[Amnorix]

December 31.

535. The great Byzantine general Belisarius completes his conquest of Sicily, ending his Consulship for the year.

1600. The British East India Company is chartered.

1695. England institutes a window tax, causing many to brick up their windows to avoid having to pay the tax. The tax would also have important ramifications on architecture over a very protracted period of time in both England and France, which also introduced the tax (it wasn't repealed in FRance until 1926).

1759. Arthur Guinness signs a lease for up to 9,000 years at an unused brewery and begins brewing Guinness.

1862. Abraham Lincoln signs an act admitting a portion of what was then Virginia into the Union, thus creating what we now now as West Virginia and forever splintering the former Old Dominion.

1904. First New Year's Eve celebration in New York's Times Square.

1909. Opening of the Manhattan Bridge.

1951. The Marshall Plan official ends, after dispensing $13.3 billion in US aid.

1955. GM is the first company to make over $1 billion in a single year.

1983. AT&T Bell is broken up.

1999. Boris Yeltsin resigns, elevating Vladimir Putin to the office of President of Russia.

1999. The US turns over control of the Panama Canal to Panama.