Shimla, Dec. 19 Keekli Bureau
2012
Park Geun-Hye became the first female to be elected president of South Korea; she was sworn into office the following year; however, she also became the country’s first democratically elected president to be removed from office when she was impeached in 2017.
1997
James Cameron’s Titanic, a drama about the doomed ocean liner starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, premiered; it later became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time.
1974
Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was sworn in as the 41st vice president of the United States, succeeding Gerald Ford, who had been elevated to the presidency following the resignation of Richard Nixon.
1971
The sci-fi drama A Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of a novel by Anthony Burgess, had its world premiere; although widely acclaimed, the movie’s violent and sexually explicit scenes proved controversial, and it received an X rating when released in the United States.
1966
The United Nations General Assembly endorsed the Outer Space Treaty, an international treaty binding the parties to use outer space only for peaceful purposes.
1946
The Viet Minh, founded by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh, began the First Indochina War against France.
1915
French singer and actress Edith Piaf, whose interpretation of the chanson (French ballad) made her internationally famous, was born.
1910
Jean Genet, a French criminal and social outcast turned writer who, as a dramatist, became a leading figure in the avant-garde theatre, especially the Theatre of the Absurd, was born.
1843
English author Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, which became one of the outstanding Christmas stories of modern literature.
1777
During the American Revolution, General George Washington led 11,000 regulars to take up winter quarters at Valley Forge on the west bank of the Schuylkill River, 22 miles (35 km) northwest of Philadelphia.
