December 12, 1936

1936Iolanda Balaș, Romanian high jumper and educator (died 2016)^[†]

Iolanda Balaș was a Romanian athlete, an Olympic champion and former world record holder in the high jump. She was the first Romanian woman to win an Olympic gold medal and is considered to have been one of the greatest high jumpers of the twentieth century.

1936The beginning of Xi'an incident. As a result, Chiang Kai Shek is captured.^[†]

The Xi'an Incident was a Chinese political crisis that lasted from 12 to 26 December 1936. Soldiers of the Northeastern Army under the command of General Zhang Xueliang arrested Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Nationalist government of China, while the latter was in Xi'an to review the troops. Zhang demanded that Chiang agree to a ceasefire in the Chinese Civil War so that the Nationalist government could ally with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against Japanese expansionism. Negotiations were held between Chiang and the CCP, resulting in verbal agreement on the broad outlines of an alliance. After Chiang was released, he publicly renounced the terms he had agreed to in captivity, but secretly continued the negotiations that would result in the Second United Front.