Protesting the Tea Act levied by the British government and the East India Company, American patriots dump 342 chests of imported tea into Boston Harbor. In response to the Boston Tea Party's destroying about $18,000 of tea, the British enacted harsher measures on Massachusetts as punishment for its civil unrest.
Best known as the Battle of the Bulge, the German army begins its final offensive in the Ardennes Forest across Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. The German surprise attack initially drove back Allied defenders, but fierce Allied defensive and counterattacking tactics stifled the German advance and inflicted unbearable Nazi casualties.
American anthropologist Dr. Margaret Mead is born in Philadelphia. Mead researched adolescent development in the United States and in Polynesia, publishing controversial writings that spurred the feminist and counterculture movements. President Jimmy Carter posthumously awarded Mead the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1979.
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