On This Day in History

Marian Anderson became the first African-American to perform with the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

An article entitled "Iran and Red and Black Colonization" was published in the newspaper Ettela'at attacking Ruhollah Khomeini, then in exile in Iraq.

The People's Army of Vietnam captured Phnom Penh, marking the end of large-scale fighting in the Cambodian–Vietnamese War.

Representatives of Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini delivered a letter to Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to consider Islam as an alternative to communism, and predicting the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc.

In one of the most famous upsets in FA Cup history, Sutton United, a team in the fifth tier of English league football, defeated top-tier Coventry City.

The Fourth Republic of Ghana was inaugurated with Jerry Rawlings, the country's former military ruler, as president.

In Nag Hammadi, Egypt, Muslim gunmen opened fire on a crowd of Coptic Christians leaving church after attending Christmas Liturgy, killing eight of them, as well as one Muslim bystander.

A hot air balloon flight from Carterton, New Zealand, collided with a power line while landing, causing it to crash and killing all eleven people on board.

After 253 days without an operational government, a second round of investiture votes produced Spain's first coalition government since the Second Republic.