William Speirs Bruce (1867–1921) was a London-born Scottish naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer who organized and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements the expedition established the first permanent weather station below the Antarctic Circle. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were stillborn through lack of public and financial support. In 1892 Bruce abandoned his medical studies at the University of Edinburgh and joined the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica as a scientific assistant. This was followed by Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. In 1899 Bruce, by then Britain's most experienced polar scientist, applied for a post on Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition, but delays over this appointment and clashes with Royal Geographical Society president Sir Clements Markham led him instead to organize his own expedition, and earned him the permanent enmity of the British geographical establishment. Between 1907 and 1920 Bruce made many journeys to the Arctic regions, both for scientific and for commercial purposes. (more...)

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• Rwanda becomes the first country to be declared landmine-free under the Ottawa Treaty.
• In the process to revalue the North Korean won, current banknotes cease to be legal tender, and businesses throughout the country shut down until new notes are released on 7 December.
• José Mujica (pictured) is elected President of Uruguay.
• Porfirio Lobo is elected President of Honduras in the first election since the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis.
• In a referendum in Switzerland, voters approve a ban on the construction of minarets in the country.
• Rwanda is admitted under the Edinburgh criteria into the Commonwealth of Nations, becoming its second member without any formal historical ties to the United Kingdom.
• At least 26 people are killed after a bomb explodes under a train on the Moscow–Saint Petersburg Railway near Bologoye in Russia.

December 3: International Day of Disabled Persons

• 1800 – War of the Second Coalition: French forces under General Jean Moreau defeated the Austrians and Bavarians under Archduke John in Hohenlinden, near Munich, forcing the Austrians to sign an armistice.
• 1854 – At least 22 people were killed and 35 others were injured when rebelling miners at the Eureka Stockade clashed violently with the police and the military in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia.
• 1967 – Cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard performed the first successful human heart transplant on Louis Washkansky at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa.
• 1971 – The formal initiation of hostilities of the Indo-Pakistani War began with the Pakistani Air Force launching pre-emptive airstrikes on several forward airbases and radar installations of the Indian Air Force.
• 1999 – NASA lost contact with the Mars Polar Lander (artist's impression pictured) moments before it reached the atmosphere of Mars and disappeared.

More anniversaries: December 2 – December 3 – December 4