Timeline December 2012

Events in December 2012 17

• 1909 – 2012 Rita Levi-Montalcini Nobel Neurologist Awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for her discovery of nerve growth factor.
• 1920 – 2012 Ravi Shankar (1920-2012) Died 11 December 2012, aged 92 Indian musician and composer credited with popularizing the sitar and Indian classical music in the West. He mentored George Harrison of the Beatles and performed at Woodstock and the Concert for Bangladesh.
• 1920 – 2012 Dave Brubeck (1920-2012) Died 5 December 2012, aged 91 American jazz pianist and composer best known for the album "Time Out" and its hit track "Take Five." He died of heart failure one day before his 92nd birthday.
• 2003 – 2012 Brigade of Gurkhas Joined the Brigade of Gurkhas in 2003, following his family's military tradition. Served for nearly a decade, developing the discipline and physical resilience that would define his mountaineering career.
• 2011 – 2012 Royal Society and AAAS President Elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 2011 and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2012, reflecting his stature as one of the leading figures in world science.
• 2012 2012: Sebastian Vettel Red Bull Vettel won his third consecutive title in a dramatic season, fighting back from last place in the opening lap of the final race in Brazil to finish sixth and clinch the championship.
• 2012 First Summit: Dhaulagiri Climbed his first 8,000-metre peak, Dhaulagiri (8,167m), while still serving in the British military, igniting his passion for high-altitude mountaineering.
• 2012 Gershwin Prize Together with Hal David, received the Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the nation's highest honour for songwriters.
• 2012 Helpless Starred in the mystery thriller Helpless, earning praise for portraying a man searching for his missing wife.
• 2012 Louis Vuitton Collaboration and Global Retrospectives Collaborated with Marc Jacobs on a line of Louis Vuitton products — leather goods, fashion, accessories and jewellery — covered in her signature dots, sold through pop-up shops worldwide. Major retrospectives opened at the Tate Modern in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York in the same year.
• 2012 The Hobbit Appeared as the Great Goblin in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
• 2012 Major Stroke Suffered a major stroke that left him wheelchair-bound and with limited use of his legs. He later recalled that he had been having a massage when the masseur noticed something was wrong and called an ambulance. The stroke effectively ended his ability to perform on stage, though he continued occasional voice work and public appearances.
• 2012 Ravi Shankar dies in San Diego Aged 92 Dies weeks after his last concert.
• 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting Gunman kills twenty children and six adults A gunman shot and killed 20 children and 6 adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, after first killing his mother. The massacre became one of the deadliest school shootings in US history and intensified the national gun control debate.
• 2012 – 2014 The Hobbit trilogy -- return to Middle-earth Peter Jackson returns to Middle-earth with a three-film adaptation of The Hobbit (2012-2014): An Unexpected Journey, The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies. The production is troubled: Guillermo del Toro was originally set to direct but withdrew after two years of pre-production delays caused by MGM's bankruptcy. The Hobbit trilogy is shot at 48 frames per second (double the standard 24fps) -- a controversial choice that many viewers find disconcerting. The three films gross $2.93 billion combined but are generally considered inferior to the LOTR trilogy, suffering from bloated running times and excessive CGI.
• 2012 Park Geun-hye elected President of South Korea First woman elected to lead the country Park Geun-hye, daughter of former president Park Chung-hee, won South Korea's presidential election to become the country's first female head of state. She was later impeached and removed from office in 2017.
• 2012 Django Unchained Slavery as spaghetti western A freed slave and a German bounty hunter ride into Mississippi. It becomes Tarantino's highest-grossing film to that point, takes over four hundred million dollars worldwide, and draws sustained criticism from Spike Lee among others over its use of the slave era as genre material. It is also his last collaboration with editor Sally Menke, who died in 2010, and the first film he has to cut without her.