December 21st
 

1118 ~ Birthday of Thomas Becket, Lord Chancellor & Archbishop of Canterbury.

1804 ~ Birthday of Benjamin Disraeli, Politician & Writer.

1898 ~ Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.

1913 ~ The first crossword puzzle was published, in the New York World.

1933 ~ Newfoundland becomes a crown colony.

1940 ~ Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer.

1945 ~ Death of George S. Patton, U.S. General.

1958 ~ Charles de Gaulle became the first leader of the Fifth Republic.

1979 ~ Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.

1988 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground.

December 22nd
 

1858 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Puccini, Composer.

1864 ~ Savannah, Georgia fell to the Union army of General Sherman.

1880 ~ Death of George Eliot, Writer.

1944 ~ During the Battle of the Bulge, Germany demanded the surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium; Brigadier Gen. Anthony C. McAuliffe reportedly replied: ''Nuts!''.

1989 ~ Ion Iliescu assumed executive power of Romania, ending Nicolae Ceauşescu's Communist dictatorship.

1989 ~ Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened, ending the division of East and West Germany.

1990 ~ Lech Wałęsa sworn in as President of Poland.

2001 ~ The Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the government headed by President Hamid Karzai.

2001 ~ Richard Reid tried to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes.

2001 ~ Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.

December 23rd
 

1790 ~ Birthday of Jean François Champollion, Egyptologist. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

1823 ~ “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, by Clement Clarke Moore, was first published.

1834 ~ Death of Thomas Malthus, Demographer and Economist.

1888 ~ Vincent Van Gogh cut off his ear.

1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1956 ~ British and French forces withdrawn from Suez, Egypt.

1979 ~ Soviet military occupies Kabul, Afghanistan.

1986 ~ Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling.


Feastdays & Holidays

Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held.

December 24th
 

1491 ~ Birthday of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits.

1818 ~ "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.

1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer.

1914 ~ World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.

1914 ~ Death of John Muir, Naturalist.

1951 ~ Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written specifically for TV, was first broadcast

1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan.

1968 ~ The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve TV broadcast.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia.

1992 ~ President Bush pardoned 6 people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

December 25th
 

800 ~ Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1066 ~ Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1223 ~ Saint Francis of Assisi assembled the first Nativity scene.

1642 ~ Birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, Physicist & Mathematician.

1821 ~ Birthday of Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross.

1918 ~ Birthday of Anwar Sadat, Egyptian president.

1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot.

1973 ~ A programming bug routed all ARPANET traffic through the server at Harvard, causing the server to freeze - crashing the network.

1989 ~ Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator (executed).

1991 ~ Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).

Feastdays & Holidays

The Nativity of Jesus.

DM..It was good to see you at "you know where" Thanks for keeping in touch hun. :) Merry Christmas.

December 26th
 

1610 ~ Elizabeth Bathory's crimes were uncovered.

1791 ~ Birthday of Charles Babbage, Mathematician and designer of computing machines.

1792 ~ Final trial of Louis XVI of France began.

1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

1948 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty arrested in Hungary.

1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.

1991 ~ Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolved the USSR.

2004 ~ A tsunami triggered by an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean left more than 216,000 people dead or missing, mostly in southern Asia.

I sure do love this thread jseal and appreciate the work you put into it.

Loved that link for the 1610 tidbit today.

December 27th
 

1571 ~ Birthday of Johannes Kepler, astronomer.

1822 ~ Birthday of Louis Pasteur, Scientist.

1831 ~ Charles Darwin embarked on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

1871 ~ The world's first cat show was held at the Crystal Palace in London.

1904 ~ James Barrie's play Peter Pan premiered in London.

1932 ~ Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1945 ~ The World Bank was created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1945 ~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted Indonesia sovereignty.

1985 ~ Naturalist Dian Fossey was found murdered in Rwanda.

2001 ~ The U.S. announced plans to hold Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Just filling in for a few days while jseal is away ...

December 28th

1065 ~ Westminster Abbey consecrated.

1836 ~ Spain recognized Mexico’s independence.

1869 ~ William F. Semple patented chewing gum.

1895 ~ The Lumiere Brothers gave birth to Cinema at the Grand Cafe in Paris.

1937 ~ Death of Maurice Ravel, French composer.

1951 ~ The Peak District became the UK’s first National Park.

1969 ~ Birthday of Linus Torvalds, Benevolent Dictator for Life of Linux.

1973 ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn published Gulag Archipelago.

1983 ~ Death of Dennis Wilson, the only Beach Boy who could surf.

2000 ~ Montgomery Ward announced it was going out of business after 128 years.

December 29th

1170 ~ Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by knights acting under the orders of Henry II.

1845 ~ Texas became the 28th state of the United States.

1851 ~ The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the U.S. opened in Boston.

1890 ~ Defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee effectively ended American Indian resistance to European settlement of the U.S.

1916 ~ Death of Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk.

1937 ~ The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

1986 ~ Death of Harold Macmillan, former Prime Minister of the UK.

1989 ~ Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

1998 ~ Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed 1 million lives.

December 30th

1691 ~ Death of Robert Boyle, the first modern Chemist.

1853 ~ The U.S. bought some 45,000 sq miles of land from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

1879 ~ The Pirates of Penzance was first performed.

1896 ~ Jose Rizal, hero of the Philippine Revolution, was executed by firing-squad by the Spanish.

1911 ~ Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

1922 ~ The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed by the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Transcaucasian Federation.

1924 ~ Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galaxies.

1937 ~ Birthday of Gordon Banks, the best Goalkeeper ever.

1981 ~ Wayne Gretzky scored his 50th goal in 39 games.

1993 ~ Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations.

2006 ~ Saddam Hussein hanged for crimes committed during brutal reign.

December 31st

404 ~ The last gladiatorial contest took place in Rome.

1879 ~ Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of an electric incandescent lamp.

1880 ~ Birthday of George Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State, recipient of 1953 Nobel Peace Prize.

1938 ~ The first breath test for drivers, "drunkometer," was introduced.

1960 ~ The farthing coin ceased to be legal tender.

1964 ~ One of my boyhood heroes, Donald Campbell set the world water speed record, the only man to set both the world land and water speed records in the same year.

1980 ~ Death of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian writer.

1987 ~ Robert Mugabe sworn in as Zimbabwe's president.

1995 ~ The last new Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip was published.

1999 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.

jseal didn't actually give me a post for today, but just in case he's not back, I'll put one out here ...

January 1st

1892 ~ the Ellis Island Immigrant Station in New York formally opened.

1898 ~ New York City was consolidated into five boroughs.

1901 ~ the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed.

1953 ~ country singer Hank Williams Sr., 29, died of a drug and alcohol overdose while en route to a concert date in Canton, Ohio.

1959 ~ Fidel Castro led Cuban revolutionaries to victory over Fulgencio Batista.

1984 ~ the breakup of AT&T took place as the telecommunications giant was divested of its 22 Bell System companies under terms of an antitrust agreement.

1993 ~ Czechoslovakia peacefully split into two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

1994 ~ the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect.

1999 ~ the euro, the new single currency of 11 European countries (later 12), officially came into existence with the start of the New Year.

January 2nd
 

1492 ~ Granada, the last Moorish stronghold in Spain, surrendered.

1727 ~ Birthday of James Wolfe, British general in French and Indian War.

1872 ~ Brigham Young was arrested for bigamy (25 wives).

1882 ~ John D. Rockefeller united his oil holdings into the Standard Oil trust.

1904 ~ Death of James Longstreet, Confederate general.

1905 ~ The Russian fleet surrender at Port Arthur, China brought the Russo-Japanese War to a close.

1920 ~ Birthday of Isaac Asimov, Russian-born American science fiction author.

1929 ~ Canada and the United States agreed on a plan to preserve Niagara Falls.

1942 ~ Manila was captured by Japanese forces during World War II.

1996 ~ U.S. peacekeepers arrive in Bosnia.