December

December 1, 2012,  Jovan Belcher, a linebacker for the Kansas City Chiefs American football team kills himself at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, after reportedly killing his girlfriend. (The Telegraph)

December 1, 2012,



December 1, 2012, President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi announces that the country's new draft constitution will be put to a constitutional referendum on December 15. (BBC)



December 1, 2012, The USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, was officially deactivated in ceremonies held at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, completing a 51-year career in the United States Navy. (Associated Press)



December 2, 2012, Egypt's Supreme Constitutional Court defers a ruling on whether the Constituent Assembly is legal following pressure from supporters of President Mohamed Morsi. (AP)

December 3, 2012, St James's Palace confirms that Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge is pregnant. (BBC)

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December 3, 2012, NASA's Curiosity rover has detected several simple carbon-based organic compounds on Mars, but it remains unclear whether they were formed via Earthly contamination or whether they contain only elements indigenous to the planet. (Space.com)

December 3, 2012,



December 3, 2012, 

December 3, 2012, 

December 3, 2012, The Sea Launch consortium successfully launches its Zenit-3SL carrier rocket with the Eutelsat 70B satellite from the Odyssey Launch Platform in the Pacific Ocean. (RIA Novosti)

December 4, 2012, Release of Far Cry 3

 

December 4, 2012, Release of EVE: Inferno

December 4, 2012, 

December 4, 2012, 

December 4, 2012, All members of the Commonwealth of Nations which have the British Monarch as their head of state agree to a bill that will change the rules on royal succession rules which currently favour a male heir. (BBC)

December 5, 2012, The New Orleans Hornets plan to change their nickname to the Pelicans (after the state bird of Louisiana) as early as the 2013-14 NBA season. (ESPN) 

December 6, 2012, Possession of marijuana for personal use of people aged over 21 becomes legal according to state law in the US state of Washington. (AP)
 

 
 
December 6, 2012, The Duchess of Cambridge leaves hospital following treatment for severe morning sickness. (BBC)

December 6, 2012, NASA's twin GRAIL probes have revealed the surface of the Moon in unprecedented detail, showing unexpectedly-deep cracks, craters and tectonic structures. (Los Angeles Times)

December 6, 2012,

December 6, 2012,

      December 6, 2012, Google announces Google+ now has more than 500 million user accounts, 235 million of which actively use Google+ features. (VentureBeat)

      December 6, 2012, The extinct reptile Nyasasaurus is described as the possible oldest known dinosaur from 243-million-year old fossils discovered in Tanzania. (BBC)

    

December 7, 2012, Release of Hyde on the Hudson

December 7, 2012, Release of Playing for Keeps

December 7, 2012, Release of Deadfall

December 7, 2012, Release of Green Day album Tre 

December 7, 2012, Jacintha Saldanha, a nurse at a London hospital, who took a hoax call from 2Day FM prankers about the Duchess of Cambridge, is found dead in a suspected suicide. (BBC)

December 7, 2012, A strong earthquake of magnitude 7.3 occurs off the coast of Japan near the city of Kamaishi, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency to issue a tsunami warning. 10 people are taken to hospital with injuries, no fatalities reported. (Dow Jones via Wall Street Journal)

December 7, 2012,

December 7, 2012,



December 7, 2012, The United States Supreme Court grants review of California's ban on same-sex marriage (Proposition 8, which has been challenged), and also agrees to finally determine the constitutionality of the federal DOMA law, which the Obama administration has said it will not continue defending. This is the Court's most significant foray into the issue yet, though an overruling of the DOMA act would only mean the federal government would have to recognize such marriages in areas where they are already legal. (NBC News)



December 7, 2012, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal arrives in Gaza on a historic first visit to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Hamas. (The Guardian)

December 8, 2012, Mohammed Morsi annuls the decree he issued expanding his powers but a proposed referendum on a new constitution will still go ahead. (AFP via The Australian)

December 8, 2012, Texas A&M University quarterback Johnny Manziel becomes the first freshman ever to win the Heisman Trophy as the most outstanding player in U.S. college football. (AP via ESPN)

 

December 8, 2012, A United Nations climate conference held in Doha, Qatar, agrees to extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020. (AP via Yahoo News)
December 8, 2012, American football player Josh Brent of the Dallas Cowboys is arrested for driving while intoxicated and vehicular manslaughter in relation to the death of teammate Jerry Brown. (USA Today)
December 8, 2012, Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela, announces that he has cancer again. Preparing to travel to Havana, Cuba, for further cancer surgery, he named Vice President Nicolás Maduro to carry out his legacy if he is unable to remain in office. (AP via Huffington Post)
December 8, 2012, Juan Manuel Márquez knocks out Manny Pacquiao in round six for WBO Champion of the Decade belt and win the fourth fight of their epic boxing rivalry. (ESPN)

 December 9, 2012,

December 9, 2012,



December 9, 2012, British astronomer and broadcaster Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of The Sky at Night for over 55 years, dies aged 89. (BBC)

December 10, 2012, Release of Epic Mickey 2

December 10, 2012, John Hickenlooper, the Governor of the US state of Colorado, issues a proclamation allowing the personal use of marijuana following the passage of an amendment to the state consitution last month. (AP)

December 10, 2012, The two 2Day FM presenters who made a prank call to London's King Edward VII's Hospital give their first interviews to Australian television following the death of Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who answered the call. (BBC)

 December 10, 2012,

December 10, 2012,

December 11, 2012, Michigan's state government passes right to work legislation, making Michigan the 23rd state and the most highly unionized state in the US to have such laws. Thousands of union employees protest outside the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing. (CNN)

 

December 11, 2012, Australia's 2Day FM says it will donate advertising profits to a fund for the family of King Edward VII's Hospital nurse Jacintha Saldanha. (BBC)

December 11, 2012, A gunman opens fire in the Clackamas Town Center mall in the U.S. state of Oregon. Three people, including the suspected shooter, are killed and another is injured. (CNN)

 

December 11, 2012, North Korea successfully launches a long-range Unha rocket to put its first satellite into space, the aim of what critics say is a disguised ballistic missile test. The United Nations condemns the action. (Reuters)

December 11, 2012, 



December 11, 2012,



December 11, 2012,



December 11, 2012,



December 11, 2012,



December 11, 2012, British-based bank HSBC will pay US authorities $1.9 billion in a settlement over money laundering for drug cartels and countries under sanctions, the largest ever such penalty. (BBC)
December 11, 2012, Schools in the United States plan to drop literature classics such as To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in the Rye from their curriculum; children there will instead learn from "informational texts" such as Recommended Levels of Insulation by the the US Environmental Protection Agency and the Invasive Plant Inventory by California's Invasive Plant Council in order to be better prepared for workplace reading material. (The Telegraph)

December 12, 2012,



December 12, 2012,



December 12, 2012,


 
December 12, 2012, Musicians and entertainers including the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton and Bruce Springsteen perform a benefit concert for victims of Hurricane Sandy at Madison Square Garden in New York City. (AP)
December 12, 2012, The Pope is videoed attempting to send his first ever Tweet. Seated at a table he is handed his glasses before trying to push a button on an iPad touchscreen. Cheers erupt, though the Tweet remains unsent. An aide steps in to push the button and send the Tweet. (The Guardian)
December 12, 2012, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve announces explicit ties between Fed policy on interest rates and economic goals, especially unemployment. (Reuters)
December 12, 2012, American businessman John McAfee is deported from Guatemala to the United States despite being wanted for questioning in Belize. (The Telegraph)
December 12, 2012, 4179 Toutatis, an asteroid about 3 miles wide, passes within 4.3 million miles or 18 lunar distances of the Earth. (Fox News)
December 12, 2012, A British research team launches a long-awaited project to hunt for life in Lake Ellsworth hidden beneath the ice-sheet in Antarctica. (BBC)

December 13, 2012,



December 13, 2012, 2012 royal hoax call incident: An inquest into the death of nurse Jacintha Saldanha hears that she died as a result of self-inflicted hanging. (The Independent)

-The media regulatory body, Australian Communications and Media Authority launches an investigation into the prank call made by 2Day FM. (The Australian)

December 13, 2012, North Korea's first satellite successfully put into orbit, Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2, appears to be spinning out of control, according to US officials. South Korean sources later deny the report, saying the satellite appears to be orbiting Earth normally. (NBC news)

 

December 13, 2012,



December 13, 2012, Japan scrambles fighter jets in response to a Chinese plane seen near the disputed Senkaku Islands, marking the first time aircraft are involved in the dispute. (CNN)

December 14, 2012, Release of the Hobbit

December 14, 2012, A shooting leaves 28 people, including the gunman, dead at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, United States.  (BBC)

December 14, 2012,



December 14, 2012,

December 14, 2012, A man with a knife stabs 22 children and an elderly woman outside a primary school in Chengping, Henan. The stabbings occurred as students were arriving for classes, and most of the victims are thought to be 6-11 years old. (CBC News)
December 14, 2012, The Crown Prosecution Service decides that computer hacker Gary McKinnon will face no charges in the United Kingdom over his activities. (BBC)
December 14, 2012, Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans celebrate the successful launch of the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2 satellite in Pyongyang's Kim Il-Sung Square. (AFP via SBS News)
December 14, 2012, Lionel Messi wins World Soccer's 2012 Player of the Year award ahead of Cristiano Ronaldo and Andrés Iniesta. Vicente del Bosque is chosen as the Manager of the Year. (World Soccer)

December 15, 2012,

December 15, 2012, Two incidents of shootings happened in the U.S. state of Alabama. A 38-year-old man opens fire at a hospital in Birmingham, wounding a police officer and two employees before he is fatally shot by police. In another unrelated incident, a man suspected of the fatal shooting of three people in a mobile home in Cleburne County, is shot to death near Birmingham by police after brandishing an AK-47. (CBC)
December 15, 2012, A man stood in the parking lot of the Fashion Island mall in Newport Beach, California, and fired 50 gunshots in the air, inducing a mass of panic from the shoppers and employees. No one was hit by the bullets, but one person was injured while trying to flee. A 42-year-old man was arrested for the shooting, and additional ammunition was found in his car. (CNN)
December 16, 2012, Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, leads thousands of officials in a memorial service for his father Kim Jong-il, the former leader, who died on 17 December 2011. (AAP via News Limited)
December 16, 2012, Scientists report Chinese deep-space probe Chang'e 2 successfully took a series of images of the asteroid 4179 Toutatis during flyby on 13 December. (The Planetary Society)
December 16, 2012, British professional racing cyclist Bradley Wiggins wins the 2012 BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award ahead of track and field athlete Jessica Ennis and tennis player Andy Murray. (BBC)

December 17, 2012, NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft crash into a mile-high cliff near the Lunar North Pole to close out a successful mission to map the Moon's gravity field with unprecedented precision. (Reuters)



December 17, 2012, North Korea commemorates the one-year anniversary of the death of former Leader Kim Jong-il. (AFP via Google News)
December 17, 2012, The Large Hadron Collider completes the first proton run and stops today for renovation until 2015. (CERN)

December 18, 2012, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom attends a Cabinet meeting for the first time to receive a gift in honour of her Diamond Jubilee, including having an area of the British Antarctic Territory named for her. It is believed to be the first time that a British monarch has attended a Cabinet meeting in peace-time since Queen Victoria's reign. (BBC)



December 18, 2012, The premiere of Quentin Tarantino's new movie Django Unchained is cancelled as a response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. (USA Today)
December 18, 2012, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is sworn in as the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, making him third in the United States presidential line of succession. (The Hill)

December 19, 2012, Release of Zero Dark Thirty

December 19, 2012, Release of Guilt Trip

December 19, 2012, 



December 19, 2012,

 

December 19, 2012, The BBC reports that David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, will announce the withdrawal of 4,000 British soldiers from Afghanistan. (BBC)
December 19, 2012, Banking giant UBS is fined $1.5 billion for attempting to manipulate the Libor interbank lending rate, becoming the second international bank, after Barclays, to be fined over the Libor scandal. (Al Jazeera)
December 19, 2012, U.S. news magazine Time selects U.S. President Barack Obama as its 2012 Person of the Year, following on from his 2008 award, and those of his predecessors George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1998, George H. W. Bush in 1990, Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1983, Jimmy Carter in 1976, Richard Nixon in 1971 and 1972 and Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and 1967. (Time)
December 19, 2012, The South Korean electoral commission declares Park Geun-hye the winner of the presidential election with 84% of the votes counted and will become South Korea's first female president. Moon Jae-in has conceded. (Yonhap)
December 19, 2012, The Russian Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft launches from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, carrying Roman Romanenko, Chris Hadfield and Thomas Marshburn for the ISS Expedition 34 and 35 crews. (CNet)

December 20, 2012,

December 20, 2012,


 
December 20, 2012,



December 20, 2012, The New York Stock Exchange, the largest stock exchange in the United States and the world, is sold to Atlanta-based IntercontinentalExchange. (AP)
December 20, 2012, U.S. patent authorities reject an important Apple Inc. patent concerning pinch-to-zoom gestures on a mobile device screen. (Reuters)
December 20, 2012, The midwestern United States is hit by a massive storm causing major disruption to traffic. (AP via Time)



December 20, 2012, Julian Assange issues a statement to supporters from a balcony of London's Ecuadorean embassy, in which he refers to the U.S. Pentagon's recent description of the existence of WikiLeaks as an "ongoing crime" and suggests it is the intention of WikiLeaks to release a million more documents in 2013. (BBC)
December 20, 2012, Police in China arrest almost 1,000 people belonging to the doomsday Almighty God Christian cult for spreading rumours about the end of the world. (BBC)

-Dozens of Michigan schools close early for holidays, sending home 80,000 students, due to rumors related to the Mayan doomsday and the Connecticut shooting. (Detroit News)

  December 21, 2012, Release of This is 40

December 21, 2012, Release of Jack Reacher

December 21, 2012, Release of The Impossible

December 21, 2012, Release of Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away

December 21, 2012, The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar reaches the date 13.0.0.0.0, associated with various doomsday myths. (The Guardian)
December 21, 2012, "Gangnam Style" by South Korean singer PSY becomes the first video to reach one billion views on YouTube. (BBC)
December 21, 2012, The UK Ministry of Defence confirms it has spent $22.7 million settling claims from 205 Iraqis alleging abuse by British troops following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. (Al Jazeera)
December 21, 2012,Steve Jobs' £85m high-tech yacht Venus is impounded at the Port of Amsterdam after designer Philippe Starck claims he is still owed money. (BBC)
December 21, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama nominates John Kerry to succeed Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. (CNN)
December 21, 2012, After detailed study of the Sutter's Mill meteorite found in California on 22 April 2012, scientists report it contains some of the oldest material in the Solar System. (Science News)
December 21, 2012, Expedition 34 Flight Engineers Tom Marshburn, Roman Romanenko and Chris Hadfield dock their Soyuz TMA-07M spacecraft to the International Space Station’s Rassvet module. (NASA)
December 21, 2012, MIT researchers discover that Herbertsmithite exhibits a quantum spin liquid behavior, a new kind of magnetism. (Extreme Tech)

December 22, 2012,

December 22, 2012,Pope Benedict XVI pardons his former butler, Paolo Gabriele following his recent conviction for stealing confidential documents. (BBC)

December 23, 2012, A Draft constitution by the Constitutuent Assembly is approved by a majority of Egyptians in a referendum on 15 and 22 December. (BBC)

December 24, 2012,

December 24, 2012,
 

 
December 24, 2012,U.S. actor Jack Klugman, who starred in the 1970s hit TV series The Odd Couple and Quincy, M.E., dies at the age of 90. (BBC)
December 24, 2012, American actor Charles Durning, the two-time Oscar award nominee, dies at the age 89 in New York City. (Los Angeles Times)
December 24, 2012, Two firefighters are shot and killed and two others are injured while responding to a fire in Webster, New York, United States. (CNN)
December 24, 2012,Steve Jobs' £85m high-tech yacht Venus is freed from the Port of Amsterdam after his estate paid off the last of its bills. (TechnoBuffalo)
December 24, 2012, SpaceX releases video of the latest test of their Grasshopper rocket with vertical takeoff and vertical landing, where it rose 40 meters (131 feet), hovered and landed safely on the pad on 17 December. (Universe Today)
 
 

 December 25, 2012, Release of Django Unchained

December 25, 2012, Release of Les Miserables

December 25, 2012, Release of Parental Guidance

December 25, 2012,

 December 25, 2012, 

 December 25, 2012, Egypt announces the ratification of a new Constitution adopted in constitutional referendum. (The Washington Post)



 December 25, 2012, 


  
December 25, 2012, Elizabeth II addresses her Commonwealth subjects in her annual Royal Christmas Message, referring to the 2012 Summer Olympics in London and the "humbling" experience of her diamond jubilee celebrations. Her speech – the first to be broadcast in 3D – does not include mention the recently-announced pregnancy of Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, wife of her eldest grandson. (The Guardian)
 December 25, 2012, Iran rebuffs a Stuxnet-style computer worm attack on a power plant in southern Iran. Tehran accuses Israel and the United States of planting the malware. (BBC)

 December 26, 2012, 

 
December 26, 2012, Russia's parliament approves a law banning Americans from adopting Russian children as response to a U.S. Magnitsky bill. (AP via ABC News)
 December 26, 2012, China officially opens the world's longest high-speed rail route, which links Beijing and Guangzhou. (BBC)

 December 27, 2012, Harry Reid, the Democratic US Senate leader, says the U.S. appears to be heading over the fiscal cliff, with tax raises and spending cuts imminent. (BBC)

 

 December 27, 2012, U.S. private investigator Paul Huebl claims Whitney Houston was killed by drug dealers in February 2012 after clocking up a $1.5 million debt. (The Sun)
 December 27, 2012, NASA scientists are planning to capture a 500 ton near-Earth asteroid, relocate it and turn it into a space station for astronauts on their route to Mars after 2025. (Daily Mail)
 December 27, 2012, Team members from the British Antarctic Survey temporarily abandon a project to drill through two miles of Antarctica's ice sheet to reach Lake Ellsworth due to problems linking boreholes in the ice. (BBC)

December 28, 2012, Release of Promised Land

December 28, 2012,

December 28, 2012,



December 28, 2012,

December 28, 2012, Jiroemon Kimura of Japan becomes the world's oldest verified man ever. (Bloomberg)
December 28, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin signs the Dima Yakovlev Law banning US citizens from adopting Russian children. (The Voice of Russia)
December 28, 2012, US President Barack Obama says he is "modestly optimistic" that a deal to avoid the fiscal cliff is possible, after a last-ditch White House meeting. (BBC)

December 29, 2012,

December 29, 2012,



December 29, 2012, A Tupolev Tu-204 airliner with eight people on board crashes in a ditch between the airport fence and the M3 highway after overshooting a runway at Vnukovo International Airport in Moscow, Russia, killing five people and leaving three others critically injured. (BBC)
December 29, 2012, Bradley Wiggins and Dave Brailsford are awarded knighthoods in the 2013 New Year Honours list, while Sarah Storey becomes a Dame, the female equivalent of a knight. (The Guardian)
 

December 30, 2012, U.S. President Barack Obama puts pressure on Republicans to accept a deal aimed at avoiding a tax and spending "fiscal cliff", as the end-of-year deadline looms. (BBC)

December 30, 2012, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hospitalized after doctors discover a blood clot related to the concussion she suffered earlier this month. (CNN)
December 30, 2012, The confirmation of the existence of a subatomic particle known as the Higgs boson is named as 2012 Breakthrough of the Year by the Science magazine. (Science)


December 31, 2012, United States "fiscal cliff" debate: The White House reaches an agreement with congressional Republicans on a "fiscal cliff" deal. (Associated Press)

-The U.S. will miss the midnight deadline and head over the "fiscal cliff", after the House of Representatives announces it will not vote on the deal on Monday night. (BBC)
December 31, 2012, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton making "excellent progress" at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital after a blood clot in a vein was found in a sinus between her brain and skull. (BBC)