Today in History, December 31st
On December 31, 1999, the U.S. handed the Panama Canal to Panama. Plus Yeltsin's resignation, Edison's light show and the first Times Square ball drop.
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December 31 is best known for 1999, when the United States handed the Panama Canal over to Panama. The same date saw Boris Yeltsin resign as Russia’s president in 1999, Thomas Edison show off his electric light in 1879 and the first New Year’s Eve ball drop in Times Square in 1907.
The big story: The U.S. hands the Panama Canal to Panama (1999)
For most of the 20th century, a strip of Panama was run by Washington. The U.S. built the canal under a 1903 deal, spent about $375 million on it, and saw more than 5,600 workers die during construction. The canal officially opened on August 15, 1914. Decades later, on September 7, 1977, President Jimmy Carter and Panama’s leader, General Omar Torrijos, signed two new treaties. One set a schedule for handing over the canal; the other let the U.S. defend its neutrality. The deal was a tough sell at home. The Senate approved each treaty in 1978 by 68 to 32, just one vote more than the two-thirds it needed. The U.S.-run Canal Zone ceased to exist in 1979, and the countdown to full transfer began. On December 31, 1999, the waterway passed fully into Panamanian hands, as crowds in Panama celebrated.
More events on December 31
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1600 | Queen Elizabeth I granted a royal charter to the East India Company, a group of London merchants out to break the Dutch hold on the spice trade (Old Style). |
| 1775 | American forces under Richard Montgomery and Benedict Arnold attacked Quebec in a snowstorm and were beaten back. Montgomery was killed and more than 400 Americans were captured. |
| 1862 | The Union ironclad USS Monitor sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. |
| 1879 | Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of his incandescent lighting by illuminating a street in Menlo Park, New Jersey. The railroad ran special trains for the crowds. |
| 1907 | The first New Year’s Eve ball was lowered from the New York Times building in Times Square. It was made of iron and wood and carried 100 lightbulbs. |
| 1968 | The Soviet Tu-144, nicknamed “Konkordski” in the West, made its first flight, a few months ahead of the Anglo-French Concorde. |
| 1972 | Baseball great Roberto Clemente died when a plane carrying relief supplies for earthquake victims in Nicaragua crashed after taking off from San Juan, Puerto Rico. |
| 1999 | Boris Yeltsin resigned as Russia’s president, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took over as acting president. |
| 2019 | Health officials in Wuhan, China, reported a cluster of pneumonia cases. The illness, caused by a new coronavirus, was later named COVID-19. |
Born on December 31
- 1869: Henri Matisse, French painter, born in Le Cateau, France.
- 1880: George C. Marshall, U.S. Army chief of staff in World War II and later secretary of state, born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.
- 1937: Anthony Hopkins, Welsh actor, born in Port Talbot, Wales.
- 1943: Ben Kingsley, English actor, born in Snainton, North Yorkshire.
Sources
- The Panama Canal and the Torrijos-Carter Treaties, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- Panama Canal turned over to Panama, History.com
- This Day in History: December 31, History.com
- On This Day: December 31, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- The First-Ever Times Square Ball Drop, Smithsonian Magazine
- Roberto Clemente, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- WHO Timeline: COVID-19, World Health Organization
- Henri Matisse, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- George C. Marshall, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Ben Kingsley, Biography.com
