About the day » Saturday December 21, 1996Calender converter

• Catharina Christiana Kan (89), Koog aan de Zaan
• Aalt Bronkhorst (73), Uddel
• Charles Thomas Abbring (88), Crown Point (Lake County) (Indiana)
• Anna Rachel Danis (64), Roeselare
• Adrianus VERMONDEN (85), Baarle-Nassau,, Noord-Brabant, Nederland
• Agatha Cornelia Bruins (84), Noordwijkerhout
• Aloysius Véra (91), Sint-Gillis-Dendermonde
• Andele Cornelis Pottjewijd (70), Emmen
• Antonia Johanna Dingemans (83), Tilburg, Noord-Brabant, Nederland
• Alida Klazina Stip (97), Dordrecht

• 1979 » Steve Montador, Canadian ice hockey player († 2015)
• 1981 » Cristian Zaccardo, Italian footballer
• 1982 » Philip Humber, American baseball player
• 1983 » Steven Yeun, American actor
• 1985 » Tom Sturridge, English actor
• 1988 » Perri Shakes-Drayton, English sprinter and hurdler
• 1989 » Mark Ingram Jr., American football player
• 1989 » Tamannaah, South Indian actress
• 1991 » Riccardo Saponara, Italian footballer
• 1995 » Ronnie Bassett Jr., American race car driver

• 1983 » Paul de Man, Belgian-born philosopher, literary critic and theorist (b. 1919)
• 1988 » Nikolaas Tinbergen, Dutch-English ethologist and ornithologist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1907)
• 1992 » Albert King, American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and producer (b. 1924)
• 1992 » Nathan Milstein, Russian-American violinist and composer (b. 1903)
• 1992 » Stella Adler, American actress and educator (b. 1901)
• 1998 » Ernst-Günther Schenck, German colonel and physician (b. 1904)
• 2004 » Autar Singh Paintal, Indian physiologist and neurologist (b. 1925)
• 2006 » Saparmurat Niyazov, Turkmen engineer and politician, 1st President of Turkmenistan (b. 1940)
• 2009 » Christos Lambrakis, Greek journalist and businessman (b. 1934)
• 2009 » Edwin G. Krebs, American biochemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1918)

• Koningin Beatrix (Huis van Oranje-Nassau) was from April 30, 1980 till April 30, 2013 sovereign of the Netherlands (also known as Koninkrijk der Nederlanden)
• In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, August 22, 1994 to Monday, August 3, 1998 the cabinet a href="https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinet-Kok_I" class="extern">Kok I, with W. Kok (PvdA) as prime minister.
• The Netherlands had about 15.5 million citizens.
• February 1 » The Communications Decency Act is passed by the U.S. Congress.
• February 16 » A Chicago-bound Amtrak train, the Capitol Limited, collides with a MARC commuter train bound for Washington, D.C., killing 11 people.
• February 17 » NASA's Discovery Program begins as the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft lifts off on the first mission ever to orbit and land on an asteroid, 433 Eros.
• September 21 » The Defense of Marriage Act is passed by the United States Congress.
• November 18 » A fire occurs on a train traveling through the Channel Tunnel from France to England causing several injuries and damaging approximately 500 metres (1,600ft) of tunnel.
• December 22 » Airborne Express Flight 827 crashes near Narrows, Virginia, killing all six people on board.

The temperature on December 21, 1996 was between -4.8 °C and -0.7 °C and averaged -3.5 °C. There was 6.6 hours of sunshine (85%). The average windspeed was 4 Bft (moderate breeze) and was prevailing from the east-northeast.