On This Day: Truck barrels into Berlin Christmas market killing 12

Dec. 19 (UPI) -- On this date in history:

In 1777, Gen. George Washington and the Continental Army began a winter encampment at Valley Forge, Pa.

In 1946 the First Indochina War began with Vietnamese troops under Ho Chi Minh clashing with the French at Hanoi.

In 1958, the U.S. satellite SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), launched aboard an Atlas rocket, transmitted the first radio voice broadcast from space, a 58-word recorded Christmas greeting from President Dwight Eisenhower.

In 1972, the splashdown of Apollo 17 ended the United States' manned moon exploration program. "It's a beautiful day," astronaut Eugene Cernan said upon exiting the command module.

In 1974, Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President of the United States under President Gerald Ford.

File Photo by David Hume Kennerly/Gerald R. Ford Library

In 1984, the prime ministers of Britain and China signed an agreement to return Hong Kong to China in 1997.

In 1998, Bill Clinton became the second U.S. president to be impeached (Andrew Johnson was the first) by the House of Representatives, which approved articles charging him with perjury and obstruction of justice. Like Johnson, he was acquitted by the Senate.

In 2006, a Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a doctor to death for deliberately infecting 426 children with HIV.

In 2012, Britain announced it would begin a gradual withdrawal of its forces in Afghanistan in April 2013.

In 2012, South Koreans headed to the polls to elect Park Geun-hye as the nation's first female president.

File Photo by Keizo Mori/UPI

In 2013, Target, confirming a security breach, said criminals stole credit and debit card information millions of people who shopped in its stores in the post-Thanksgiving period.

In 2016, a failed Tunisian asylum seeker drove a truck into a group of people at a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring dozens more. The driver, Anis Amri, was killed days later in Milan when confronted by police.

In 2018, President Donald Trump announced the full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, declaring victory over the Islamic State.

File Photo courtesy of SANA