31 December It Happened Today

1869  Birth of French painter Henri Matisse.

1880  Birth of George Marshall, American general and politician who devised the Marshall plan for a post war Europe in 1945.

1937  Birth of British actor Anthony Hopkins.

1981  Jerry Rawlings, a former flight lieutenant overthrows the government of Hilla Limann in Ghana.

1999  Boris Yeltsin resigns the Russian presidency.