Important Events From This day in History – 21st December

Today in History

• 1995 Palestinians take control of Bethlehem

  Under the Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, signed in September 1995, Israeli troops withdrew from the city. From 1920 to 1948, the city was under British mandate, and Jordan captured it during the Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Israel most recently occupied it during the 1967 Six-Day War.

• 1988 Lockerbie Bombing

  A bomb exploded on Pan Am Flight 103, flying from Frankfurt, Germany, to Detroit, Michigan, over the Scottish town of Lockerbie. All passengers and crew on board and 11 people on the ground were killed in the terrorist attack.

• 1965 International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination adopted

  The United Nations member states adopted the human rights convention, enacted on January 4, 1969. It attempts to eliminate racial discrimination in the world.

• 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs released

  The movie made by Walt Disney Productions was the world’s first full-length animated feature film, and it was based on a German fairy tale of the same name by the Brothers Grimm.

• 1872 Phileas Fogg wins his wager

  The fictional character created by French writer Jules Verne for his book Around the World in Eighty Days completed his circumnavigation and arrived in London to win the wager he had set with his friends. The date also coincides with the publication of the series’s final instalment that evolved into the now-popular science fiction novel.