What happened on 2 December?

18 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1804 Napoleon crowned Emperor Napoleon places the crown on his own head in Notre-Dame, consecrating the First French Empire proclaimed that May.
2. 1942 First fission chain reaction (Chicago Pile-1) Fermi's team achieves the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction.
3. 1805 Battle of Austerlitz Napoleon's masterpiece; crushes the combined Austrian and Russian armies; Holy Roman Empire dissolved a year later.
4. 1848 Reign of Franz Joseph I Sixty-eight years on the throne, from the barricades of 1848 to the third year of the Great War — defeats, compromises and personal tragedies borne with iron routine at a desk in S
5. 1852 Second French Empire Napoleon III's authoritarian-then-liberal empire; ends in catastrophe at Sedan in 1870.
6. 1469 Lorenzo the Magnificent's patronage of Florentine art Lorenzo de Medici becomes Florence's de facto ruler, patron of Botticelli, Michelangelo and Leonardo.
7. 1823 Monroe Doctrine President James Monroe declares the Americas closed to further European colonisation, a cornerstone of US foreign policy for a century.
8. 1942 Beveridge Report Beveridge's wartime report on social insurance maps the post-war welfare state and NHS; bestseller.
9. 2020 First COVID-19 mRNA vaccine authorised Britain's medicines regulator authorises the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, the first COVID-19 vaccine cleared after large-scale phase 3 trials; the US follows on 11 December and authori
10. 1956 The Granma lands 82 men Amnestied, exiled to Mexico, and trained by a veteran of the Spanish war, Castro returns aboard a leaking 60-foot yacht — seasick, two days late, and ambushed within seventy-two ho
11. 1923 Born: Maria Callas Greek-American soprano; transformed operatic acting in the mid-20th century.
12. 1989 Malta Summit Bush and Gorbachev declare the Cold War over at sea off Malta.
13. 1851 Napoleon III coup of 1851 President Louis-Napoléon dissolves the National Assembly and seizes dictatorial power.
14. 1825 Born: Pedro II of Brazil Emperor of Brazil for 58 years — a scholarly, abolitionist monarch who presided over stability and the end of slavery, and was deposed by a military coup the following year.
15. 1952 Eisenhower goes to Korea Elected on a promise to go and see for himself, the president-elect spends three days at the front and concludes the war must be ended, not won. A hint of nuclear escalation and St
16. 1932 Bodyline series To stop Bradman, England's captain Douglas Jardine has his fast bowlers aim at the batsman's body; Bradman's average halves and the row nearly breaks relations between the countrie
17. 1970 Environmental Protection Agency founded Nixon creates the EPA by executive reorganisation, the same year he signs the Clean Air Act — the high tide of bipartisan environmental law.
18. 2008 Ronaldo's first Ballon d'Or After 42 goals and a Champions League win with Manchester United, the 23-year-old Portuguese winger wins the first of his five Ballon d'Or awards.