Birthday Paper › What happened on …? › December 31

Events on December 31

• 1600 The British East India Company is founded by a charter from Queen Elizabeth I to London merchants.
• 1857 Queen Victoria appoints Ottawa as the capital of Canada.
• 1879 Thomas Alva Edison demonstrates his electric lighting for the first time in the city of Menlo Park, New Jersey.
• 1939 The Vienna Philharmonic gives its first New Year's concert.
• 1950 In his New Year's address, Federal President Theodor Heuss introduces the Anthem for Germany, which, at his request, is to become the German national anthem.
• 1972 Nine years after its first broadcast, Norddeutscher Rundfunk broadcasts the sketch Dinner for One for the first time on New Year's Eve.
• 1989 Arved Fuchs and Reinhold Messner reach the geographic South Pole on their traverse of Antarctica on foot and on skis.
• 1991 The Deutsche Fernsehfunk, the former East German television service, has its final day of broadcasting.
• 1991 The Soviet Union is officially dissolved following the December 8 resolution to dissolve it.
• 1999 President Boris Yeltsin resigns and Vladimir Putin becomes President of Russia.
• 2019 Government authorities in Wuhan confirm the occurrence of the previously unknown disease COVID-19 for the first time.
• 2022 The emeritus Pope Benedict XVI dies in the Vatican at the age of 95.

Born on December 31

• 1880 George Catlett Marshall, American general and politician, Nobel Prize winner
• 1881 Max Pechstein, German Expressionist painter and graphic artist
• 1893 Mina Amann, German resistance fighter against National Socialism, trade unionist and politician
• 1921 Dieter Bührle, Swiss armaments manufacturer
• 1931 Mildred Scheel, German physician, wife of Walter Scheel and founder of the German Cancer Aid
• 1950 Inge Helten, German track and field athlete
• 1962 Traudl Hächer, German ski racer
• 1962 Katy Karrenbauer, German actress
• 1972 Joey McIntyre, American singer and actor
• 1981 Tobias Rau, German football player

Is your birthday on December 31?

Then there is a newspaper that tells only the story of your day: what was going on in the world on December 31 of your birth year, which song was at the top, what the weather was like at your birthplace, plus birthday twins and a personal greeting.

• For every birth year from 1946
• 4 to 10 pages, always €14.90, as a PDF to print
• With a greeting page for voice and video messages

Create the paper for December 31 · €14.90

Day and month are already filled in, you only choose the birth year.

Source of events and birthdays: German Wikipedia article „31. Dezember“, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, selected, shortened and translated by Birthday Paper.

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