What happened on December 19 ?

401 - Pope Anastasius I

1075 - Edith of Wessex, wife of Edward the Confessor of England

1327 - Agnes of France, Duchess of Burgundy

1370 - Pope Urban V (b. 1310)

1737 - James Sobieski, Crown Prince of Poland (b. 1667)

1741 - Vitus Bering, Danish-born explorer (b. 1681)

1745 - Jean-Baptiste van Loo, French painter (b. 1684)

1749 - Francesco Antonio Bonporti, Italian priest and composer (b. 1672)

1751 - Louise of Great Britain, wife of Frederick V of Denmark (b. 1724)

1807 - Friedrich Melchior, baron von Grimm, German writer (b. 1723)

1819 - Sir Thomas Fremantle, British naval officer and politician (b. 1765)

1848 - Emily Brontë, British author (b. 1818)

1915 - Alois Alzheimer, German neuroscientist (b. 1864)

1932 - Yoon Bong-Gil, Protester against Japanese occupation of Korea (executed) (b. 1908)

1939 - Hans Langsdorff, German naval officer (b. 1894)

1944 - Khedive Abbas II of Egypt, (b. 1874)

1944 - Rudolph Karstadt, German entrepreneur (b. 1856)

1946 - Paul Langevin, French physicist (b. 1872)

1953 - Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1868)

1967 - Harold Holt, seventeenth Prime Minister of Australia (b. 1908)

1968 - Norman Thomas, American socialist (b. 1884)

1989 - Stella Gibbons, British author (b. 1902)

1996 - Marcello Mastroianni, Italian actor (b. 1924)

1999 - Desmond Llewelyn, British actor (b. 1914)

2003 - Peter Carter-Ruck, British lawyer (b. 1914)

2003 - Hope Lange, American actress (b. 1931)

2004 - Herbert C. Brown, British-born American chemist and Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1912)

2004 - Renata Tebaldi, Italian soprano (b. 1922)

2005 - Vincent Gigante, American mafioso (b. 1927)