On December 10

A tornado strikes an Amazon warehouse during increased holiday demand, killing six sheltering workers.

The video game Doom, later considered the "father" of the first-person shooter genre, is released.

Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan establishes the Marriage Fund in the United Arab Emirates in response to rising wedding prices.

At the first open pro-democracy demonstration in Mongolia, journalist Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj announced the formation of the Mongolian Democratic Union, which would be instrumental in ending communist rule four months later.

Raúl Alfonsín (pictured) became the first democratically elected president of Argentina to take office after more than seven years of military dictatorship.

Around the northern Thai village of Mae Salong, remnants of Chinese anti-communist forces now fighting on behalf of the Thai government launched a five-year campaign against local communist insurgents.

Soul and blues singer, Otis Redding, along with members of his back-up group, The Bar-Kays, are killed when their helicopter crashes in Lake Monona in Madison, Wisconsin.

Edward Raczyński of the Polish government-in-exile issued a note that was the first official report on the Holocaust.

Second World War: The Royal Navy capital ships HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse were sunk by Imperial Japanese Navy torpedo bombers east of Malaya.

Edward VIII, desiring to marry the American socialite Wallis Simpson against widespread British opposition, signed the instrument of abdication to renounce the throne in favour of his brother George VI.

The conclusion of the Emu War, after the Australian Government ordered the withdrawal of all Australian forces from the conflict.

Calbraith Perry Rodgers completed the first transcontinental flight across the United States.

During the Brown Dog affair, protesters marched through London and clashed with police officers in Trafalgar Square over the existence of a memorial for animals that had been vivisected.

On the fifth anniversary of the death of their founder, Swedish chemist and industrialist Alfred Nobel, the first Nobel Prizes were awarded in Stockholm.

The New York World Building, the then-tallest building in the United States at a height of 110 meters, was completed in New York City.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Finn depicted) by American author Mark Twain was first published in the United Kingdom and Canada, two months earlier than in the US.

Militia forces led by Nguyễn Trung Trực, an anti-colonial leader in southern Vietnam, sank the French lorcha L'Esperance.

Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte won France's first presidential election, and was elected as the first and only president of the French Second Republic.

The first edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica was released in Edinburgh.

Edmond Halley presented the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, containing Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, to the Royal Society.