December 12 in history: Sikkim CM Pawan Kumar Chamling completes 20 years in office

Bengaluru, Dec 12: Today is Friday, December 12, 2014. What happened on this day in history? Oneindia takes a look at the past:

1770: British soldiers responsible for the Boston Massacre were acquitted.

1787: Pennsylvania became the second state to ratify the US Constitution.

1862: USS Cairo becomes the first ship to be a sunk by a naval mine in Yazoo River in the USA.

1870: Joseph Rainey becomes the first African American in the US House of Representatives.

1901: Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi receives the first transatlantic radio transmission.

1905: Mulkraj Anand, Indo-Anglian novelist, was born in Peshawar in modern-day Pakistan.

1921: Mahatma Gandhi organises a complete boycott of the visit of Prince of Wales to Allahabad.

1927: Communist forces seize Canton in China.

1930: The Spanish Civil War begins.

The last Allied troops withdraw from the Saar region in Germany.

1931: Chiang Kai-shek resigns as president of the Nanking Government under the communists's pressure.

1943: The German Army launches Operation Winter Tempest to free the Sixth Army trapped in Stalingrad.

1950: Actor Rajinikanth was born in Bangalore.

1956: The UN calls for immediate Soviet withdrawal from Hungary.

1959: US President Dwight D. Eisenhower visited India.

Cricketer Krishnamachari Srikkanth was born in Chennai (then Madras)

1964: Kenya becomes a republic.

1981: Cricketer Yuvaraj Singh was born in Chandigarh.

1985: Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashes at Gander, Newfoundland, Canada; 256 killed including many US troops.

1991: The Russian Federation becomes independent from the USSR.

1994: Pawan Kumar Chamling takes oath as Sikkim chief minister. He has continued ever since. TDP leader NT Rama Rao takes oath as Andhra Pradesh CM.

1995: Willie Brown becomes the first African-American mayor of San Francisco.

1998: The House Judiciary Committee approved a fourth and final article of impeachment against US President Clinton.

2000: The US Supreme Court announced its decision in Bush versus Gore, ending legal changes to the results of that year's presidential election.

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