1843 - English author Charles Dickens published A Christmas Carol, which became one of the outstanding Christmas stories of modern literature. This popular novella sold out by Christmas Eve, selling 6,000 copies. Since then, “A Christmas Carol” has never gone out of print.

2018 - A meteor explodes in a huge fireball over the Bering Sea with 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

2004 - The opening of ‘The Sage – Gateshead’, a concert venue and centre for musical education, located on the south bank of the River Tyne.

1995 - The name “Euro” was officially adopted for European Currency in Madrid. Belgian Esperantist Germain Pirlot, a former teacher of French and history, is credited with naming the new currency.

2013 - Andy Murray was awarded the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year. Earlier in the year Murray had become the first Briton in three quarters of a century to win the men’s singles competition at Wimbledon.

1984 - Miners’ leader Arthur Scargill was found guilty of obstruction during a picket at a Yorkshire coal works earlier in the year. He was fined £250 and ordered to pay £750 in costs.

1972 - Last human landing on the Moon. Apollo 17 was the last mission of the United States’ Apollo lunar landing program. It was also the sixth and the last time humans landed on the Moon.

1982 - 30,000 women formed a 9 mile human chain that encircled Greenham Common air base in Berkshire, in protest against the proposed siting of US Cruise missiles there.

2005 - A huge fire continued to burn at Buncefield oil depot near Hemel Hempstead in Hertfordshire. It was the largest of its kind in peacetime Europe and the noise of the explosions could be heard as far away as the Netherlands.