December 8, 1813: Premiere of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, conducted by Beethoven himself. The piece is very well received, and the second movement, the Allegretto, has to be encored immediately.
December 8, 1925: Sammy Davis Jr. born in Harlem, New York. His parents were vaudevillians and he began appearing on stage at age 4; his first movie credit came at age 7 in the 1933 short, Rufus Jones For President. Probably best known as a singer/entertainer at various clubs and other venues and a frequent headliner in Las Vegas, he did make several movies as a member of Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” and was a frequent guest star on various television series such as All in the Family and The Cosby Show. His last credit was for a role in the TV movie The Kid Who Loved Christmas, released after his death in 1990 at the age of 64.
-“BB”_
December 8, 1980:
Former Beatles guitarist and songwriter John Lennon was shot to death outside his New York city apartment building by a deranged fan.
Forget Buddy Holly, this was the day the music died.
Like you would know. 
RIP John.
December 8, 1978: *The Deer Hunter, directed by Michael Cimino and starring Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep, premieres in Los Angeles (Academy Awards Best Picture 1979)
December 9, 1911: The Cross Mountain Mine Disaster in Tennessee kills 84.
December 9, 1946: The “Subsequent Nuremberg trials” begin with the “Doctors’ trial”, prosecuting physicians and officers involved in Nazi human experimentation and mass murder under the guise of euthanasia.
December 10, 1684: Isaac Newton’s derivation of Kepler’s laws from his theory of gravity, contained in the paper De motu corporum in gyrum, is read to the Royal Society by Edmond Halley.
On December 10, 1869
Women were granted the right to vote in the Wyoming Territory
December 11, 1941: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States, following the Americans’ declaration of war on the Empire of Japan in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
December 12, 2000: The United States Supreme Court releases its decision in Bush v. Gore.
December 13, 1928: George Gershwin’s An American in Paris is first performed, conducted by Walter Damrosch. Gershwin stated that Damrosch’s sluggish, dragging tempo caused him to walk out of the hall. The audience was much more enthusiastic.
December 13, 1943: The Kalavryta Massacre occurs when Nazi Germany forces murder nearly 700 civilians in Greece.
December 14, 2008: Muntadhar al-Zaidi throws his shoes at then-U.S. President George W. Bush during a press conference in Baghdad, Iraq.
December 14, 1287: The St. Lucia’s Flood kills somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 in Europe.
December 15, 1973: The American Psychiatric Association votes 13–0 to remove homosexuality from its official list of psychiatric disorders.
December 16, 1811: The first in a series of several major earthquakes rocks the Mississippi Valley. The area was sparsely populated at the time.
December 16, 1773: The Boston Tea Party: Members of the Sons of Liberty, disguised as Mohawk Indians, dump hundreds of crates of tea into Boston harbor as a protest against the Tea Act.
December 16, 1770: Composer Ludwig van Beethoven was born in Bonn, Germany
December 17, 1961: The Niteroi Circus fire in Brazil kills over 500.