December 2

• 1755 - The second Eddystone Lighthouse is destroyed by fire.
• 1804 - At Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned as the first Emperor of France in a thousand years.
• 1805 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Austerlitz - French troops under Napoleon decisively defeat a joint Russo-Austrian force.
• 1823 - US President James Monroe delivers a speech to the United States Congress, announcing a new policy of forbidding European interference in the Americas and establishing American neutrality in future European conflicts (this would later be called the Monroe Doctrine).
• 1845 - Manifest Destiny: US President James Polk announces to Congress that the Monroe Doctrine should be strictly enforced and that the United States should aggressively expand into the West.
• 1848 - Franz Josef I becomes Emperor of Austria.
• 1851 - Newly-elected French President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte violently overthrows the Second Republic.
• 1852 - Napoleon III becomes Emperor of France.
• 1859 - Militant abolitionist leader John Brown is hanged for his October 16th raid on Harper's Ferry.
• 1867 - In a New York City theater, British author Charles Dickens gives his first public reading in the United States.
• 1899 - Philippine-American War: The Battle of Tirad Pass, termed "The Filipino Thermopylae", is fought.
• 1915 - Albert Einstein publishes the general theory of relativity.
• 1927 - Following 19 years of Ford Model T production, the Ford Motor Company unveils the Ford Model A as its new automobile.
• 1930 - Great Depression: US President Herbert Hoover goes before Congress and asks for a US$150 million public works program to help generate jobs and stimulate the economy.
• 1939 - La Guardia Airport opens for business in New York City.
• 1942 - Manhattan Project: Below the bleachers of Stagg Field at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi initiate the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction (a coded message, "The Italian navigator has landed in the new world" was then sent to US President Franklin D. Roosevelt).
• 1954 - Red Scare: The United States Senate votes 65 to 22 to condemn Joseph McCarthy for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute."
• 1961 - Cold War: In a nationally broadcast speech, Cuban leader Fidel Castro declares that he is a Marxist-Leninist and that Cuba was going to adopt Communism.
• 1962 - Vietnam War: After a trip to Vietnam at the request of US President John F. Kennedy, US Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield becomes the first American official to not make an optimistic public comment on the war's progress.
• 1970 - The United States Environmental Protection Agency begins operations.
• 1971 - The United Arab Emirates is formed.
• 1972 - Gough Whitlam becomes the first Australian Labor Party Prime Minister of Australia for 23 years. He is famously sworn in on the election night and his first action using executive power is to withdraw all Australian personnel from the Vietnam War.
• 1982 - At the University of Utah, 61-year-old retired dentist Barney Clark, becomes the first person to receive a permanent artificial heart (he lived for 112 days with the device).
• 1988 - Benazir Bhutto is sworn in as Prime Minister of Pakistan, becoming the first woman to head the government of an Islam-dominated state.
• 1990 - A coalition led by Chancellor Helmut Kohl wins the first free all-German elections since 1932.
• 1993 - War on Drugs: Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar is shot and killed in Medellín.
• 1993 - Space Shuttle program: STS-61 - NASA launches the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to repair an optical flaw in the Hubble Space Telescope.
• 1999 - The United Kingdom devolves political power in Northern Ireland to a the Northern Ireland Executive. [1]
• 2000 - American rock band The Smashing Pumpkins play their final gig at The Metro in Chicago, Illinois.
• 2001 - Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection five days after Dynegy canceled a US$8.4 billion buyout bid (as of 2003 this was the largest bankruptcy in the history of the United States).

• 1578 - Agostino Agazzari, composer and music theorist (d. 1640)
• 1694 - William Shirley, Colonial Governor of Massachusetts (d. 1771)
• 1703 - Ferdinand Konscak, Croatian explorer (d. 1759)
• 1738 - Richard Montgomery, Irish-American soldier (d. 1775)
• 1760 - John Breckinridge, American politician (d. 1806)
• 1817 - Heinrich von Sybel, historian (d. 1895)
• 1846 - Pierre Marie René Ernest Waldeck-Rousseau, French statesman (d. 1904)
• 1859 - Georges Seurat, painter (d. 1891)
• 1863 - Charles Ringling, circus leader (d. 1926)
• 1884 - Ruth Draper, American character actress (d. 1956)
• 1885 - George Richards Minot, American physician, winner of 1934 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1950)
• 1891 - Otto Dix, painter and graphic artist (d. 1969)
• 1892 - Leo Ornstein, composer and pianist (d. 2002)
• 1895 - Harriet Cohen, pianist (d. 1967)
• 1899 - John Barbirolli, conductor (d. 1970)
• 1899 - John R. Cobb, automobile racer (d. 1952)
• 1906 - Peter Goldmark, inventor, engineer (d. 1977)
• 1909 - Marion Gräfin Dönhoff, publisher (d. 2002)
• 1914 - Ray Walston, actor (d. 2001)
• 1914 - Adolph Green, composer (d. 2002)
• 1923 - Maria Callas, opera singer (d. 1977)
• 1924 - Alexander M. Haig, Jr., US politician
• 1925 - Julie Harris, actress
• 1930 - Gary Becker, economist
• 1931 - Edwin Meese, American politician
• 1944 - Botho Strauß, author
• 1945 - Penelope Spheeris, director
• 1946 - Gianni Versace, designer (d. 1997)
• 1952 - Michael McDonald, musician
• 1954 - Dan Butler, actor
• 1960 - Rick 'Sav' Savage , Def Leppard bass player
• 1962 - Tracy Austin, tennis player
• 1968 - Lucy Liu, actress
• 1973 - Monica Seles, tennis player
• 1973 - Jan Ullrich, cyclist and winner of the 1997 Tour de France
• 1978 - Nelly Furtado, singer, songwriter
• 1981 - Britney Spears, singer

• 1547 - Hernán Cortés, Spanish explorer and conqueror
• 1552 - Francis Xavier, Catholic missionary
• 1594 - Gerardus Mercator, cartographer
• 1774 - Johann Friedrich Agricola, composer and organist
• 1814 - Marquis de Sade, writer
• 1849 - Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen - queen consort of King William IV of the United Kingdom
• 1859 - John Brown, militant abolitionist (hanged)
• 1892 - Jay Gould, entrepreneur
• 1931 - Vincent d'Indy, composer
• 1944 - Josef Lhévinne, pianist
• 1950 - Dinu Lipatti, pianist
• 1969 - Kliment Yefremovich Voroshilov, Russian politician
• 1974 - Max Weber, Swiss Federal Councilor (b. 1897)
• 1980 - Romain Gary, writer
• 1982 - Marty Feldman, comedian
• 1983 - Fifi D'Orsay, actress
• 1986 - Desi Arnaz, actor, musician, band leader, composer
• 1990 - Aaron Copland, composer
• 1993 - Pablo Escobar, drug lord
• 1995 - Robertson Davies, Canadian novelist
• 2002 - Ivan Illich, priest, philosopher
• 2002 - Arno Peters, historian