FACTS and FUN

Wednesday, Dec. 31:

1759: Brewer Arthur Guinness, 34, signed a whopping 9,000-year lease to begin making ale – and later darker porters – on the site of the former St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin.

1857: Queen Victoria of the U.K. proclaimed Ottawa to be the capital of Canada.

1879: Carl Benz, regarded by many as the 'father of the car,' successfully started and ran the world’s first stationary gas-fueled engine, a reliable two-stroke design for which he’d receive a patent about six months later.

1879: In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison made Christie Street – home to what he called 'The Invention Factory' – the world’s first road to be illuminated by incandescent light bulbs.

1907: The first New Year’s Eve ball – one made from iron and wood, with 100 light bulbs – was dropped from the flagpole in New York’s Times Square.

1955: Detroit-based General Motors became the first American corporation to earn $1 billion in a year, with net profits of nearly $1.12 billion on about $12.4 billion in sales, including about two million Chevrolet vehicles and 800,000 Buick models.

1972: Baseball legend and humanitarian Roberto Clemente died at 38 in a plane crash while taking supplies to help people devastated by an earthquake that killed thousands the week before in Nicaragua. Clemente was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame a few months later.

1991: The USSR officially dissolved 10 days after Russia and several other republics formerly in the Soviet Union established the Commonwealth of Independent States. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania didn’t join the CIS. The republic of Georgia, which joined in 1993, pulled out in 2009.

1999: Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin resigned, elevating Prime Minister and former KGB intelligence officer Vladimir Putin to the acting role until he was elected president the next year.

Tuesday, Dec. 30:

534: The second and final edition of the Code of Justinian came into effect in the Byzantine Empire.

1813: British troops torched nearly all the buildings in Buffalo, New York, after American forces had burned the Canadian town of Newark, which became Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

1853: In a land deal dubbed the Gadsden Purchase, the United States agreed to pay Mexico for tens of thousands of square miles in present-day southern New Mexico and Arizona. This land was used to help connect the West via the southern transcontinental railroad.

1922: The USSR – Union of Soviet Socialist Republics – was formed as delegates from Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine and the Transcaucasian Federation approved a declaration that created the first nation based on Marxist socialism. The Communist Party led by Vladimir Lenin had previously been called the Bolshevik Party earlier in the Russian Revolution.

1936: In what turned into the first major unionization win in America, United Auto Workers began a sit-down strike that halted production at General Motors’ Fisher Body Plant No. 1 in Flint, Michigan, after learning GM was moving some key equipment. Strikers later seized control of other GM plants over 44 days, which led GM to recognize the recently founded UAW as its members’ power broker.

2006: In a statement to the world, President George W. Bush said deposed genocidal Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein 'was executed after receiving a fair trial – the kind of justice he denied the victims of his brutal regime.'

Monday, Dec. 29:

1890: U.S. Army forces under Col. James Forsyth killed an estimated 300 Lakota people – many of them women and children – near Wounded Knee Creek in southwestern South Dakota. It became known as the Wounded Knee Massacre.

1937: The Constitution of Ireland was adopted, making the country a republic.

1940: A German Luftwaffe air raid set London ablaze with tens of thousands of incendiary bombs that killed about 160 people, including more than a dozen firefighters who tried to put out the flames. It was one of the most massive raids of the Blitz early in World War II.

1956: Elvis Presley made music sales history with 10 singles simultaneously listed on the Top 100. For the year, Presley’s first single sold more than any other; 'Don’t Be Cruel' was No. 2; 'Hound Dog' was No. 6; 'I Want You, I Need You, I Love You' was No. 14; and 'Love Me Tender,' also the name of his first movie that opened in November, was No. 15.

1975: At New York’s LaGuardia Airport, at least 11 people died and 74 others were hurt in a bombing that officials said involved a bag with about two dozen sticks of dynamite left in a public locker near a baggage claim area used by Delta and Trans World airlines. The crime went unsolved.

1978: Three years after the death of Nationalist dictator Gen. Francisco Franco, the Spanish Constitution took effect, completing the nation’s pivot to democracy with a parliamentary government, as well as a constitutional monarchy.

2006: The United Kingdom paid the United States the final installment on an interest-bearing $3.75 billion loan America made to help keep the British economy afloat after World War II. The total it paid to America was about $7.5 billion.

Sunday, Dec. 28:

1895: The world's first commercial movie screening took place at the Grand Café in Paris.

1912: San Francisco’s Municipal Railway streetcars became the first city-owned service of its kind when they rolled through the Bay Area.

1945: The U.S. Senate and House approved a joint resolution that recognized the official name of the Pledge of Allegiance. Federal leaders added the words 'under God' to the pledge in 1954.

1973: President Richard Nixon signed into law the Endangered Species Act, which expanded animal and plant protections from industrial, hunting and logging threats.

2017: Apple apologized to consumers in a letter and confirmed it had purposely slowed the performance of some older iPhones to compensate for the declining life of batteries as they age.

Saturday, Dec. 27:

537: The Hagia Sophia in Istanbul was inaugurated.

1932: Radio City Music Hall opened at Rockefeller Center in the heart of New York City.

1979: Three days after invading Afghanistan, the USSR took control in what became a decade-long occupation until it withdrew its troops as communism was collapsing in Europe. The ruin that remained in Afghanistan gave rise to the control of Islamic extremists known as the Taliban.

Friday, Dec. 26:

1862: After the monthlong U.S.-Dakota War, 38 Indigenous people in Mankato, Minnesota were hanged in the largest mass execution in American history. More than 1,600 Dakota noncombatants – mostly children, women and elders – were force-marched to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling.

1966: The first day of the first-ever Kwanzaa was celebrated in Los Angeles, Californis.

1968: Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham played their first North American show at Denver Auditorium Arena as an unbilled opening band for headliner Vanilla Fudge.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone!

Thursday, Dec. 25:

336: This is the date traditionally thought to be when Romans became the first people known to celebrate Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ in Roman-controlled Bethlehem, Judea. Earlier texts indicate it was celebrated as early as a couple centuries prior. Some historians theorize the Roman church’s observance was a way to replace pagan winter holidays. Some pagan traditions did eventually become part of Christmas lore.

800: In a move that united Central and Western Europe, Pope Leo III crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne, who already was king of the Franks and Lombards.

1815: The Handel and Haydyn Society, America’s longest-running performing arts group, made its concert debut in Boston with the 'Hallelujah' chorus from composer George Handel’s 1741 oratorio, 'Messiah.'

1932: King George V delivered the first Royal Christmas Message from a sovereign of the United Kingdom to the Commonwealth nations.

Wednesday, Dec. 24:

1223: Saint Francis of Assisi staged the first nativity scene in a cave in Greccio, Italy.

1822: This was 'the night before Christmas' when many believe New Yorker Clement Moore, a Columbia graduate, wrote the poem 'A Visit from St. Nicholas' for his children. It was first published anonymously about a year later in the Troy (NY) Sentinel; Moore eventually published it in a poetry anthology in 1844.

1865: Several Confederate Army veterans formed a private club that became the first chapter of the Ku Klux Klan.

1913: More than 70 people died – 59 of them children – after someone yelled 'fire' during a Christmas party for families of striking copper miners at the Italian Hall in a village of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula called Red Jacket (now Calumet). The victims were crushed or suffocated. There was no fire.

Tuesday, Dec. 23:

1783: With the last British forces having sailed away from the United States earlier in the month, Gen. George Washington stepped down as commander in chief of colonial armies in the American Revolution.

1954: Surgeons at Brigham Hospital in Boston performed the world’s first successful human organ transplant, a kidney from one identical twin, Ronald Herrick, to his brother Richard.

Monday, Dec. 22:

1972: Helicopters arrived to rescue the surviving passengers of Uruguayan Air Force flight 571, which had crashed into the Andes mountains more than two months earlier.

1989: Genocidal Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was ousted from power in a revolution that led to the Christmas Day trial and execution by firing squad of him and his wife, Elena. Their deaths ended over four decades of Communist Party rule.

1989: Six weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of people flocked to the ceremonial reopening of Brandenburg Gate, the former border checkpoint that divided East and West Germany for nearly three decades as a symbol of the Cold War.

Sunday, Dec. 21:

1891: James Naismith introduced the first 13 basketball rules to the gym class he was teaching before the class played the first 'basket ball' game.

1937: Walt Disney Productions and RKO Radio Pictures premiered Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world’s first full-length animated feature film, at Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles.

2019: A quarter century after its initial release, Mariah Carey’s 'All I Want for Christmas Is You' climbed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time. The classic carol didn’t make it into the top 10 of the chart until December 2017.

Saturday, Dec. 20:

1790: America’s first water-powered cotton mill began spinning textiles in Pawtucket, Rhode Island.

1860: Pro-slavery South Carolina leaders declared through an ordinance their intention to secede from the Union, making it the first state to try to break away from the United States.

1924: Future genocidal dictator Adolph Hitler was released from Landsberg Prison, where he wrote his political manifesto 'Mein Kampf' as an inmate after he and other Nazis failed in a coup known as the Beer Hall Putsch 13 months prior.

1946: Liberty Films, in conjunction with RKO Radio Pictures, premiered the future Christmas classic 'It’s a Wonderful Life' at the Globe Theatre in New York.

1999: Macau was made a "special administrative region" of China, after previously being ruled by Portugal.

Friday, Dec. 19:

1843: Charles Dickens's novella A Christmas Carol was first published in London, Eng;and.

1903: The Williamsburg Bridge – at the time the world’s longest suspension bridge – opened over New York’s East River. It initially carried rail cars, trolleys, carriages and pedestrians.

1932: British Broadcasting Corp. began broadcasting Empire Service, a short-wave radio channel that reached long distances and became known as Overseas Service during World War II. It was renamed BBC World Service in 1965 for its global reach.

1972: The three-person crew of NASA’s Apollo 17 mission returned to Earth after their 13-day trip to the moon and back, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean near American Samoa. It was the Apollo program’s sixth and last lunar-landing mission. Commander Eugene Cernan, a U.S. Navy captain and engineer, was the last human to step on the moon.

1974: Though some legislators had raised ethical concerns about longtime former New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller’s previous gifts and forgiven loans to people who remained working in public service, Congress confirmed Rockefeller, President Gerald Ford’s pick for vice president.

Thursday, Dec. 18:

1865: The 13th Amendment was adopted, abolishing slavery in the United States.

1903: The United States began controlling a 10-mile-wide stretch of land that later became part of the Panama Canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The United States solely controlled the roughly 50-mile-long canal until 1979, when a joint U.S.-Panama agency took over until passing control fully to Panama at the end of 1999.

1944: A Supreme Court ruling upheld President Franklin Roosevelt’s early 1942 executive order that called for nearly all 120,000 people of Japanese descent in the United States – two-thirds of whom were American citizens – to be relocated to detention camps as prisoners of war.

2020: The Food and Drug Administration authorized the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use.

Wednesday, Dec. 17:

1777: France acknowledged the independence of the United States, which led officials from both nations to sign the Treaty of Alliance, as well as the Treaty of Amity and Commerce on Feb. 6, 1778.

1892: Vogue magazine founder and editor Arthur Baldwin Turnure published the first issue covering New York’s social elite and arts.

1903: The Wright brothers, Wilbur and Orville, made the world’s first successful pilot-controlled flights of an engine-powered aircraft. Orville’s first flight made it about 120 feet over 12 seconds on a beach in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Wilbur flew about 850 feet, remaining airborne for nearly a minute, on their fourth flight there that day.

1933: At Wrigley Field, the Chicago Bears beat the New York Giants in the first National Football League title game.

1989: Fox first aired The Simpsons in a Christmas special titled Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire, thus premiering its three-season stint of short, animated cartoons on the Fox variety program, The Tracey Ullman Show.

2014: More than a half century after the United States failed in its attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro’s regime in Cuba, the two nations temporarily reestablished diplomatic relations severed amid the Cold War.

Tuesday, Dec. 16:

1773: Dozens of colonial American patriots – a group led by Samuel Adams called the Sons of Liberty – tossed hundreds of chests of tea into Boston Harbor. It was to protest of British bias that favored the East India Co., and the British Parliament’s Townshend Acts imposing taxes on tea and other imported goods without colonial representation.

1944: Nazi Germany began its final major attack of Allies on the Western Front of World War II in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, a six-week clash named for the large pocket Germans created in Allied lines before Allies countered for the victory in the dense and frigid Ardennes Forest region. It was the deadliest battle of the war for America, which saw about 19,000 U.S. troops killed, 47,500 wounded, and over 23,000 missing.

1993: MTV premiered Nirvana’s 'MTV Unplugged' episode that was filmed about a month prior at Sony Music Studios in New York. The songs were released on compact disc and cassette tape in 1994, several months after singer-songwriter Kurt Cobain died by suicide.

2000: President George W. Bush nominated retired U.S. Army Gen. Colin Powell for secretary of state. The first Black American to be elevated to a top national diplomatic post, Powell took the oath of office about a month later after unanimous Senate confirmation.

Monday, Dec. 15:

1791: Americans’ Bill of Rights became law when the Virginia General Assembly ratified the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

1896: The U.S. Patent Office approved an apparatus for holding skeins of yarn, developed by Black American inventor Julia Hammonds of Lebanon, Illinois.

1939: 'Gone with the Wind' premiered at Lowe’s Grand Theater in Atlanta. The film went on to win the 1940 Academy Award for Best Picture and become one of the top-grossing films ever, when adjusted for inflation.

2011: U.S. military leaders declared the Iraq War was officially over with withdrawal of the last American troops.

Sunday, Dec. 14:

1799: George Washington died at his Mount Vernon home in Virginia at age 67.

1836: The Toledo border dispute between the Michigan Territory and the state of Ohio ended when Michigan leaders accepted statehood terms from Congress that would eventually add the Upper Peninsula to Michigan in exchange for the 'Toledo Strip' being part of Ohio.

1911: Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first explorer to lead an expedition to the South Pole, where his team planted Norway’s flag. Amundsen’s crew previously sailed into Antarctica’s Bay of Whales, then used skis and sled dogs to reach their destination.

1985: Chief Wilma Mankiller began serving as the Cherokee Nation’s first female leader after Chief Ross Swimmer resigned to lead the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs. Mankiller also was the first female chief of a major tribe of Indigenous people in the United States.

2020: Sandra Lindsay, a critical care nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in New York, became the first American not involved in a clinical trial to receive a COVID-19 vaccine after the Pfizer-BioNTech shot was approved for use. 'I was determined to show up for my team and my family,' Lindsay wrote in a USA TODAY op-ed a year later.

Saturday, Dec. 13:

1577: Francis Drake sets sail from England on an epic three-year circumnavigation of the world aboard the "Pelican," later renamed the "Golden Hind".

1636 The Massachusetts Bay Colony organizes three militia regiments to defend the colony against the Pequot Indians. Recognized today as the founding of the United States National Guard.

1642: Dutch explorer Abel Tasman sights the South Island of present day New Zealand; initially he calls it Staten Landt and changes it a year later to Nieuw Zeeland [1]

1759: First music store in America opens in Philadelphia by future Treasurer of the United States, Michael Hillegas.

1920: League of Nations establishes the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

1920: Francis G. Pease's interferometer at Mount Wilson Observatory is the first to measure the diameter of a star, Betelgeuse.

1989: "Driving Miss Daisy" directed by Bruce Beresford and starring Morgan Freeman and Jessica Tandy is released (Best Picture 1990).

2002: The European Union announces that Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia will become members from May 1, 2004.

2003: Former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is captured in a spider hole near his home town of Tikrit, during Operation Red Dawn by US forces.

2007: The Mitchell Report is publicly released listing the names of 89 Major League Baseball players that have presumably used anabolic steroids and human growth hormones. Notable players named include Roger Clemens and Miguel Tejada.

Friday, Dec. 12:

627: Battle of Nineveh: Byzantine Emperor Heraclius' Byzantine army heavily defeats Persian forces during the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628.

1792: In Vienna, 22-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven receives his first lesson in music composition from 60-year-old Franz Joseph Haydn.

1901: Italian physicist Guglielmo Marconi received the first transatlantic radio signal (the letter "S" in Morse code) at Signal Hill in St. Johns, Newfoundland.

1925: Constituent Assembly of Iran votes 257 to 3 to amend the constitution, officially overthrowing the Qajar dynasty and bestowing the crown upon Reza Shah Pahlavi.

1930: Baseball Rules Committee greatly revises the rule book; a ball that bounces into the stands is now a ground-rule double instead of a home run.

1946: United Nations accepts six Manhattan blocks as a gift from John D. Rockefeller Jr.

1964: Kenya becomes an independent republic with Jomo Kenyatta as its first president.

1966: "A Man for All Seasons," based on the play by Robert Bolt, directed by Fred Zinnemann and starring Paul Scofield, premieres in New York (Best Picture 1967).

2000: US Supreme Court issues its 5-4 decision in Bush v. Gore, resolving the recount dispute in Florida's 2000 presidential election in George W. Bush's favor and effectively awarding him the presidency over Al Gore.

2015: COP21 climate change summit in Paris reaches an agreement between 195 countries to limit the rise in the global average temperature to less than 2°C above pre-industrial levels.

2019: British general election is won by Boris Johnson's Conservative Party in a landslide victory with an 80 seat majority, while the Scottish National Party wins 48 of 59 seats in Scotland.

Thursday, Dec. 11:

1282: Llywelyn ab Gruffydd the last native and independent Prince of Wales is killed at the Battle of Orewin Bridge at Cilmeri, near Builth Wells, south Wales by forces of Edward I of England. He reigned from 1259 and is known as Llywelyn the Last.

1395: John "Eleanor" Rykener, a male cross-dressing prostitute, is brought to court in London for "committing that detestable unmentionable and ignominious vice" in late medieval England's only recorded case on same-sex intercourse (verdict unknown).

1620: Mayflower Pilgrims come ashore in Plymouth Bay, traditionally thought to be at Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts.

1792: French King Louis XVI goes on trial, accused of high treason and crimes against the state.

1913: "Mona Lisa" is recovered two years after it was stolen from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

1931: Statute of Westminster gives complete legislative independence to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Ireland (Free State), and Newfoundland (not then part of Canada).

1946: United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) is established by resolution 57(I ) of the UN General Assembly.

1946: Hank Williams begins to record for the Sterling Records label.

1951: Joe DiMaggio announces his retirement from baseball.

1967: "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", directed by Stanley Kramer, starring Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier and Katharine Hepburn, premieres in NYC (Hepburn - Academy Award for Best Actress 1968).

1997: Delegates from 150 industrial nations attending a UN climate conference in Kyoto, Japan, reach agreement to control heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

Wednesday, Dec. 10:

1520 Martin Luther publicly burns Pope Leo X's papal bull 'Exsurge Domine' which demanded that Luther recant his writings.

1684 Isaac Newton's derivation of Kepler's laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper “De motu corporum in gyrum” (On the motion of bodies in an orbit), is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.

1799 The metric system is first adopted in France (and the U. S. is alone in the developed world still not using it! ).

1831 "Spirit of the Times," the premier sports journal of the 19th century, begins publishing in New York City.

1884: "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" by Mark Twain is first published in the UK and Canada; publication in the US follows in February 1885 due to a printing error.

1901 First Nobel Peace Prizes awarded, first recipients Red Cross founder Jean Henri Dunant and peace activist Frederic Passy.

1936 Edward VIII signs Instrument of Abdication, giving up the British throne to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.

1943: The United Nations fomally adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1962 David Lean's film "Lawrence of Arabia", based on life of T. E. Lawrence and starring Peter O'Toole, premieres at Odeon Leicester Square (Academy Awards Best Picture 1963).

1964 Nobel Peace Prize presented to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Oslo, Norway.

2016 Bob Dylan is awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature at a ceremony in Stockholm, Sweden; he does not attend.

Tuesday, Dec. 9:

536 Byzantine General Belisarius enters Rome while the Ostrogothic garrison peacefully leaves the city, returning the old capital to its empire.

1212 Frederick II (later also Holy Roman Emperor) crowned King of Germany in Mainz.

1854: Alfred Tennyson's poem "Charge of the Light Brigade" is published in "The Examiner".

1868: The world's first traffic light was installed near Westminster Bridge in London, England.

1968 Douglas Engelbart demonstrates in "The Mother of All Demos" the computer system NLS (oN-Line System) to a live audience in San Francisco, showcasing for the first time the mouse, word processing, windows, hypertext links, video conferencing, real-time collaboration, and other modern computing concepts.

1990 Lech Wałęsa wins the first direct presidential election in Poland.

1992 US Marines and allied nations launch an amphibious and airborne operation in Mogadishu, Somalia to restore order to the war-torn nation. Authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 794 passed on December 3.

1995: A US helicopter flies over Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, during Restore Hope.

1960 First broadcast of "Coronation Street" on British ITV; recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's longest-running television soap opera upon its 50th anniversary in 2010.

1964 John Coltrane's Quartet records their greatest work "A Love Supreme" at Van Gelder Studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey.

1978 First game of Women's Professional Basketball League (WBL): Chicago Hustle vs. Milwaukee Does.

Monday, Dec. 8:

1863 Abraham Lincoln issues his Amnesty Proclamation and plan for the Reconstruction of the South.

1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivers his famous "Day of Infamy" speech to a joint session of Congress a day after the bombing of Pearl Harbor as the U. S. and Britain declare war on Japan, thus entering Worls War II.

1965 Pope Paul VI closes the final session of the Second Vatican Council, an influential ecumenical council that significantly modernizes church practices.

1966 The US and USSR reach an agreement on a treaty to prohibit nuclear weapons in outer space (the Outer Space Treaty), which is signed the following month.

2004 The Cuzco Declaration is signed in Cuzco, Peru, establishing the Union of South American Nations.

2013: Metallica performed a show in Antarctica, becoming the first band to perform on all seven continents.

2024 Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad resigns and flees to Moscow after rebel forces sweep into the capital, Damascus.

Sunday, Dec. 7:

43 BCE: Roman orator and politician Marcus Tullius Cicero is assassinated in Formiae by soldiers under the command of Mark Antony.

1909 Inventor Leo Baekeland patents the first thermosetting plastic, Bakelite, sparking the birth of the plastics industry.

1941 Imperial Japanese Navy with 353 planes attacks the US fleet at Pearl Harbor Naval Base, Hawaii, killing 2,403 people.

1965 Roman Catholic Pope Paul VI and Orthodox Patriarch Athenagoras I simultaneously lift the mutual excommunications that led to the split of the two churches in 1054 during the Great Schism.

1972: Apollo 17, the last Apollo lunar landing mission, was launched.

1988 A 6.9 magnitude earthquake in Spitak, Armenia, kills 25,000 to 50,000 people and leaves up to 500,000 homeless.

1988 PLO delegation lead by Yasser Arafat proclaims the State of Palestine, recognizing the existence of the State of Israel for the first time.

2022 After widespread public protests, China announces a major loosening of COVID-19 restrictions for the whole country, allowing home quarantine and scrapping QR codes, effectively ending China's zero-COVID policy.