December 2

The Jeshuat Israel congregation dedicated its new synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, now the oldest surviving synagogue building in the United States.

The Flemish Augustinian canon and mystical writer Jan van Ruusbroec, author of The Spiritual Espousals, died at Groenendaal.

Henry W. F. Saggs, the British Assyriologist who published the Nimrud cuneiform letters and wrote The Greatness That Was Babylon, was born in East Anglia.

Beneath a stadium at the University of Chicago, a team led by Enrico Fermi brought Chicago Pile-1 to criticality, achieving the first controlled, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction, a foundational milestone in nuclear physics.