Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union's Dictator and General Secretary, was born in Gori, Tiflis Governorate, Russian Empire, in 1878.
On December 18, 1878, he was born in Gori, Georgia. Losif Jughashvili was his birth name. Stalin's parents were impoverished, and he had a difficult upbringing. He contracted smallpox when he was seven years old. He lived, but his skin was scarred. He eventually went to seminary to become a priest, but he was booted because he was a radical. Stalin joined the Bolshevik revolutionaries after leaving the seminary. This was an underground movement founded by Vladimir Lenin that adhered to Karl Marx's communist theories.
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Chinese Premier Zhao Ziyang and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher sign the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, pledging to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.
Pratibha Patil, the first female President of India and Governor of Rajasthan, was born in Nadgaon, India, in 1934.
Joni Flynn, an Indian actress, was born in Assam, India in 1949.
Emily Bronte, an English author, dies of TB at the age of 30 in 1848.
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Jake Gyllenhaal, an American actor, was born in Los Angeles, California in 1980.
In 1995, Queen Elizabeth requests a divorce from Prince Charles and Princess Diana.
Steven Spielberg, an American director, was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1946.
In 1961, India liberates Goa and two other Portuguese colonies.
Katie Holmes, an American actress, was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1978.
Billie Eilish, an American singer-songwriter, was born in Los Angeles, California in 2001.
Poet Robert Frost marries Elinor Miriam White in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1895.
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former Prime Minister, marries Asif Ali Zardari in 1987.
The $200 million epic "Titanic" by James Cameron premiered in American theatres on December 19, 1997.