THURSDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2019

0627-Battle at Nineveh: Byzantine emperor Heraclius beats Perzen

1474-Isabella crowns herself queen of Castile & Aragon

1715-Russian, Prussian troops occupy Stralsund

1792-In Vienna, Ludwig van Beethoven, 21, receives first lesson in music composition from Franz Joseph Haydn

1800-Washington D.C. established as capital of U.S.

1858-First Canadian coins circulated

1878-Joseph Pulitzer begins publishing "St Louis Dispatch"

1901-Marconi receives first transatlantic radio signal, England to U.S.

1913-"Mona Lisa" recovered after being stolen from the Louvre Museum in 1911

1917-Worst train disaster ever. Derailment near mouth of Mount Cenis tunnel kills 543 French troops

1932-USSR, China resume diplomatic relations

1936-Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek declares war on Japan

1939-Soviet prison ship Indigirka carrying 2,500 prisoners capsizes in blizzard off Japanese coast; 2,470 die

1961-Martin Luther King Jr and 700 demonstrators arrested in Albany GA

1963-Argentina asks for extradition of ex-President Peron