December 9 birthdays & history

Famous people born on December 9

• 1608John Milton, English poet and philosopher
• 1842Peter Kropotkin, Russian zoologist, economist, geographer, and philosopher
• 1916Kirk Douglas, American actor, singer, and producer
• 1934Judi Dench, English actress
• 1954Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourger lawyer and politician, Prime Minister of Luxembourg
• 1868Fritz Haber, Polish-German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1742Carl Wilhelm Scheele, Swedish Pomeranian and German pharmaceutical chemist
• 1953John Malkovich, American actor and producer
• 1917James Rainwater, American physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1926Henry Way Kendall, American physicist, photographer, and mountaineer, Nobel Prize laureate

What happened on December 9

• 1851The first YMCA in North America is established in Montreal.
• 1868The first traffic lights are installed, outside the Palace of Westminster in London. Resembling railway signals, they use semaphore arms and are illuminated at night by red and green gas lamps.
• 1888The first edition of the Argosy magazine was published under the title The Golden Argosy.
• 1892The English association football club Newcastle United was founded by the merger of Newcastle East End and West End.
• 1897French actress, journalist and leading suffragette Marguerite Durand founded the feminist newspaper La Fronde.
• 1905In France, a law separating church and state is passed.
• 1922Gabriel Narutowicz is elected the first president of Poland.
• 1931The Constituent Cortes approves a constitution which establishes the Second Spanish Republic.
• 1961Tanganyika Territory gained independence from Britain before becoming part of Tanzania three years later.
• 1965A large, brilliant fireball was seen by thousands in midwestern North America before landing in Kecksburg, Pennsylvania.
• 1968Douglas Engelbart gave what became known as "The Mother of All Demos", publicly debuting the computer mouse, hypertext, and the bit-mapped graphical user interface using the computer system NLS.
• 1990In Serbia's first multi-party election, Slobodan Milošević won the presidential election and the Socialist Party of Serbia won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.

Also observed on December 9

• Armed Forces Day (Peru)
• Fatherland's Heroes Day (Russia)
• Independence Day, celebrates the independence of Tanganyika from Britain in 1961. (Tanzania)
• International Anti-Corruption Day (United Nations)
• National Heroes Day, formerly V.C. Bird Day. (Antigua and Barbuda)