Emperor Hirohito dies 1989

Showa Tenno Hirohito, the 124th Japanese monarch in an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C., dies after serving six decades as the emperor of Japan. He was the longest serving monarch in Japanese history.

Made regent in 1921, Hirohito was enthroned as emperor in 1928, two years after the death of his father, Emperor Taisho. During his first two decades as emperor, Hirohito presided over one of the most turbulent eras in his nation’s history. From rapid military expansion beginning in 1931 to the crushing defeat of Japan in 1945, Hirohito stood above the Japanese people as an absolute monarch whose powers were sharply limited in practice. After U.S. atomic bombs destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it was he who argued for his country’s surrender, explaining to the Japanese people in his first-ever radio address that the “unendurable must be endured.” Under U.S. occupation and postwar reconstruction, Hirohito was formally stripped of his powers and forced to renounce his alleged divinity, but he remained his country’s official figurehead until his death in 1989. He was succeeded as emperor by his only son, Akihito.

First U.S. presidential election

On this day in 1789, America’s first presidential election is held. Voters cast ballots to choose state electors; only white men who owned property were allowed to vote. As expected, George Washington won the election and was sworn into office on April 30, 1789.

As it did in 1789, the United States still uses the Electoral College system, established by the U.S. Constitution, which today gives all American citizens over the age of 18 the right to vote for electors, who in turn vote for the president. The president and vice president are the only elected federal officials chosen by the Electoral College instead of by direct popular vote.

Today political parties usually nominate their slate of electors at their state conventions or by a vote of the party’s central state committee, with party loyalists often being picked for the job. Members of the U.S. Congress, though, can’t be electors. Each state is allowed to choose as many electors as it has senators and representatives in Congress. The District of Columbia has 3 electors. During a presidential election year, on Election Day (the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November), the electors from the party that gets the most popular votes are elected in a winner-take-all-system, with the exception of Maine and Nebraska, which allocate electors proportionally. In order to win the presidency, a candidate needs a majority of 270 electoral votes out of a possible 538.

On the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December of a presidential election year, each state’s electors meet, usually in their state capitol, and simultaneously cast their ballots nationwide. This is largely ceremonial: Because electors nearly always vote with their party, presidential elections are essentially decided on Election Day. Although electors aren’t constitutionally mandated to vote for the winner of the popular vote in their state, it is demanded by tradition and required by law in 26 states and the District of Columbia (in some states, violating this rule is punishable by $1,000 fine). Historically, over 99 percent of all electors have cast their ballots in line with the voters. On January 6, as a formality, the electoral votes are counted before Congress and on January 20, the commander in chief is sworn into office.


Critics of the Electoral College argue that the winner-take-all system makes it possible for a candidate to be elected president even if he gets fewer popular votes than his opponent. This happened in the elections of 1876, 1888 and 2000. However, supporters contend that if the Electoral College were done away with, heavily populated states such as California and Texas might decide every election and issues important to voters in smaller states would be ignored.

This day in history The euro debuts

On this day in 1999, for the first time since Charlemagne’s reign in the ninth century, Europe is united

with a common currency when the “euro” debuts as a financial unit in corporate and investment markets.

Eleven European Union (EU) nations (Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy,

Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain), representing some 290 million people, launched the

currency in the hopes of increasing European integration and economic growth. Closing at a robust 1.17

U.S. dollars on its first day, the euro promised to give the dollar a run for its money in the new

global economy. Euro cash, decorated with architectural images, symbols of European unity and member-

state motifs, went into circulation on January 1, 2002, replacing the Austrian schilling, Belgian franc,

Finnish markka, French franc, German mark, Italian lira, Irish punt, Luxembourg franc, Netherlands

guilder, Portugal escudo and Spanish peseta. A number of territories and non-EU nations including Monaco

and Vatican City also adopted the euro.

Conversion to the euro wasn’t without controversy. Despite the practical benefits of a common currency

that would make it easier to do business and travel throughout Europe, there were concerns that the

changeover process would be costly and chaotic, encourage counterfeiting, lead to inflation and cause

individual nations to loose control over their economic policies. Great Britain, Sweden and Demark opted

not to use the euro. Greece, after initially being excluded for failing to meet all the required

conditions, adopted the euro in January 2001, becoming the 12th member of the so-called eurozone.


The euro was established by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union, which spelled out specific

economic requirements, including high degree of price stability and low inflation, which countries must

meet before they can begin using the new money. The euro consists of 8 coins and 7 paper bills. The

Frankfurt-based European Central Bank (ECB) manages the euro and sets interest rates and other monetary

policies. In 2004, 10 more countries joined the EU—-Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,

Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. Several of these countries plan to start using the euro

in 2007, with the rest to follow in coming years.

Martin Luther excommunicated-On January 3, 1521

On January 3, 1521, Pope Leo X issues the papal bull Decet Romanum Pontificem, which excommunicates Martin Luther from the Catholic Church.

Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, was a professor of biblical interpretation at the University of Wittenberg in Germany when he drew up his 95 theses condemning the Catholic Church for its corrupt practice of selling indulgences, or the forgiveness of sins. He followed up the revolutionary work with equally controversial and groundbreaking theological works, and his fiery words set off religious reformers all across Europe.






In January 1521, Pope Leo X excommunicated Luther. Three months later, Luther was called to defend his beliefs before Holy Roman Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms, where he was famously defiant. For his refusal to recant his writings, the emperor declared him an outlaw and a heretic. Luther was protected by powerful German princes, however, and by his death in 1546, the course of Western civilization had been significantly altered.

Russian fleet surrenders at Port Arthur 1905

Russian fleet surrenders at Port Arthur
During the Russo-Japanese War, Port Arthur, the Russian naval base in China, falls to Japanese naval forces under Admiral Heihachiro Togo. It was the first in a series of defeats that by June turned the tide of the imperial conflict irrevocably against Russia.

In February 1904, following a Russian rejection of a Japanese plan to divide Manchuria and Korea into spheres of influence, Japan launched a surprise naval attack on Port Arthur, decimating the Russian fleet. In the subsequent fighting, Japan won a series of decisive victories over the Russians, who underestimated the military potential of its non-Western opponent.

In January 1905, the strategic naval base of Port Arthur fell to the Japanese; in March, Russian troops were defeated at Shenyang, China, by Japanese Field Marshal Iwao Oyama; and in May, the Russian Baltic fleet under Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski was destroyed by Admiral Togo’s fleet near the Tsushima Islands. These three crucial defeats convinced Russia that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs on East Asia was hopeless, and in August 1905 President Theodore Roosevelt mediated a peace treaty at Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Japan emerged from the conflict as the first modern non-Western world power and set its sights on greater imperial expansion. For Russia, however, the disastrous performance in the war was one of the immediate causes of the Russian Revolution of 1905.

The Christmas Truce

The Christmas Truce
Just after midnight on Christmas morning, the majority of German troops engaged in World War I cease firing their guns and artillery and commence to sing Christmas carols. At certain points along the eastern and western fronts, the soldiers of Russia, France, and Britain even heard brass bands joining the Germans in their joyous singing.

At the first light of dawn, many of the German soldiers emerged from their trenches and approached the Allied lines across no-man’s-land, calling out “Merry Christmas” in their enemies’ native tongues. At first, the Allied soldiers feared it was a trick, but seeing the Germans unarmed they climbed out of their trenches and shook hands with the enemy soldiers. The men exchanged presents of cigarettes and plum puddings and sang carols and songs. There was even a documented case of soldiers from opposing sides playing a good-natured game of soccer.

The so-called Christmas Truce of 1914 came only five months after the outbreak of war in Europe and was one of the last examples of the outdated notion of chivalry between enemies in warfare. In 1915, the bloody conflict of World War I erupted in all its technological fury, and the concept of another Christmas Truce became unthinkable

Astronomers across the world are preparing for December’s Cold Moon on Saturday, the last full moon of 2018.

The exact time when the moon comes opposite the sun is 17.48, though witnesses will be able to see the full moon at any point overnight.

“It will be visible throughout the night, for anyone who has clear skies – the actual moment of the full moon, the point where the moon comes exactly opposite the sun in the sky will be at 17.48, so just coming up to six o’clock, but there will be no appreciable difference in how the moon appears,”

“As it stands, it’s looking rather cloudy, not completely overcast here in the South so there might be quite a lot of cloud, but if the cloud is thin cloud, then the moon is very dramatic anyway, being so bright in the sky thin cloud normally isn’t enough to stop the moon light coming through – and if you have a telescope or something like that you can usually see the details on the surface of the moon, even through a small amount of thin cloud.”


The astronomer warned that the moon may appear bigger but said this is just an illusion.

You will notice as well that when the moon is rising and setting when it’s a full moon in particular it has a tendency to look very large and this is an illusion created by our brains when things are close to the horizon.

“But also something that is not an illusion is that the rising and setting can take on quite a warm colour, sort of a yellow, orange tone and this is because moon light, which is sunlight bouncing off the moon, is being filtered through our atmosphere, so in the same way that sunsets look red, moon sets and moon rises also have a slightly reddish colour to them.”

Though there aren’t any noticeable differences in a full moon, the event does take place during the Ursids meteor shower, which could provide some extra special lunar photography.

The event is particularly notable this year as it occurs around the 50th anniversary of Apollo 8, the first time humans could see the whole of the planet at once.