Ginza Line (3号線銀座線, San-gō-sen Ginza-sen), is a subway line in Tokyo, Japan, operated by Tokyo Metro. The line spans 14.3 km (8.9 mi) and serves the wards of Shibuya, Minato, Chūō, Chiyoda, and Taitō. It is the oldest subway line in Asia, opening in 1927 and originally operated by the Tokyo Underground Railway, later jointly operated with the Tokyo Rapid Railway. The line is named after the Ginza commercial district in Chūō, through which it passes. On maps, diagrams, and signage, the line is color-coded orange, and its stations are identified by the letter "G" followed by a specific number.

The Flint sit-down strike, also known as the General Motors sit-down strike, was a sitdown strike at the General Motors plants in Flint, Michigan, United States, in which thousands of workers occupied the plants for 44 days, from December 30, 1936 to February 11, 1937. After hostile clashes between strikers and Flint police, Michigan governor Frank Murphy, with the support and counsel of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, refused to use force against the strikers, and sent in the Michigan National Guard to protect the workers from police and company guards, until an agreement was reached. The strike changed the United Automobile Workers (UAW) from a collection of isolated local unions on the fringes of the industry into a major labor union and led to the unionization of the American automobile industry.

Subhas Chandra Bose (23 January 1897 – 18 August 1945) was an Indian anti-colonial nationalist whose defiance of British authority in India made him a hero among many Indians, but his wartime alliances with Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan left a legacy vexed by authoritarianism, antisemitism, and military failure. The honorific Netaji (Hindustani for "Respected Leader") was first applied to Bose in Germany in early 1942—by the Indian soldiers of the Indische Legion and by the German and Indian officials in the Special Bureau for India in Berlin. It is now used throughout India. Bose was born into wealth and privilege in a large Bengali family in Orissa during the British Raj. The early recipient of an Anglo-centric education, he was sent after college to England to take the Indian Civil Service examination. He succeeded with distinction in the vital first exam but demurred at taking the routine final exam, citing nationalism to be the higher calling. Returning to India in 1921, Bose joined the nationalist movement led by Mahatma Gandhi and the Indian National Congress. He followed Jawaharlal Nehru to leadership in a group within the Congress which was less keen on constitutional reform and more open to socialism. Bose became Congress president in 1938. After reelection in 1939, differences arose between him and the Congress leaders, including Gandhi, over the future federation of British India and princely states, but also because discomfort had grown among the Congress leadership over Bose's negotiable attitude to non-violence, and his plans for greater powers for himself. After the large majority of the Congress Working Committee members resigned in protest, Bose resigned as president and was eventually ousted from the party. Bose arrived in Nazi Germany in April 1941, where the leadership offered unexpected but equivocal sympathy for India's independence. German funds were employed to open a Free India Centre in Berlin. A 3,000-strong Free India Legion was recruited from among Indian POWs captured by Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps to serve under Bose. Although peripheral to their main goals, the Germans inconclusively considered a land invasion of India throughout 1941. By the spring of 1942, the German army was mired in Russia and Bose became keen to move to southeast Asia, where Japan had just won quick victories. Adolf Hitler during his only meeting with Bose in late May 1942 agreed to arrange a submarine. During this time, Bose became a father; his wife, or companion, Emilie Schenkl, gave birth to a baby girl. Identifying strongly with the Axis powers, Bose boarded a German submarine in February 1943. Off Madagascar, he was transferred to a Japanese submarine from which he disembarked in Japanese-held Sumatra in May 1943. With Japanese support, Bose revamped the Indian National Army (INA), which comprised Indian prisoners of war of the British Indian army who had been captured by the Japanese in the Battle of Singapore. A Provisional Government of Free India (Azad Hind) was declared on the Japanese-occupied Andaman and Nicobar Islands and was nominally presided over by Bose. Although Bose was unusually driven and charismatic, the Japanese considered him to be militarily unskilled, and his soldierly effort was short-lived. In late 1944 and early 1945, the British Indian Army reversed the Japanese attack on India. Almost half of the Japanese forces and fully half of the participating INA contingent were killed. The remaining INA was driven down the Malay Peninsula and surrendered with the recapture of Singapore. Bose chose to escape to Manchuria to seek a future in the Soviet Union which he believed to have turned anti-British. Bose died from third-degree burns after his plane crashed in Taiwan (then under Japanese occupation) on 18 August 1945. Some Indians did not believe that the crash had occurred, expecting Bose to return to secure India's independence. The Indian National Congress, the main instrument of Indian nationalism, praised Bose's patriotism but distanced itself from his tactics and ideology. The British Raj, never seriously threatened by the INA, charged 300 INA officers with treason in the Indian National Army trials, but eventually backtracked in the face of opposition by the Congress, and a new mood in Britain for rapid decolonisation in India. Bose's legacy is mixed. Among many in India, he is seen as a hero, his saga serving as a would-be counterpoise to the many actions of regeneration, negotiation, and reconciliation over a quarter-century through which the independence of India was achieved. His collaborations with Japanese fascism and Nazism pose serious ethical dilemmas, especially his reluctance to publicly criticise the worst excesses of German anti-Semitism from 1938 onwards or to offer refuge in India to its victims.

George II (Greek: Γεώργιος Β', romanized: Geórgios II; 19 July [O.S. 7 July] 1890 – 1 April 1947) was King of Greece from 27 September 1922 until 25 March 1924, and again from 25 November 1935 until his death on 1 April 1947. The eldest son of King Constantine I of Greece and Princess Sophia of Prussia, George followed his father into exile in 1917 following the National Schism, while his younger brother Alexander was installed as king. Constantine was restored to the throne in 1920 after Alexander's death, but was forced to abdicate two years later in the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War. George acceded to the Greek throne, but after a failed royalist coup in October 1923 he was exiled to Romania. Greece was proclaimed a republic in March 1924 and George was formally deposed and stripped of Greek nationality. He remained in exile until the Greek monarchy was restored in 1935, following a rigged referendum, upon which he resumed his royal duties. The king supported Ioannis Metaxas's 1936 self-coup, which established an authoritarian, nationalist and anti-communist dictatorship known as 4th of August Regime. Greece was overrun following a German invasion in April 1941, forcing George into his third exile. He left for Crete and then Egypt before settling in London, where he headed the Greek government-in-exile. At the end of the war, George returned to Greece after a 1946 referendum had preserved the monarchy. He died of arteriosclerosis in April 1947 at the age of 56. Having no children, he was succeeded by his younger brother, Paul. He was also a male-line first cousin of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

The Cold War was a period of international geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc. It began in the aftermath of the Second World War and ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The term cold war is used because there was no direct fighting between the two superpowers, though each supported opposing sides in regional conflicts known as proxy wars. In addition to the struggle for ideological and economic influence and an arms race in both conventional and nuclear weapons, the Cold War was expressed through technological rivalries such as the Space Race, espionage, propaganda campaigns, embargoes, and sports diplomacy.

The Avro Lancaster, commonly known as the Lancaster Bomber, is a British World War II heavy bomber. It was designed and manufactured by Avro as a contemporary of the Handley Page Halifax, both bombers having been developed to the same specification, as well as the Short Stirling, all three aircraft being four-engine heavy bombers adopted by the Royal Air Force (RAF) during the same era. The Lancaster has its origins in the twin-engine Avro Manchester, which had been developed during the late 1930s in response to the Air Ministry Specification P.13/36 for a medium bomber for "world-wide use" to carry a torpedo internally and make shallow dive-bombing attacks. Originally developed as an evolution of the Manchester, which had proved troublesome in service and was retired in 1942, the Lancaster was designed by Roy Chadwick and powered by four Rolls-Royce Merlin engines and in one of the versions, Bristol Hercules engines. It first saw service with RAF Bomber Command in 1942 and as the strategic bombing offensive over Europe gathered momentum, it was the main aircraft for the night-time bombing campaigns that followed. As increasing numbers of the type were produced, it became the principal heavy bomber used by the RAF, the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within the RAF, overshadowing the Halifax and Stirling, two other commonly-used bombers. A long, unobstructed bomb bay meant that the Lancaster could take the largest bombs used by the RAF, including the 4,000 lb (1,800 kg), 8,000 lb (3,600 kg) and 12,000 lb (5,400 kg) "blockbusters", loads often supplemented with smaller bombs or incendiaries. The "Lanc", as it was known colloquially, became one of the most heavily used of the Second World War night bombers, delivering 608,612 long tons (618,378,000 kg) of bombs in 156,000 sorties. The versatility of the Lancaster was such that it was chosen to equip 617 Squadron and was modified to carry the Upkeep "bouncing bomb" designed by Barnes Wallis for Operation Chastise, the attack on German Ruhr Valley dams. Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles, including daylight precision bombing, for which some Lancasters were adapted to carry the 12,000 lb (5,400 kg) Tallboy and then the 22,000 lb (10,000 kg) Grand Slam earthquake bombs (also designed by Wallis). This was the largest payload of any bomber in the war. In 1943, a Lancaster was converted to become an engine test bed for the Metropolitan-Vickers F.2 turbojet. Lancasters were later used to test other engines, including the Armstrong Siddeley Mamba and Rolls-Royce Dart turboprops and the Avro Canada Orenda and STAL Dovern turbojets. Postwar, the Lancaster was supplanted as the main strategic bomber of the RAF by the Avro Lincoln, a larger version of the Lancaster. The Lancaster took on the role of long range anti-submarine patrol aircraft (later supplanted by the Avro Shackleton) and air-sea rescue. It was also used for photo-reconnaissance and aerial mapping, as a flying tanker for aerial refuelling and as the Avro Lancastrian, a long-range, high-speed, transatlantic passenger and postal delivery airliner. In March 1946, a Lancastrian of BSAA flew the first scheduled flight from the new London Heathrow Airport.

The National Bureau of Investigation (NBI; Finnish: Keskusrikospoliisi (KRP), Swedish: Centralkriminalpolisen (CKP), lit. 'central criminal police') is a national law enforcement agency of the Finnish Police and the principal criminal investigation and criminal intelligence organization of Finland. The Bureau's main tasks are to counter and investigate organized crime, provide expert services, and develop methods for criminal investigation. NBI is also responsible for financial intelligence (FININT), such as preventing money laundering and terrorism financing. NBI headquarters has been situated in the city of Vantaa within the Capital Region since 1994 with field offices in Tampere, Turku, Mariehamn, Joensuu, Oulu and Rovaniemi. It is subordinate to the National Police Board under the jurisdiction of the Interior Ministry.

The Guatemalan Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the Armed Forces of Guatemala. The FAG is a subordinate to the Guatemalan Military and its commanding officer reports to the Defence Minister.

Aeroflot Flight L-51 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight operated by an Antonov An-24 that crashed on approach to Liepāja International Airport on 30 December 1967, resulting in the death of 43 of the 51 people on board. To date, it is the deadliest aviation accident in Latvian history. The investigation revealed the cause of the accident to be pilot error.

Operation Linebacker II, sometimes referred to as the Christmas bombings and, in Vietnam, the Twelve days and nights, or Điện Biên Phủ of the Sky, was a strategic bombing campaign conducted by the United States against military and industrial areas of North Vietnam from 18 December to 29 December 1972, during the Vietnam War. More than 20,000 tons of ordnance was dropped, primarily targeting Hanoi and Haiphong, and at least 1,624 civilians were killed.

Diplomatic recognition in international law is a unilateral declarative political act of a state that acknowledges an act or status of another state or government in control of a state. Recognition can be accorded either on a de facto or de jure basis. Partial recognition can occur if many sovereign states refuse to recognize an entity as a peer. Recognition can be a declaration to that effect by the recognizing government or may be implied from an act of recognition, such as entering into a treaty with the other state or making a state visit. Recognition may, but might not, have domestic and international legal consequences. If sufficient countries recognize a particular entity as a state, that state may have a right to membership in international organizations, while treaties may require all existing member countries unanimously agreeing to the admission of a new member.

Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu is an Israeli politician and diplomat who has served as Prime Minister of Israel since 2022. Having previously held office from 1996 to 1999 and from 2009 to 2021, Netanyahu is Israel's longest-serving prime minister.

Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. Spanning over 2,381,741 square kilometres (919,595 sq mi), it is the largest country in Africa and the tenth largest in the world. It is bordered to the northeast by Tunisia; to the east by Libya; to the southeast by Niger; to the southwest by Mali, Mauritania, and Western Sahara; to the west by Morocco; and to the north by the Mediterranean Sea. With a population of over 47 million, Algeria is the tenth-most populous country in Africa. Its capital and largest city is Algiers.

On 30 December 2004, a fire broke out in the crowded República Cromañón nightclub in Buenos Aires, Argentina, killing 194 people and leaving at least 1,492 injured. The direct cause was the indoor pyrotechnics igniting the ceiling.

Tropical Storm Zeta was a very late-developing tropical storm that formed in the central Atlantic Ocean during the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, forming one month after the season's official end. Becoming a tropical depression on December 30, and intensifying the following day into the season's 28th storm, Zeta continued into January 2006. It was one of only two Atlantic tropical cyclones to span two calendar years.

Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport is the main international airport serving Madrid, the capital of Spain, and its metropolitan area. At 3,050 ha in area, it is the second-largest airport in Europe by physical size behind Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport. In 2025, 68.1 million passengers travelled through Madrid–Barajas, making it the country's busiest airport as well as Europe's fifth-busiest.

The MV Senopati Nusantara was an Indonesian ferry that sank in a storm on December 30, 2006. The Japanese-made ship was a scheduled passenger liner from the port of Kumai in Central Kalimantan (Borneo) to Tanjung Emas port in Semarang, Central Java. About 40 km (25 mi) off Mandalika Island, the ship sank during a violent storm in the Java Sea. At least 400–500 people are thought to have drowned, with only 224 surviving.

The president of the Republic of Iraq is the head of state of Iraq. Since the mid-2000s, the presidency is primarily a symbolic office, as the position does not possess significant power within the country according to the constitution adopted in October 2005.

The Camp Chapman attack was a suicide attack by Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi against the Central Intelligence Agency facility inside Forward Operating Base Chapman in Afghanistan on December 30, 2009. One of the main tasks of the CIA personnel stationed at the base was to provide intelligence supporting drone attacks in Pakistan. Seven American CIA officers and contractors, a Jordanian intelligence officer, and an Afghan working for the CIA were killed when al-Balawi detonated a bomb sewn into a vest he was wearing. Six other American CIA officers were wounded. The bombing was the most lethal attack against the CIA in more than 25 years.

Attacks in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were launched by supporters of religious leader Paul Joseph Mukungubila against television studios, the airport and a military base in the capital on 30 December 2013. The state security forces responded, killing around 54 of the attackers. An additional 47 of Mukungubila's supporters were killed in separate clashes in the cities of Lubumbashi and Kolwezi and around 100 people were arrested.