Western Front
London and south-east counties raided by 25 airplanes (another soruce claims 19 of 21 German (including 2 Giant) , two brought down; eight killed, 28 injured.
Germany claims the capture of 148 artillery guns over the course of its counter-attacks, and British evacuation of the salient at Cambrai.
Eastern Front
Ukraine: Vladimir Antonov forms Red Southern Front.
Don: French captain from Romania meets Alexei Kaledin at Novocherkask and other White leaders later, reports hopes of new anti-German front exaggerated.
Southern Front
First Battle of the Piave (until December 30): Austro-Hungarians capture Mount Sisemol and 2,000 PoWs; attacks in Val Frenzela frustrated. Italians consolidate new line farther south across Valstagna and Frenzela valleys.
Austro-Hungarian soldiers carrying game caught near the front at Cervignano, Italy:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...073011164499968
Naval and Overseas Operations
United States Battleship Division, under Rear-Admiral Rodman, joins Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow.
U.S. destroyer
Jacob Jones torpedoed and sunk by
U-53 off Scillies; 37 survivors.
Channel:
U-96 collides with
UC-69 (sunk) off Cape Barfleur; the latter sank 50 ships worth 88,138t in 1917.
Asiatic and Egyptian Theaters
The first British soldiers enter the city of Hebron, south of Jerusalem, after it was abandoned by the Ottomans:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...103218613243904
Political, etc
Truce arranged between Russia, and Bulgaria, Central Powers and Turkey from 7th to 17th. Negotiations suspended.
Austria-Hungary: Count ottokar Czernin tells Hungarian delegation ‘I see no difference between Strassburg and Trieste.’
France: Loire Department strikes end with union officials reinstatement and promise of negotiated wage rises.
Canada: Halifax (N.S.) wrecked: SS*Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with high explosives bound for Bordeaux, France, collided with the Norwegian vessel SS Imo in the Narrows, at the north-west tip of Halifax Harbor. When a fire on board the French ship ignited her cargo, around 2,000 people were killed by the blast, debris, fires and collapsed buildings, and an estimated 9,000 others were injured. Nearly all structures within an 800-meter (half-mile) radius, including the entire community of Richmond, were obliterated. A pressure wave snapped trees, bent iron rails, demolished buildings, grounded vessels, and scattered fragments of Mont-Blanc for kilometers. A tsunamicreated by the blast wiped out the community of Mi'kmaq First Nations people who had lived in the Tufts Cove area for generations. estimated cost $40 million.
Aftermath of the explosion at Halifax, Nova Scotia:
https://twitter.com/CenturyAgoToday...407981733105667
Turkey: Djemal Pasha at Beirut reveals Sykes-Picot Agreement and ‘taunts Hussein’.
Romania: Hostilities between Romania and Central Powers suspended.
United States: Nationalisation of railways in U.S.A. announced.
Manacling of conscientious objectors ends but 142 get life imprisonment (last 31 set free December 1923).
Finland: Finland votes for independence, seeks Swedish recognition on December 29, Bolsheviks recognize on December 31.
Spain: Anglo-Spanish Commercial Agreement.