Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 11

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 * 861 – The Abbasid caliph al-Mutawakkil was assassinated by his guards, beginning the Anarchy at Samarra.
 * 1640 – A crowd of 1,500 people presented the Root and Branch petition to the Long Parliament, calling for abolishing the episcopacy of the Church of England.
 * 1899 – Second Boer War: In the Battle of Magersfontein, Boers defeated British forces trying to relieve the Siege of Kimberley.
 * 1907 – The original Parliament House in Wellington, New Zealand, was destroyed by fire (pictured).
 * 1925 – Pope Pius XI promulgated the encyclical Quas primas, establishing the Feast of Christ the King.
 * 1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission, landed on the Moon.
 * 1998 – With its pilot believed to have been suffering from spatial disorientation, Thai Airways Flight 261 crashed in a swamp on approach to Surat Thani Airport, resulting in 101 deaths.
 * 2005 – Demonstrations in Cronulla, a suburb of Sydney, against recent violence towards locals turned into a series of race riots.
 * 2006 – The first action in the Mexican drug war began as President Felipe Calderón ordered Mexican soldiers and Federal Police units into the state of Michoacán.
 * 2008 – American stockbroker Bernie Madoff was arrested and charged with securities fraud in a $64.8 billion Ponzi scheme, the largest in history.
 * Born/died: | Al-Fath ibn Khaqan |d|861| Pieter Nuyts |d|1655| George Mason |b|1725| Colley Cibber |d|1757| Hector Berlioz |b|1803| Webster Paulson |b|1837| Max Born |b|1882| Max-Hellmuth Ostermann |b|1917 |Emmanuelle Charpentier |b|1968 | Anne Rice |d|2021