January 18 » An X-ray generating machine is exhibited for the first time by H. L. Smith.
January 28 » Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, becomes the first person to be convicted of speeding. He was fined one shilling, plus costs, for speeding at 8mph (13km/h), thereby exceeding the contemporary speed limit of 2mph (3.2km/h).
April 15 » Closing ceremony of the Games of the I Olympiad in Athens, Greece.
May 18 » Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people.
July 9 » William Jennings Bryan delivers his Cross of Gold speech advocating bimetallism at the 1896 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
December 17 » Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Schenley Park Casino, which was the first multi-purpose arena with the technology to create an artificial ice surface in North America, is destroyed in a fire.
Day of death December 27, 1978
The temperature on December 27, 1978 was between 3.4 °C and 8.3 °C and averaged 6.1 °C. There was 7.0 mm of rain during 5.9 hours. The heavily clouded was. The average windspeed was 2 Bft (weak wind) and was prevailing from the south east. Source: KNMI
In The Netherlands , there was from Monday, December 19, 1977 to Friday, September 11, 1981 the cabinet Van Agt I, with Mr. A.A.M. van Agt (CDA/KVP) as prime minister.
February 9 » The Budd Company unveils its first SPV-2000 self-propelled railcar in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
February 24 » The Yuba County Five disappear in California. Four of their bodies are found four months later.
August 7 » U.S. President Jimmy Carter declares a federal emergency at Love Canal due to toxic waste that had been disposed of negligently.
August 17 » Double Eagle II becomes first balloon to cross the Atlantic Ocean when it lands in Miserey, France near Paris, 137 hours after leaving Presque Isle, Maine.
October 1 » Tuvalu gains independence from the United Kingdom.
November 18 » In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder–suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
When copying data from this family tree, please include a reference to the origin: Bob Smith, "Family tree Smith", database, Genealogy Online (https://www.genealogieonline.nl/stamboom-smith/I5829.php : accessed March 16, 2026), "Willem George Abbink (1896-1978)".
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