1977 - Thousands of people flocked to UK cinemas to watch the long-awaited blockbuster, Star Wars. Sadly, Carrie Fisher also died on this day in 2016 of a sudden cardiac arrest.

2004 - A devastating tsunami with waves up to 30 m (100 ft) high and an earthquake occurred in the Indian Ocean. The destruction killed an estimated 227,898 people.

1932 - King George V made the first Royal Christmas broadcast to the British Empire via radio from Sandringham House, an event initiated by BBC founder Lord Reith and written by Rudyard Kipling.

1952 - The prototype of Britain's Handley Page Victor strategic bomber first flew. The Victor was the last of the three "V-bombers" (which also included the Vickers Valiant and the Avro Vulcan).

1970 - Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap broke the world record as the longest-running play hitting its 7,511th performance, marking a major milestone in its extraordinary continuous run.

1989 - Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate reopens after 30 years, symbolically ending the east-west division of Germany.

1988 – A Pan American jumbo jet bound for New York was blown out of the sky by a terrorist bomb and crashed onto the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all 259 passengers and 11 people on the ground.

1928 - Harry Ramsden started his fish and chip restaurant in a hut at White Cross in Guiseley, near Bradford in West Yorkshire. It soon became the most famous fish and chip restaurant in the world.

1843 - English author Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, which became one of the outstanding Christmas stories of modern literature.