On December 1, 2008, the Curb Exchange building at 86 Trinity Place was closed, and the Amex Equities trading floor was moved to the NYSE Trading floor at 11 Wall Street.

In December 2008, HDMS Absalon was involved in the rescue of putative Somali pirates 90 miles off Yemen in the Gulf of Aden.

On December 21, 2008, Atlanta beat the Minnesota Vikings 24 – 17 to clinch a wild card spot, earning a trip to the playoffs for the first time since 2004.

On December 9, 2008, Atari announced that it had acquired Cryptic Studios, an MMORPG developer.

In December 2008, Aston Martin announced that it would cut its 1, 850 workforce by 600.

AOL released an all-new AIM for the Macintosh on September 29, 2008 and the final build on December 15, 2008.

The 2008 Menier Chocolate Factory production opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre in previews on November 24, 2009 and officially on December 13, 2009, with the same creative team.

2008 has brought announcements of new or additional sales to Singapore, Finland, Morocco and South Korea ; in December 2010 the Swiss government requested 150 AIM-120C-7 missiles.

Digicel was finally granted a licence on 17 December 2007 and plans to start operations in the BVI sometime in 2008.

Construction of the second line started in December 2008, which is due to be opened according to initial forecasts by the end of 2012.

* Programming: Principles and Practice Using C ++ by Bjarne Stroustrup – Addison-Wesley Professional ; 1 edition ( December 29, 2008 ); ISBN 0-321-54372-1

A bocce player of note is Umberto Granaglia ( May 20, 1931 – December 13, 2008 ), who was awarded the honor of " Player of the Twentieth Century " by the Confédération Mondiale des Sports de Boules.

In December 2008, Power Fasteners agreed to pay $ 16 million to the state to settle manslaughter charges.

Prior to 31 December 2010, deposits with building societies of up to £ 50, 000 per individual, per institution, were normally protected by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme ( FSCS ), but Nationwide and Yorkshire Building Societies negotiated a temporary change to the terms of the FSCS to protect members of the societies they acquired in late 2008 / early 2009.

The new highspeed ICE railway line from Karlsruhe to Basel was completed in 2008 while phase I of the TGV Rhin-Rhône line, opened in December 2011, has reduced travel time from Basel to Paris to about 3 hours.

With Switzerland joining the Schengen Area on December 12, 2008, immigration checks were no longer carried out at the crossings.

Prior to that Bernd Kellner computed B < sub > n </ sub > to full precision for n = 10 < sup > 6 </ sup > in December 2002 and Oleksandr Pavlyk for n = 10 < sup > 7 </ sup > with ' Mathematica ' in April 2008.

Ellas Otha Bates ( December 30, 1928 – June 2, 2008 ), known by his stage name Bo Diddley, was an American rhythm and blues vocalist, guitarist, songwriter ( usually as Ellas McDaniel ), and rock and roll pioneer.

$ 7. 401 billion ( December 2008 )

Costa Rican colones (₡) per US $ 1 – 512. 11 ( September 4, 2010 ), US $ 1 – 559. 51 ( October 24, 2008 ), per US $ 1 – 500. 10 ( December 2007 ), 516. 78 ( November 2007 ), 506. 11 ( April 2006 ), 479. 57 ( July 2005 ), 299. 63 ( February 2000 ), 285. 68 ( 1999 ), 257. 23 ( 1998 ), 232. 60 ( 1997 ), 207. 69 ( 1996 ) and 179. 73 ( 1995 )

11. 5 % ( 31 December 2008 )

15. 6 % ( 31 December 2008 )

$ 21. 58 billion ( 31 December 2008 )

$ 26. 57 billion ( 31 December 2008 )

At the 14th Party Congress ( 18 – 31 December 1925 ) Kamenev and Zinoviev were forced into the same position that Trotsky had been forced into previously ; they proclaimed that the center was usurping power from the regional branches, and that Stalin was a danger to inner-party democracy.

Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (; born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, ; 18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953 ) was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 until his death in 5 March 1953.

Thereafter, in a December Politburo session, Stalin announced that " Every Jewish nationalist is the agent of the American intelligence service.

Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria (; ; 29 March 1899 – 23 December 1953 ) was a Soviet politician, Marshal of the Soviet Union and state security administrator, chief of the Soviet security and secret police apparatus ( NKVD ) under Joseph Stalin during World War II, and Deputy Premier in the postwar years ( 1946 – 1953 ).

As Lenin neared death after suffering strokes, he declared in his testament of December 1922 an order to remove Joseph Stalin from his post as General Secretary and replace him by " some other person who is superior to Stalin only in one respect, namely, in being more tolerant, more loyal, more polite and more attentive to comrades ".

However, Kirov was assassinated in Leningrad in December 1934, and his death was used by Stalin as a pretext to launch the Great Purge, in which about a million people were to perish as Stalin eliminated all past and potential opposition to his authority.

In the Soviet Union, speaking to his generals in December, Stalin mentioned Hitler's references to an attack on the Soviet Union in Mein Kampf, and said they must always be ready to repulse a German attack, and that Hitler thought the Red Army would need four years to ready itself.

* December 18 – Joseph Stalin, leader of the Soviet Union ( d. 1953 )

The struggle became open at the September 1925 meeting of the Central Committee and came to a head at the XIVth Party Congress in December 1925, when Kamenev publicly demanded removal of Stalin from the position of the General Secretary.

In December 1929, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin gave a famous speech praising " practice " above " theory ", elevating the political bosses above the scientists and technical specialists.

Mao Zedong | Mao, Stalin and Ulbricht, at Stalin's 70th birthday celebration in Moscow, December 1949 Ulbricht ( right ) with Nikita Khrushchev in 1963

The Tehran Conference ( codenamed Eureka ) was a strategy meeting held between Joseph Stalin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Winston Churchill from 28 November to 1 December 1943.

A clear sign of Molotov's precarious position was his inability to prevent the arrest in December 1948 for " treason " of his Jewish wife, Polina Zhemchuzhina, whom Stalin had long distrusted.

Lenin, however, had become increasingly anxious about Stalin and, following his December 1922 stroke dictated a letter to the party criticising him and urging his removal as general secretary, a position which was starting to arise as the most powerful in the party.

The conflict erupted at the Fourteenth Party Congress held in December 1925 with Zinoviev and Kamenev now protesting against the dictatorial policies of Stalin and trying to revive the issue of Lenin's Testament which they had previously buried.

By the time the Congress finally convened in December 1927 Zinoviev had capitulated to Stalin and denounced his previous adherence to the opposition as " anti-Leninist " and the few remaining members still loyal to the opposition were subjected to insults and humiliations.

From 20 December 1949 to 20 October 1956 the city was renamed by the communist government Stalin after Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin.

General Georgy Zhukov's success in defending Moscow during December 1941 had persuaded Stalin that he was a better commander than Timoshenko.

In December 1936, Joseph Stalin finally granted Chiang's return to China.

The 1936 Soviet constitution, adopted on December 5, 1936, and also known as the " Stalin " constitution, redesigned the government of the Soviet Union.

The Stalin Prize was an honour different from the Stalin Peace Prize which was created in 21 December 1949 and was usually awarded to foreign recipients rather than to Soviet citizens.