Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 31

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 * 1759 – Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease at £45 per annum to the St. James's Gate Brewery in Dublin and began brewing Guinness.
 * 1775 – American Revolutionary War: At the Battle of Quebec, British forces repulsed an attack by the Continental Army to capture Quebec City and enlist French Canadian support.
 * 1862 – The Battle of Stones River in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, began with an engagement in which both sides would suffer their highest casualty rates in the American Civil War.
 * 1907 – New York City held its first annual ball drop event in Times Square as part of New Year's Eve celebrations.
 * 1909 – The Manhattan Bridge, connecting Lower Manhattan to Downtown Brooklyn and considered to be the forerunner of modern suspension bridges, opened to traffic.
 * 1961 - RTÉ, Ireland's first television network, began broadcasting.
 * 1965 – Central African military officers led by Jean-Bédel Bokassa began a coup d'état against the government of President David Dacko.
 * 1972 – Puerto Rican baseball player Roberto Clemente died in a plane crash en route to deliver aid to victims of that year's Nicaragua earthquake.
 * 1983 – Two Australian biologists initiated the Wells and Wellington affair by publishing an article titled "A Synopsis of the Class Reptilia in Australia".
 * 1986 – Three disgruntled employees set fire to the Dupont Plaza Hotel in San Juan, Puerto Rico, killing more than 90 people and injuring 140 others, making it the second-deadliest hotel fire in United States history.
 * 1999 – Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin became acting president upon President Boris Yeltsin's unexpected resignation.
 * 2010 – 28 tornadoes (one depicted) touched down in midwestern and southern United States, part of an outbreak that led to the deaths of nine people and large property damage.
 * Born/died: | Ibn Hawshab |d|914| Carlo Gimach |d|1730| Richard Montgomery |d|1775| Kapiʻolani |b|1834| Cornelius Gallagher |b|1854| Henri Matisse |b|1869|  Ion Creangă |d|1889| Samuel Ajayi Crowther |d|1891| Mary Logan Reddick |b|1914| Cornelia Clapp |d|1934| Henry Gerber |d|1972 | Amy Cure |b|1992