December 19 in history — On This Day

A photograph taken after the 1871 fire can make Chicago look as though its future had been decided by a wall of flame. A view from around 1905 tells a different story: tall offices, busy transport routes and commercial streets crowded again.

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December

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Apollo 17 Returns to Earth

This Week in History

Venera 7 Returns Data from Venus's Surface

Pioneer 6 Begins a Long Solar Mission

Gemini 6A and Gemini 7 Rendezvous in Orbit

Mariner 2 Flies Past Venus

War & Conflict

Pan Am Flight 103 Is Destroyed Over Lockerbie

Space

Apollo 17 Returns to Earth

Technology

The Wright Brothers Make Their First Powered Flights

History

Ivy Mike Detonates and Opens the Thermonuclear Age

Tsar Bomba: The Largest Nuclear Test Explosion

China Conducts Its First Nuclear Test

Crime & Justice

Seven Lives Lost: The Unsolved Mystery of United Air Lines Flight 23

An Ovechkin family group hijacks Aeroflot Flight 3739

Science

The Piltdown Fossil Claim Is Announced

The Curies Announce Evidence for Radium

Darwin Sails on HMS Beagle

Medicine & Health

The First Successful Human Kidney Transplant

The First American IVF Baby Is Born

Hong Kong Begins a Mass Poultry Cull Against Bird Flu

Nature & Disasters

A Living Coelacanth Is Caught off South Africa

The Andes Flight Survivors' Rescue Is Completed

Arrow Air Flight 1285 Crashes at Gander

Exploration

The First Flight Around the World Returns to Seattle

Film & TV

The Lumière Cinématographe Is Shown to a Paying Paris Audience

Edison’s laboratory demonstrates a prototype Kinetoscope

The Story Behind the Photo

Chicago After the Fire: From Burned Blocks to a New Skyline

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The Road to the Moon

Fires That Changed Cities

The Age of Invention

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My Birthday in History

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