Today in History: Turkey's First Driverless Metro Line Opened in Istanbul

December 15 is the 349th day of the year (350th in leap years) according to the Gregorian calendar. The number of days left until the end of the year is 16.

Railways

• 15 December 1912 Rad-su-Aleppo-Tripoli (203km) line was opened in the Anatolian Baghdad Railway.
• 15 December 1917 Crown Prince Vahidettin and Mustafa Kemal Pasha, via a private wagon connecting the Balkan Train, moved to Germany via Sofia-Budapest-Vienna. On January 10, 1918 departed from Germany and 4 arrived at the Sirkeci Railway Station in January 1918 with the Balkan Train.
• 15 December 1921 According to the İkdam newspaper, the American Mc. Dovvel, on behalf of the Gandaş's Company, Samsun-Sivas-Erzurum railway line with the construction of Inebolu and Samsun ports with the American capital is on the project.
• 2017 – Üsküdar – Yamanevler stage, the first stage of the M5 (Üsküdar – Çekmeköy) Metro Line in Istanbul, Turkey's first driverless metro line, was put into service.

Events

• 1256 – The Alamut Fortress of the Assassins in Iran was destroyed by the Hulagu Khan Army.
• 1574 – III. Murad ascended the throne as the 12th Ottoman sultan.
• 1840 - Napoleon Bonaparte's body (ashes) was brought to Paris from Saint Helena Island and buried in Les Invalides.
• 1890 - Sitting Bull (Tatanka Iyotake), chief of the Hunkpapa Lakota, one of the Native American tribes, was killed by the Native police mobilized by the USA.
• 1893 – Wilhelm Ludwig Thomsen announced to the scientific world that he had deciphered the Orkhon alphabet and read the Orkhon Inscriptions, with a paper he presented at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences.
• 1923 – Turkey-Hungary friendship treaty was signed in Istanbul.
• 1925 - Reza Pahlavi took the oath of kingship and established the Pahlavi Dynasty, ending the Qajar Dynasty.
• 1934 – In Bingöl, 4.9 people died in an earthquake with a magnitude of 12.
• 1939 – Gone with the Wind was released in Atlanta (USA).
• 1941 – The ship Struma, which went to Palestine with 769 Romanian Jewish passengers, arrived in Istanbul. The ship is prohibited from disembarking.
• 1948 – The law regarding the granting of a monthly pension to the members of the Representative Committee elected to the Sivas Congress and the members of the first term of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey from the service of the homeland was accepted.
• 1948 - France begins the establishment of the first nuclear reactor.
• 1949 – The Istanbul Office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) was opened.
• 1953 – The critic Fethi Naci used this name for the first time. Kaynak criticizing a story by Orhan Kemal in the magazine Liberation Road used in an article.
• 1954 – Turkish Petroleum Corporation (TPAO) was established.
• 1957 – United Nations General Assembly rejected Greece's Cyprus thesis.
• 1958 – Minister of Justice Esat Budakoğlu announced that 4 journalists were convicted of press crimes in 238 years.
• 1960 – A radio station was opened in Erzurum.
• 1960 – Baudouin I marries Fabiola de Mora y Aragón, named Queen Fabiola. The marriage ceremony was held at the Saint-Michel-et-Gudule cathedral in Brussels and was televised for the first time in Belgium.
• 1970 – The Soviet space probe Venera 7 reaches planet Venus and orbits it for 23 minutes, sending information to Earth.
• 1970 – Workers revolt in Poland.
• 1972 – Yaşar Kemal could not attend an international meeting because he was not given a passport. Upon reaction, the author was given a passport 15 days later.
• 1986 – Olympic champion weightlifter Naim Süleymanoğlu became a Turkish citizen.
• 1987 - The dollar officially reaches four digits for the first time in the history of the Republic. The Central Bank increased the selling rate of the American dollar to 1.300 liras.
• 1989 – A popular uprising began in Romania, which led to the overthrow of President Nicolay Ceausescu.
• 1990 - Kyrgyzstan declared its independence.
• 1995 – The European Court of Justice announced its decision, known as the Bosman rules, regarding the contracts of football players upon the application of Jean-Marc Bosman.
• 1996 – The biggest jackpot in the history of Turkey up to that time was awarded to a Number Lotto winner: 211 billion liras.
• 1997 – An agreement including the Blue Stream project was signed between Turkey and Russia.
• 2000 – A military helicopter belonging to the 6th Armored Brigade Command crashed near the Tatvan district of Bitlis. 2 soldiers died and 5 soldiers were injured in the accident.
• 2000 – 5,8 people died and 6 people were injured in the earthquake with a magnitude of 42 in Afyonkarahisar and its surroundings.
• 2000 – After the Chernobyl reactor accident, the operation of the Nuclear Power Plant was stopped.

Births

• 37 – Nero, Roman emperor (d. 68)
• 130 – Lucius Verus, Roman emperor (d. 169)
• 1242 – Prince Munetaka, sixth shogun of the Kamakura shogunate (d. 1274)
• 1533 – XIV. Eric, king of Sweden (d. 1577)
• 1789 – Carlos Soublette, President of Venezuela (d. 1870)
• 1824 – Juliusz Kossak, Polish historical painter and illustrator (d. 1899)
• 1832 – Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, French civil engineer and architect (creator of the Eiffel Tower) (d. 1923)
• 1852 – Henri Becquerel, French physicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics (d. 1908)
• 1859 – Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, Polish ophthalmologist, philologist, and creator of Esperanto, the most widely used artificial language in the world (d. 1917)
• 1861 – Pehr Evind Svinhufvud, President of Finland (d. 1944)
• 1882 – Fernando Tambroni, Italian politician and prime minister of Italy (d. 1963)
• 1907 – Oscar Niemeyer, Brazilian architect (d. 2012)
• 1909 – Settar Behlulzade, Azerbaijani painter (d. 1974)
• 1912 – Rashid Necmettinov, Soviet chess player (d. 1974)
• 1913 – Roger Gaudry, Canadian scientist (d. 2001)
• 1916 – Maurice Wilkins, New Zealand physicist and molecular biologist (scientist who discovered the structure of DNA and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine) (d. 2004)
• 1916 – Orhon Murat Arıburnu, Turkish poet, cinema and theater director, producer and actor (d. 1989)
• 1920 – Ahmet Tarık Tekçe, Turkish film actor (d. 1964)
• 1924 – Ruhi Sarıalp, Turkish athlete (d. 2001)
• 1934 – Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, Somali politician and 6th President of the Republic (d. 2012)
• 1942 – Uğur Kıvılcım, Turkish actor (d. 2018)
• 1943 – Lucien den Arend, Dutch sculptor
• 1949 – Don Johnson, American actor, director, and musician
• 1958 – Ronald Gamarra, Peruvian lawyer
• 1971 – Necati Şaşmaz, Turkish cinema and TV series actor
• 1976 – Tuğba Altıntop, Turkish model, actress and singer
• 1977 – Mehmet Aurelio, Brazilian-born Turkish football player
• 1979 - Adam Brody, American actor
• 1980 – Alexandra Stevenson, American tennis player
• 1981 – Najoua Belyzel, French singer
• 1982 – Matias Emilio Delgado, Argentine football player
• 1984 – Lukáš Bajer, Czech football player
• 1984 – Véronique Mang, French athlete
• 1985 – Aynur Aydın, Turkish singer
• 1985 – Emre Kaya, Turkish singer, songwriter and composer
• 1986 – Kim Junsu, South Korean singer, songwriter, and stage actor
• 1986 - Keylor Navas, Costa Rican goalkeeper
• 1988 – Steven Nzonzi, French national football player of Congolese origin
• 1989 – Nichole Bloom, American actress
• 1992 – Jesse Lingard, English international football player
• 1992 – Alex Telles, Brazilian football player
• 1996 – Jenifer Brening, German singer
• 1996 – Oleksandr Zinchenko, Ukrainian football player
• 1997 – Mizgin Morkoyun, Turkish bocce player
• 1997 – Stefania LaVie Owen, New Zealand-American actress

Deaths

• 1025 – II. Basil, Byzantine emperor from 960 to December 15, 1025 (b. 958)
• 1574 – II. Selim, 11th sultan of the Ottoman Empire and 90th Islamic caliph (b. 1524)
• 1675 – Johannes Vermeer (or Jan Vermeer), Dutch painter (b. 1632)
• 1857 – George Cayley, English engineer, inventor, and aviator (b. 1773)
• 1890 – Sitting Bull (Native: Tatanka Iyotake), last Native tribal chief to fight against US armies (b. 1831)
• 1909 – Francisco Tarréga, Spanish guitarist and composer (b. 1852)
• 1925 – Süleyman Sırrı Aral, Turkish politician and Deputy Public Works Minister (Minister of Public Works) in the first two and 4 governments of the Turkish Republic (b. 1874)
• 1938 – George R. Lawrence, American photographer (b. 1868)
• 1941 – Leon Sperling, Polish athlete (b. 1900)
• 1942 – Faik Bey Konitza, Albanian writer, statesman (b. 1875)
• 1943 – Fats Waller, American jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedy entertainer (b. 1904)
• 1944 – Glenn Miller, American jazz musician (b. 1904)
• 1947 – Arthur Machen, Welsh writer (b. 1863)
• 1958 – Wolfgang Pauli, Austrian physicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics (b. 1900)
• 1961 – Yusuf Mammadaliyev, Soviet-Azerbaijani chemist (b. 1905)
• 1962 – Charles Laughton, English actor and winner of the Academy Award for Best Actor (b. 1899)
• 1965 – Sinan Tekelioğlu, Turkish soldier and commander of the Turkish War of Independence (b. 1889)
• 1966 – Walt Disney, American cartoon animator and filmmaker (b. 1901)
• 1974 – Anatole Litvak, Jewish-Ukrainian film director and producer (b. 1902)
• 1984 – Jan Peerce, American tenor (b. 1904)
• 1985 – Seewoosagur Ramgoolam, Mauritian politician (b. 1900)
• 1988 – Hüseyin Kutman, Turkish cinema and theater artist (b. 1930)
• 1989 – Ali Şen, Turkish cinema and theater actor (b. 1918),
• 1991 – Vasily Zaitsev, Soviet sniper (b. 1915)
• 1992 – Adnan Öztrak, Turkish bureaucrat (co-founder and first General Manager of TRT (b. 1915)
• 2004 – Şükran Kurdakul, Turkish poet and writer (b. 1927)
• 2006 – Clay Regazzoni, Swiss auto racing driver (b. 1939)
• 2007 – Feridun Akozan, Turkish architect, academic and writer (b. 1914)
• 2010 – Blake Edwards, American director (b. 1922)
• 2010 – Nijat Özön, Turkish linguist, film historian and translator (b. 1927)
• 2011 – Sönmez Atasoy, Turkish cinema and theater actor (b. 1944)
• 2011 – Christopher Hitchens, English author, journalist, columnist and activist (b. 1949)
• 2012 – Olga Zubarry, Argentine actress (b. 1929)
• 2013 – Joan Fontaine, English film actress (b. 1917)
• 2015 – Licio Gelli, Italian financier, freemason and crime syndicate leader (b. 1919)
• 2016 – Beki İkela Erikli, Turkish-Jewish writer and bio-energy expert (b. 1968)
• 2016 – Craig Sager, American sports broadcaster (b. 1951)
• 2016 – Mohammed Zevvari, Tunisian aeronautical engineer (b. 1967)
• 2017 – ABM Mohiuddin Chowdhury, Bangladeshi politician (b. 1944)
• 2017 – Darlanne Fluegel, American actress and model (b. 1953)
• 2017 – Michiru Shimada, Japanese screenwriter (b. 1959)
• 2017 – Ali Tekinture, Turkish musician, songwriter and poet (b. 1953)
• 2018 – Philippe Moureaux, Belgian politician and educator (b. 1939)
• 2018 – Guy Rétoré, French theater and film director (b. 1924)
• 2018 – Girma Wolde-Giorgis, Ethiopian politician (b. 1924)
• 2019 – Nicky Henson, English actor and dubbing artist (b. 1945)
• 2020 – Caroline Cellier, French actress (b. 1945)
• 2020 – Jorge García, Former Spanish professional football player (b. 1957)
• 2020 – Zoltan Sabo, Former Hungarian football player (b. 1972)

Holidays and special occasions

• December 15 has been declared as UNESCO International Day of Turkish Language.