Jacobus Anthonie Meessen (5 December 1836 – 14 November 1885) was a Dutch photographer who took more than 250 portraits and landscapes in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) between 1864 and 1870. He worked as a carpenter in the Indies before returning to the Netherlands in the early 1860s. Moving back to the colony in 1864, he documented its land and people, working mainly in Java and Sumatra. He also photographed Bangka, Belitung, Borneo, and Nias. When Meessen returned to the Netherlands in 1870 he went into partnership with Abraham Vermeulen and began disseminating his photographs. In 1871 he gave King William III an elaborately decorated album with selected images, now kept at the Royal Library of the Netherlands. Other photographs were published by J. H. De Bussy in 1875 and exhibited in Paris and Amsterdam. Collections of his albumen prints, some of which were hand-tinted or annotated, are held in four institutions in the Netherlands. (Full article..)

• .. that the site (pictured) of the Battle of Muster Green in Haywards Heath was the farthest a Royalist army advanced through Sussex during the First English Civil War?
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• The Power of Siberia pipeline begins operations, delivering Russian natural gas to China.
• In Iraq, Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi(pictured) resigns amidst ongoing protests.
• Luis Lacalle Pou of the National Party is electedPresident of Uruguay.
• An earth­quake in north­western Albania kills at least 50 people and injures more than 900 others.

December 5: Krampusnacht in parts of Central Europe

• 1484 – Pope Innocent VIII(portrait shown) issued the papal bullSummis desiderantes affectibus, giving Dominican inquisitor Heinrich Kramer explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft in Germany.
• 1757 – Seven Years' War: Prussian troops under Frederick the Great defeated Austrian forces at the Battle of Leuthen.
• 1945 – Flight 19, a squadron of five U.S. naval TBF Avengertorpedo bombers, disappeared in the area now known as the Bermuda Triangle.
• 1965 – The 'glasnost meeting' took place in Moscow, becoming the first demonstration in the Soviet Union after World War II and marking the beginning of the civil rights movement in the country.
• 2005 – The Civil Partnership Act came into force, granting civil partnerships in the United Kingdom rights and responsibilities identical to civil marriage.

Ealhswith (d. 902) ·Clyde Cessna (b. 1879) ·Princess Alice of Battenberg (d. 1969)