1890 – Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is killed on Standing Rock Indian Reservation, leading to the Wounded Knee Massacre.

 
1979

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
I remember as a young boy watching it take off and thinking to myself, "Don't go! You'll regret it! It's a TRAP!!!"

A venus fly by trap, to be precise. 

I saw this today, I have never heard of this film. In 1972 with T.Rex, I would assume that would be good.
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 December 14, 1972, "Born To Boogie" the Ringo Starr directed movie premiered in London. The film was based around a concert at Wembley Empire Pool, London, England starring Ringo Starr, Marc Bolan and T. Rex and was released on The Beatles Apple Films label.

1994 – Construction begins on the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze river.

1962 – NASA's Mariner 2 becomes the first spacecraft to fly by Venus.

1940 – Plutonium (specifically Pu-238) is first isolated at Berkeley, California.

1972 – Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or "Moonwalk" of Apollo 17. To date they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1962 – NASA launches Relay 1, the first active repeater communications satellite in orbit.

2000 – The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore.

 Red_Dragon wrote: 

1980 – Former Beatle John Lennon is murdered in front of The Dakota in New York City.

1660 – A woman (either Margaret Hughes or Anne Marshall) appears on an English public stage for the first time, in the role of Desdemona in a production of Shakespeare's play Othello.

December 7, 2015 David Bowie made his last public appearance when he attended the opening night of the Lazarus production at the New York Theatre Workshop in Manhattan.
Tickets to the entire run of the musical (which ran until 20th Jan 2016), sold out within hours of being made available.

2015 – The JAXA probe Akatsuki successfully enters orbit around Venus five years after the first attempt.

1995 – The Galileo spacecraft arrives at Jupiter, a little more than six years after it was launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis during Mission STS-34.

1972 – Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew takes the photograph known as The Blue Marble as they leave the Earth.

1941 – World War II: Attack on Pearl Harbor – The Imperial Japanese Navy carries out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific Fleet and its defending Army and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 

1865 – The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, banning slavery.

December 5, 1933, Utah, the final state needed for a three quarters majority, ratified the 21st Amendment, repealing Prohibition and restoring the American right to a celebratory drink. While the amendment still allowed for state and local levels of Prohibition, by 1966 there were no state laws banning alcohol.
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December 5, 1960, Paul McCartney and Pete Best were arrested for pinning a condom to a brick wall and then igniting it. The two were told to leave Germany and The Beatles returned home, discouraged.