December 2

1547 Spanish general and explorer Hernando Cortés died in Castilleja de la Cuesta, Seville province, on December 2, 1547, from a case of pleurisy at the age of 62. Cortés conquered 315,000 square miles of America in total, defeating the Aztecs, seizing southern and central Mexico and later subjugating Guatemala and Honduras to Spanish rule.

1552 In 1552 the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier fell ill with a fever on the Chinese island of Shangchuan. A poor man, George Alvarez, found him lying on the shore and carried him to his hut. He died on the island on December 2, 1552, Xavier was influential in evangelization work, most notably in India and also was the first Christian missionary to venture into Japan.

1697 On December 2, 1697, the new St Paul's Cathedral was consecrated for use. The Right Reverend Henry Compton, Bishop of London, preached the sermon. It was based on the text of Psalm 122, "I was glad when they said unto me: Let us go into the house of the Lord." The first regular service was held on the following Sunday.

1755 Designed by John Rudyard, the second Eddystone Lighthouse began peration in 1708. The tower of the second Eddystone Lighthouse caught fire on December 2, 1755, probably through a spark from one of the 24 candles used to illuminate the light and the tower burnt down. The civil engineer, John Smeaton, rebuilt the lighthouse in 1759. His tower represented a major step forward in the design of lighthouses and remained in use until 1877.

A contemporary painting of Rudyard's lighthouse by Isaac Sailmaker.

1804 In February 1804, a British-financial plot against Napoleon Bonaparte was uncovered by the former police minister Joseph Fouche. It gave Napoleon a reason to start a hereditary dynasty. Napoleon was crowned Emperor of the French on December 2, 1804 at Notre Dame de Paris in a ceremony presided over by Pope Pius VII.

The Coronation of Napoleon by Jacques-Louis David

1805 After his defeat at the Battle of Trafalgar, Emperor Napoleon abandoned plans to invade Britain and turned his armies against the Austro-Russian forces, defeating them at the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805. Napoleon's historic triumph at the Battle of Austerlitz, led to the elimination of the Holy Roman Empire, 1000 years after it had been set up by Charlemagne.

1819 Abraham Lincoln's mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, died of milk sickness in  1818. Abraham's father, Thomas, married his second wife Sarah "Sally" Bush Johnston on December 2, 1819. A widow from Elizabethtown, Kentucky, she already had three children of her own. Abraham became very close to his stepmother, whom he referred to as "Mother."

1823 President James Monroe created the Monroe Doctrine with his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams, which was a policy that said that the United States did not want Europe to be involved in the New World anymore. He issued the proclamation of opposition to European colonialism on December 2, 1823.

1852 Louis-Napoleon was blocked by the Constitution and Parliament from running for a second term as President of France, so he organized a successful coup d'état in 1851. He emerged as master of France and took the throne as Napoleon III on December 2, 1852, the 48th anniversary of his uncle's coronation. Four years later, Louis-Napoleon crowned himself as Emperor Napoleon III and the Second French Empire was born.

1860 Charles T Studd was born on December 2, 1860. An outstanding cricketer, he represented England in international matches against Australia before serving as a missionary in China, India and Africa. Studd founded in 1913 the Heart of Africa Mission, which later became the Worldwide Evangelisation Crusade, (now called WEC International) a mission that currently has over 1,800 workers evangelizing throughout the world.

1867 Charles Dickens gave his first public reading on his second US tour at Tremont Temple in Boston on December 2, 1867. The author recited A Christmas Carol from memory to a spellbound audience. During his 1867 reading tour of USA, the Americans went into a frenzy about Dickens. He gave 76 performances for which he earned $228,000. After expenses of $39,000 Dickens was able to bank nearly £19,000.

Dickens .Wood engraving from Harper's Weekly, December 1867 Wikipedia

1877 Camille Saint-Saëns composed 13 operas, of which the best known is Samson et Dalila. Franz Liszt was an enthusiastic supporter of Samson et Dalila and was instrumental in arranging the first production at the Ducal Theater in Weimar (now the Staatskapelle Weimar) on December 2, 1877.

1881 Karl Marx married Jenny von Westphalen in 1843. Asked later in her life if her marriage had been happy when they were poor, Jenny wistfully replied, "yes we were happy enough, but I wish dear Karl could have spent some time acquiring capital instead of writing about it." When she died of cancer on December 2, 1881, it left the founder of Marxism a "moral cripple."

1886 Theodore Roosevelt's first wife, Alice died aged 23 from Bright's Disease in February 1884.The grief stricken Theodore Roosevelt fled to Dakota to recover. On returning to the east he married gentle high bred Edith Carow (1886-1948), a childhood friend of his sister Corinne at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London on December 2, 1886. They had five children together.

Theodore and Edith Roosevelt and family. 1903

1923 Maria Callas was born Sophia Cecelia Kalos at Flower Hospital (now the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center), at 1249 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, on December 2, 1923 to Greek parents. Blessed with a soprano voice of fine range and a gift for dramatic expression, Callas was one of the most renowned and influential opera singers of the 20th century.

1927 Ford Motor Company introduced the Model A on December 2, 1927. The Model A was designed to replace the highly successful but aging Model T, which had been in production for nearly 20 years. It incorporated more modern features and design elements including being the first car with safety glass in the windshield.

1929 The Great Depression depression originated in the United States in August 1929, when the country's economy first went into recession. In a State of the Union message on December 2, 1929, during the Great Depression, U.S. President Herbert Hoover proposed a $150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy. Hoover was unable to fix the Great Depression, and lost the 1932 election to Franklin Roosevelt.

1939 New York City's LaGuardia Airport opened on December 2, 1939. The first flight, a TWA DC-3 from Chicago, landed at 12:02am. Originally named Glenn H. Curtiss Airport after aviation pioneer Glenn Hammond Curtiss, in 1953 it became "LaGuardia Airport", named for Fiorello La Guardia, the mayor of New York City when the airport was built. Today, LaGuardia is the busiest airport in the United States without any non-stop service to Europe.

1942 Hungarian-American physicist Leo Szilard first conceived of the idea of the nuclear chain reaction while waiting for a traffic light in Bloomsbury, London in September 1933. On December 2, 1942 a group of scientists achieved the first self-sustaining chain reaction at Chicago University and thereby initiated the controlled release of nuclear energy. Leo Szilard, who had emigrated to America was among the observers.

1943 Three carrier pigeons, named White Vision, Winkie and Tyke, became the first recipients of the Dickin Medal on December 2, 1943. The award was created to honor the part that animals played in the war effort.

1961 In a nationally broadcast speech on December 2, 1961, Fidel Castro declared that he has been a Marxist–Leninist for years and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism. Castro's declaration had a profound impact on Cuba's international relations; it strained relations between Cuba and the United States and had implications for Cuba's alignment with the Soviet Union. 

Fidel Castro - MATS Terminal Washington 1959

1971 Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Fujairah, Sharjah, Dubai, and Umm al-Quwain  agreed on December 2, 1971 to enter into a union called the United Arab Emirates. The seventh, Ras Al Khaimah, joined the federation the following year.

1979 A 29‐year‐old woman, Elvita Adams, jumped from the 86th‐floor observation deck of the Empire State Building on December 2, 1979.  She only fell one story before a freak gust of wind swept her onto a ledge. Elvita was rescued shortly after.

1982 61-year-old retired dentist Barney Clark was the first recipient of a permanent artificial heart on December 2, 1982 at the University of Utah Medical Center. He survived for three and a half months with his new heart before succumbing to foreign-body rejection problems.

1984 The Bhopal disaster was a gas leak incident on the night of December 2-3 1984, at the Union Carbide India Limited (UCIL) pesticide plant in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. It is considered to be the world's worst industrial disaster. Over 500,000 people were exposed to methyl isocyanate (500 times deadlier than hydrogen cyanide). The gas leak went undetected due to the factory's earlier removal of the alarm siren in order to not disturb its neighbors.

1984 Deputy station superintendent Ghulam Dastagir refused to leave his post during the Bhopal Gas Tragedy on the night of December 2-3, 1984. He prevented any trains from stopping at the station and may have saved thousands of lives. Ghulam spent two decades in and out of hospital due to long exposure to the gas.

1993 By the mid-80s Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar owned 19 different residences in Medellin alone, each with a helipad. There was so much money rolling into his enterprise that figuring out how to invest it was more than he could handle; millions were simply buried. Escobar was shot and killed by police in Medellín, Colombia on December 2, 1993.

2002 Rick Smith, Jr.  from Cleveland, threw a playing card a world record 65.96 meters (216 feet, 4 inches) on December 2, 2002. This is also the current record for the fastest throw, clocked at 148 kilometers per hour (91.96 mph).