Reflecting on History: Significant Events of December 12, 20 and 21

From the Louisiana Purchase to the Paris Climate Accord, these dates mark important moments in history.

On December 20, 1803, the Louisiana Purchase was completed, transferring ownership of the territory from France to the United States.
On December 21, 1864, during the Civil War, Union forces led by Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman concluded their 'March to the Sea' as they captured Savannah, Georgia.
On December 12, 2015, nearly 200 nations meeting in Paris adopted the first global pact to fight climate change, calling on the world to collectively cut and then eliminate greenhouse gas pollution but imposing no sanctions on countries that didn’t do so.
In 2017, Cardinal Bernard Law, the disgraced former archbishop of Boston, died in Rome at the age of 86; his failure to stop child molesters in the priesthood had triggered a crisis in American Catholicism.
In 2016, President Barack Obama designated the bulk of U.S.-owned waters in the Arctic Ocean and certain areas in the Atlantic Ocean as indefinitely off limits to future oil and gas leasing.