| 31 Dec 1990 | Titleholder Gary Kasparov of the USSR won the world chess championship match against his countryman Anatoly Karpov |
| 31 Dec 1974 | Popular Electronics displayed the first affordable home computer - the Altair 8800 |
| 31 Dec 1960 | The farthing coin, which had been in use in Great Britain since the 13th century, ceased to be legal tender |
| 31 Dec 1923 | The chimes of Big Ben, London, UK, were first broadcast by the BBC |
| 31 Dec 1719 | John Flamsteed, first Astronomer Royal, died |
| 30 Dec 1887 | A petition to Queen Victoria with over one million names of women appealing for public houses to be closed on Sundays was handed to the home secretary |
| 30 Dec 1691 | Robert Boyle, Irish physicist and chemist, died |
| 29 Dec 1860 | HMS Warrior, Britain's first seagoing iron-clad warship, was launched |
| 29 Dec 1800 | Charles Goodyear, US inventor, was born |
| 29 Dec 1689 | Thomas Sydenham, English physician, died |
| 28 Dec 1923 | Gustave Eiffel, French engineer, died |
| 28 Dec 1908 | An earthquake killed over 75,000 at Messina in Sicily |
| 28 Dec 1882 | Arthur Stanley Eddington, English astronomer, was born |
| 27 Dec 1965 | The BP oil rig Sea Gem capsized in the North Sea, with the loss of 13 lives |
| 27 Dec 1831 | Charles Darwin set sail in the Beagle on his voyage of scientific discovery |
| 27 Dec 1822 | Louis Pasteur, French chemist and microbiologist, |
| 27 Dec 1773 | George Cayley, British aviation pioneer, was born |
| 27 Dec 1571 | Johannes Kepler, German astronomer, was born |
| 26 Dec 1992 | John G Kemeny US computer pioneer (dies |
| 26 Dec 1898 | Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium |
| 26 Dec 1792 | Thomas Gray, English poet, 1716 Charles Babbage, English mathematician, was born |
| 25 Dec 1938 | Karel Capek, Czech dramatist who coined the word 'Robot', died |
| 25 Dec 1642 | Isaac Newton, English scientist, was born |
| 24 Dec 1965 | A meteorite landed on Leicestershire, UK it weighed about 100lbs |
| 24 Dec 1914 | The first air raid on Britain was made when a German airplane dropped a bomb on the grounds of a rectory in Dover |
