December 11

Naguib Mahfouz, the Cairo novelist whose Cairo Trilogy charted a changing Egypt, was born; he later became the first Arabic-language Nobel laureate in literature.

Rajneesh, the Indian mystic and teacher later known as Osho who founded a syncretic meditation movement, was born at Kuchwada in Madhya Pradesh.

Robert Koch, a founder of modern bacteriology who identified the microbes causing anthrax, tuberculosis, and cholera, was born in Clausthal, in the Kingdom of Hanover.

The Apollo 17 lunar module Challenger touched down in the Taurus-Littrow valley, beginning what remains the last time humans have walked on the Moon.