December 6

1060 – Béla I is crowned king of Hungary. 1240 – Mongol invasion of Rus': Kyiv, defended by Voivode Dmytro, falls to the Mongols under Batu Khan. 1492 – After exploring the island of Cuba for gold (which he had mistaken for Japan), Christopher Columbus lands on an island he names Hispaniola. 1534 – The city of Quito in Ecuador is founded by Spanish settlers led by Sebastián de Belalcázar. 1648 – Colonel Thomas Pride of the New Model Army purges the Long Parliament of MPs sympathetic to King Charles I of England, in order for the King's trial to go ahead; came to be known as "Pride's Purge". 1704 – Battle of Chamkaur: During the Mughal-Sikh Wars, an outnumbered Sikh Khalsa defeats a Mughal army. 1745 – Charles Edward Stuart's army begins retreat during the second Jacobite Rising. 1790 – The U.S. Congress moves from New York City to Philadelphia. 1803 – Five French warships attempting to escape the Royal Naval blockade of Saint-Domingue are all seized by British warships, signifying the end of the Haitian Revolution. 1865 – Georgia ratifies the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. 1882 – Transit of Venus, second and last of the 19th century. 1884 – The Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is completed. 1897 – London becomes the world's first city to host licensed taxicabs. 1904 – Theodore Roosevelt articulated his "Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, stating that the U.S. would intervene in the Western Hemisphere should Latin American governments prove incapable or unstable. 1907 – A coal mine explosion at Monongah, West Virginia, kills 362 workers. 1912 – The Nefertiti Bust is discovered. 1916 – World War I: The Central Powers capture Bucharest. 1917 – Finland declares independence from the Russian Empire. 1917 – Halifax Explosion: A munitions explosion near Halifax, Nova Scotia kills more than 1,900 people in the largest artificial explosion up to that time. 1917 – World War I: is the first American destroyer to be sunk by enemy action when it is torpedoed by German submarine .