Under Saturday, December 4th, the book of history records, among other things:
771: With the death of his brother Karlmann, Charlemagne became the sole ruler of the Franconian Empire.
1586: Queen Elizabeth I confirms the death sentence against the Scottish Queen Maria Stuart.
1691: The Habsburgs recaptured Transylvania from the Turks.
1756: William Pitt the Elder took over the Foreign Office at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War and founded the British Empire with conquests in India, Africa, North America and Canada.
1861: The principalities of Moldova and Wallachia are united to form the Romanian state with the consent of Turkey.
1871: The German Reich goes over to the gold standard: According to the Reich Coin Act, the 100 Pfennig mark becomes the only currency.
1926: The new Bauhaus in Dessau is inaugurated.
1941: The Nazis introduced a special criminal law for Poles and Jews in the incorporated eastern regions.
1946: State governments are formed in Thuringia, Mecklenburg and Saxony-Anhalt.
1951: The German PEN Center of the Federal Republic of Germany is founded in Darmstadt, with Erich Kästner becoming its first chairman.
1981: 28-year-old Stefan Wisniewski is sentenced to life imprisonment in Düsseldorf for complicity in the kidnapping and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer.
1986: A newly laid pipeline with a toxic xylene coating on the inside causes drinking water poisoning in Augsburg, and six people have to be hospitalized.
1986: In St. George’s on the Caribbean island of Grenada, 14 former politicians are found guilty of the murder of former Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.
1986: At the Grootvlei gold mine in South Africa, 5,000 black miners go on strike after the death of a colleague.
1991: As the last American hostage in Lebanon, the journalist Terry Anderson is released after six years and nine months by the Shiite underground organization “Islamic Holy War”.
1991: The second round of the Middle East conference begins in Washington without Israel, which does not want to take part until later.
1996: The news magazine “profil” has received another letter confessing the letter bomb. The authorities describe it as “most likely” not authentic.
1996: Three weeks after the failure of the Russian Mars mission, the US “Pathfinder” probe starts on a seven-month journey to the red planet.
2001: At their first meeting in four years, Cyprus’s President Glafkos Klerides and the Turkish ethnic group leader Rauf Denktas agree to start direct negotiations under UN auspices.
2001: Austria agrees with the EU partners at expert level on the provisional conclusion of the energy chapter with the accession candidate Czech Republic.
2006: The US space agency NASA announces in Houston that it plans to build a permanent lunar base by 2024. The station is intended to be the starting point for further exploration of space and the expansion of human civilization.
2016: In the third attempt, the new Austrian head of state is actually chosen. Former Green leader Alexander Van der Bellen, who is standing as an independent, receives the trust of 53.8 percent of voters and thus becomes the new Federal President. His liberal opponent Norbert Hofer lost significantly to the first runoff election, which was later repealed by the VfGH, and had to be satisfied with 46.2 percent of the votes.
Birthdays: Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter / graphic artist (1866-1944); Erwin von Witzleben, German general and resistance fighter (1881-1944); Nikolaj Semenovic Tichonov, Russian writer (1896-1979); Viktor Matejka, east Publicist (1901-1993).
Days of Death: Hans Jancik, east Librarian and musicologist (1905-2001); Benjamin Britten, British composer (1913-1976); Sócrates, brasil. Footballer (1954-2011).
Name days: Barbara, Johannes, Ada, Christian, Osmund, Adolf, Bernhard, Simon, Anno, Babette, Petrus.