Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion. He engaged in conflict with Henry II, King of England over the rights and privileges of the Church and was murdered by followers of the king in Canterbury Cathedral. Soon after his death, he was canonised by Pope Alexander III.

Born: Dec 21, 1118 · London, England
Related movies: Becket
Buried: Canterbury Cathedral
Education: Merton Priory · University of Paris
Parents: Matilda Becket (Mother) · Gilbert Becket (Father)

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Highlights

• 1154: Theobald in 1154 named Becket Archdeacon of Canterbury, and other ecclesiastical offices included a number of benefices, prebends at Lincoln Cathedral and St Paul’s Cathedral, and the office of Provost of Beverley.


• 1155: His efficiency in those posts led to Theobald recommending him to King Henry II for the vacant post of Lord Chancellor, to which Becket was appointed in January 1155.


• 1162: Becket was nominated as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1162, several months after the death of Theobald.


• 1162: His election was confirmed on 23 May 1162 by a royal council of bishops and noblemen.


• 1163: Attempts by Henry to influence the other bishops against Becket began in Westminster in October 1163, where the King sought approval of the traditional rights of the royal government in regard to the church.


• 1164: Henry summoned Becket to appear before a great council at Northampton Castle on 8 October 1164, to answer allegations of contempt of royal authority and malfeasance in the Chancellor’s office.

— Source: wiki/Thomas_Becket

The Wounded Knee Massacre occurred on December 29, 1890, near Wounded Knee Creek on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota. The previous day, a detachment of the U.S. 7th Cavalry Regiment commanded by Major Samuel M. Whitside intercepted Spotted Elk’s band of Miniconjou Lakota and 38 Hunkpapa Lakota near Porcupine Butte and escorted them 5 miles westward to Wounded Knee Creek, where they made camp. The remainder of the 7th Cavalry Regiment, led by Colonel James W. Forsyth, arrived and surrounded the encampment. The regiment was supported by a battery of four Hotchkiss mountain guns.

Date: Dec 28, 1890

— Source: wiki/Wounded_Knee_Massacre

The “Second Great Fire of London” is a name used at the time to refer to one of the most destructive air raids of the London Blitz, over the night of 29/30 December 1940. Between 6 pm and the early hours of the morning, more than 24,000 high explosive bombs and 100,000 incendiary bombs were dropped. The raid and the subsequent fire destroyed many Livery Halls and City churches and gutted the medieval Great Hall of the City’s Guildhall.

Date: Dec 29, 1940

— Source: wiki/Second_Great_Fire_of_London

Khmers rouges, more commonly known in English as Khmer Rouge was the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. It was formed in 1968 as an offshoot of the Vietnam People’s Army from North Vietnam, and allied with North Vietnam, the Viet Cong, and Pathet Lao during the Vietnam War against the anti-communist forces from 1968 to 1975. Khmer Rouge emerged victorious in the Cambodian Civil War, overthrew the military dictatorship of the Khmer Republic and installed their own government Democratic Kampuchea in 1975, led by Pol Pot, Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Son Sen, and Khieu Samphan. This was followed by the Cambodian genocide from 1975 until 1979, when Khmer Rouge was finally removed from power by Vietnam in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War. The military power of the Khmer Rouge organization was not broken however, and a long era of guerilla warfare involving large swaths of the Cambodian countryside began. Many different military factions were involved in the guerilla war era and it ended around 1994.

Founded: 1968

— Source: wiki/Khmer_Rouge

The Bill of Rights is the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution. Proposed following the oftentimes bitter 1787–88 battle over ratification of the U.S. Constitution, and crafted to address the objections raised by Anti-Federalists, the Bill of Rights amendments add to the Constitution specific guarantees of personal freedoms and rights, clear limitations on the government’s power in judicial and other proceedings, and explicit declarations that all powers not specifically delegated to Congress by the Constitution are reserved for the states or the people. The concepts codified in these amendments are built upon those found in several earlier documents, including the Virginia Declaration of Rights and the English Bill of Rights 1689, along with earlier documents such as Magna Carta (1215).

Created: September 25, 1789
Ratified: December 15, 1791
Location: National Archives
Author(s): James Madison

— Source: wiki/United_States_Bill_of_Rights

Sitting Bull was a Hunkpapa Lakota holy man who led his people during years of resistance to United States government policies. He was killed by Indian agency police on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation during an attempt to arrest him, at a time when authorities feared that he would join the Ghost Dance movement.

Lived: 1831 – Dec 15, 1890
Height: 5′ 9″ (1.75 m)
Spouse: Light Hair
Children: Crow Foot (Son) · Many Horses (Daughter)
Parents: Her-Holy-Door (Mother) · Jumping Bull (Father)
Siblings: Spotted Elk (Brother)

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Highlights

• 1865: In support of him, Sitting Bull led numerous war parties against Fort Berthold, Fort Stevenson, and Fort Buford and their environs from 1865 through 1868.


• 1874: Although Sitting Bull did not attack Custer’s expedition in 1874, the US government was increasingly pressured by citizens to open the Black Hills to mining and settlement.


• 1875: In 1875 the Northern Cheyenne, Hunkpapa, Oglala, Sans Arc, and Minneconjou camped together for a Sun Dance, with both the Cheyenne medicine man White Bull or Ice and Sitting Bull in association.


• 1876: About three weeks later, the confederated Lakota tribes with the Northern Cheyenne defeated the 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer on June 25, 1876, annihilating Custer’s battalion and seeming to bear out Sitting Bull’s prophetic vision.


• 1881: On August 26, 1881, he was visited by census taker William T. Selwyn, who counted twelve people in the Hunkpapa leader’s immediate family.


• 1884: In 1884 show promoter Alvaren Allen asked Agent James McLaughlin to allow Sitting Bull to tour parts of Canada and the northern United States.

— Source: wiki/Sitting_Bull

Otto Adolf Eichmann was a German Nazi SS-Obersturmbannführer and one of the major organisers of the Holocaust. Eichmann was tasked by SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich with facilitating and managing the logistics of mass deportation of Jews to ghettos and extermination camps in German-occupied Eastern Europe during World War II. In 1960, he was captured in Argentina by Mossad, Israel’s intelligence service. Following a widely publicised trial in Israel, he was found guilty of war crimes and hanged in 1962.

Lived: Mar 19, 1906 – May 31, 1962 (age 56)
Height: 5′ 9″ (1.76 m)
Spouse: Veronika Liebl (m. 1935 – 1962)
Movies: The Eichmann Show
Children: Horst Adolf Eichmann (Son) · Klaus Eichmann (Son) · Ricardo Francisco Eichmann (Son) · Dieter Helmut Eichmann (Son)
Parents: Maria Eichmann (Mother) · Adolf Karl Eichmann (Father)

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Highlights

• 1933: After returning to Germany in 1933, he joined the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service), where he was appointed head of the department responsible for Jewish affairs—especially emigration, which the Nazis encouraged through violence and economic pressure.


• 1935: On 21 March 1935 Eichmann married Veronika (Vera) Liebl (1909–93).


• 1939: After a posting in Prague to assist in setting up an emigration office there, Eichmann was transferred to Berlin in October 1939 to command the Central Office for Jewish Emigration for the entire Reich under Heinrich Müller, head of the Gestapo.


• 1939: On 19 December 1939, Eichmann was assigned to head RSHA Referat IV B4 (RSHA Sub-Department IV-B4), tasked with overseeing Jewish affairs and evacuation.


• 1948: In 1948 Eichmann obtained a landing permit for Argentina and false identification under the name of “Ricardo Klement” through an organisation directed by Bishop Alois Hudal, an Austrian cleric then residing in Italy with known Nazi sympathies.


• 1960: When Eichmann’s father died in 1960, Wiesenthal made arrangements for private detectives to surreptitiously photograph members of the family, as Eichmann’s brother Otto was said to bear a strong family resemblance and there were no current photos of the fugitive.

— Source: wiki/Adolf_Eichmann

Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which winning is determined by a player’s ability to answer general knowledge and popular culture questions. The game was created in December 1979 in Montreal, Quebec, by Canadian Chris Haney, a photo editor for Montreal’s The Gazette, and Scott Abbott, a sports editor for The Canadian Press. After finding pieces of their Scrabble game missing, they decided to create their own game. With the help of John Haney and Ed Werner, they completed development of the game, which was released in 1982.

Playing time: 90 minutes
Introduced: 1979
Origin: Montreal

— Source: wiki/Trivial_Pursuit