Historical Events
- Dec 6 Chicago water supply tunnel 3,227 m into Lake Michigan completed
- Dec 11 1st yacht race across Atlantic Ocean; schooners Fleetwing, Vesta and the Henrietta, with NY playboy Gordon Bennett on board, leave Sandy Hook for the Scilly Isles (the Henrietta wins)
- Dec 21 Fetterman Massacre: Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapaho Indians kill all 81 US Army soldiers, the worst military disaster suffered by the U.S. Army on the Great Plains at the time
- Dec 23 First yacht race across the Atlantic won by the schooner Henrietta owned by Gordon Bennett of New York, first to reach Bishop Rock in the Scilly Isles after racing from NY
Famous Birthdays
Harry Burleigh (1866-1949)
Dec 2 African American baritone and composer (Five Songs of Laurence Hope), and Springarn Medal winner (1917), born in Erie, Pennsylvania
- Dec 4 Wassily Kandinsky, Russian-French abstract painter (Dreamy Inspiration), born in Moscow (d. 1944)
- Dec 12 Alfred Werner, Swiss chemist (Nobel 1913), born in Mulhouse, Haut-Rhin, Alsace, France (d. 1919)
- Dec 14 Roger Fry, English artist and art critic, born in St Pancras, London, England (d. 1934)
- Dec 22 Mieczyslaw Surzynski, Polish organ virtuoso and composer (1904 Organ Concerto), born in Środa, Poland (d. 1924)
- Dec 28 Szymon Askenazy, Polish historian and diplomat (d. 1935)
- Dec 29 Joseph Limburg, Dutch lawyer and politician, born in The Hague, Netherlands (d. 1940)
