"A Christmas Carol" is first published, the NHL plays its first games, Apollo 17 splashes down, and the U.S. House impeaches President Bill Clinton, all on this day.
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German Federal Archive/Wikimedia Commons
1906: Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet statesman who was the leader of the Soviet Union for 18 years, is born in Kamenskoe, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire, in what is now the Ukraine.