TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Monday, Dec. 25, the 359th day of 2023. There are six days left in the year. This is Christmas Day.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY:
On Dec. 25, 1776, Gen. George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey, during the American Revolutionary War.
ON THIS DATE:
In A.D. 336, the first known commemoration of Christmas on Dec. 25 took place in Rome.
In 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England.
In 1818, “Silent Night (Stille Nacht)” was publicly performed for the first time during the Christmas Midnight Mass at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.
In 1926, Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito.
In 1946, comedian and actor W.C. Fields died in Pasadena, California, at age 66.
In 1977, comedian and filmmaker Sir Charles Chaplin died in Switzerland at age 88.
In 1989, ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed following a popular uprising.
In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a communist superpower that had already gone out of existence.
In 1999, Space Shuttle Discovery’s astronauts finished their repair job on the Hubble Space Telescope and released it back into orbit.
In 2003, 16 people were killed by mudslides that swept over campgrounds in California’s San Bernardino Valley.
In 2009, passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 foiled an attempt to blow up the plane as it was landing in Detroit by seizing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to set off explosives in his underwear. (Abdulmutallab later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
In 2012, Chicago mobster Frank Calabrese Sr. died in a federal prison in North Carolina at age 75.
In 2017, Russian election officials formally barred opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running for president, prompting him to call for a boycott of the March, 2018 vote.
In 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope, rocketed away from French Guiana in South America on a quest to see light from the first stars and galaxies and search the universe for signs of life.
In 2020, a recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, damaging dozens of buildings, causing widespread communications outages and grounding holiday travel at the city’s airport; investigators later determined that the bomber, a 63-year-old Nashville-area man, was killed in the explosion.