This Day in History: South Africa’s white parliament buried apartheid leading to majority rule and the country’s first all-race election

Following are some of the major events to have occurred on December 22:

1917 – In World War One, peace negotiations opened between the new Russian government and Germany at Brest-Litovsk.

1989 – Samuel Beckett, reclusive Irish writer whose works shaped contemporary theatre, died. He wrote “Waiting for Godot” and “Endgame” and won the Nobel Prize in 1986.

1989 – Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate re-opens after nearly 30 years, with crowds flooding across the former border point between East and West Germany.

1989 – Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in a revolution after 24 years of hardline rule. He escaped by helicopter but was recaptured and later executed.

1993 – South Africa’s white parliament buried apartheid, voting 237 to 45 to adopt an interim constitution leading to majority rule and the country’s first all-race election.

2000 – Russia acknowledged that Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews from Nazi death camps, had fallen victim to “Soviet repression” after being seized by Soviet forces in Hungary and brought to Moscow.

2002 – Joe Strummer, frontman for British punk band the Clash whose 1979 track “London Calling” exploded as one of punk’s biggest anthems, died. He was 50.

2008 – Russia’s upper house of parliament voted overwhelmingly to give a final nod to a constitutional amendment extending the presidential term from four to six years.

2010 – U.S. President Obama signs the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Repeal Act of 2010 into law.

2014 – Vietnam marks 70th anniversary of People’s Army.

2017 – The United Nations Security Council votes to impose new sanctions on North Korea.

(Reuters)