Portal:Biography/Selected anniversaries/December 19

Births

 * 1683 – Philip V, King of Spain (d. 1746)
 * 1852 – Albert Abraham Michelson, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1931)
 * 1875 – Carter G. Woodson, historian and founder of Black History Month (d. 1950)
 * 1906 – Leonid Brezhnev, 5th supreme leader of the Soviet Union (d. 1982)
 * 1907 – Jimmy McLarnin, Irish welterweight boxing champion (d. 2004)
 * 1955 – Lincoln Hall, Australian mountaineer and author (d. 2012)

Deaths

 * 1741 – Vitus Bering, Danish-Russian navy officer and explorer (b. 1681)
 * 1813 – James McGill, founder of McGill University (b. 1744)
 * 1848 – Emily Brontë, English author (b. 1818)
 * 1915 – Alois Alzheimer, German psychiatrist and neuropathologist (b. 1864)
 * 1916 – Thibaw Min, last Burmese king (b. 1859)
 * 1997 – Masaru Ibuka, Japanese businessman and co-founder of Sony (b. 1908)
 * 2008 – James Bevel, American civil rights movement leader and strategist (b. 1936)