On December 25th...

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795 Pope Hadrian I died.

800 Charlemagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

875 Charles the Bold was crowned Emperor of Rome.

969 Johannes I Tzimisces was crowned Emperor of Byzantium.

1046 Henry III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor.

1066 Duke William of Normandy, aka "William the Conqueror," was crowned King of England.

1100 Boudouin I of Boulogne was crowned King of Jerusalem.

1223 St. Francis of Assisi assembled the first Nativity scene, at Greccio, Italy.

1461 Christina of Saxony, Queen of Denmark and Norway, was born.

1587 Margarita of Austria, wife of King Philip III of Spain, was born.

1601 Composer Jose Ximenez was born.

1635 Samuel de Champlain, French explorer and founder of Quebec, Canada, died.

1642 Mathematician Isaac Newton was born.

1643 Christmas Island was discovered and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel Royal Mary.

1646 Composer Harald Vallerius was born.

1700 Prussian General Leopold II of Anhalt-Dessau was born.

1717 Giovanni A. Braschi, Pope Pius VI, was born.

1741 Anders Celsius introduced the centigrade temperature scale.

1750 Composer John Beckwith was born.

1757 U. S. politician Benjamin Pierce was born.

1761 Empress Elizabeth of Russia died.

1763 Engineer Claude Chappe was born.

1765 Composer Joseph Mazzinghi was born.

1771 Poet Dorothy Wordsworth was born.

1776 General George Washington and the Continental Army crossed the Delaware River.

1809 Ephraim McDowell performed the first abdominal surgery in the United States, an ovariotomy to remove a 22-pound tumor.

1821 Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was born.

1823 Confederate General Preston Smith was born.

1832 Union General Thomas Alfred Smyth was born.

1863 Film and record pioneer Charles Pathé was born.

1868 President Andrew Johnson granted an unconditional pardon to all persons involved in the "Southern Rebellion."

1870 Helena Rubinstein, cosmetics company founder, was born.

1878 Race car driver and designer Louis-Joseph Chevrolet was born.

1884 Actress Evelyn Nesbit was born.

1887 Hotel chain founder Conrad Hilton was born.

1890 Robert L. Ripley, of Believe It or Not! fame, was born.

1899 Actor Humphrey Bogart was born.

1900 Opera singer Gladys Swarthout was born.

1906 Clark Clifford, U. S. presidential advisor and Secretary of Defense, was born.
1906 Movie producer Lew Grade was born.

1907 Singer Cab Calloway was born.
1907 Oil tycoon Glenn McCarthy was born.

1908 Composer Jan Seidel was born.

1911 Cartoonist Burne Hogarth was born.

1914 British and German troops on the battlefields of Europe exchanged gifts and played an impromptu football game.

1915 Actress Nora Dunfee was born.

1918 Ahmed Ben Bella, the first President of Algeria, was born.
1918 Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt, was born.

1924 Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone, was born.
1924 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the 10th Prime Minister of India, was born.

1925 Author Carlos Castaneda was born.

1926 Japanese Emperor Yoshihito died.

1932 A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck Qansu, China, killing 275 persons.

1934 Racecar driver Giancarlo Baghetti was born.

1937 The NBC Radio Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, debuted.
1937 Politician Newton D. Baker died.

1938 Author Karel Capek died.

1939 Montgomery Ward introduced Rudolph as Santa's ninth reindeer.

1940 Music producer Phil Spector was born.

1945 Actor Gary Sandy was born.
1945 Football player Ken Stabler was born.

1946 Taiwan (Nationalist China) adopted a constitution.
1946 Singer Jimmy Buffett was born.
1946 Football player Larry Csonka was born.
1946 Comic actor W. C. Fields died.

1948 Singer Barbara Mandrell was born.

1949 Nawaz Sharif, three-time Prime Minister of Pakistan, was born.
1949 Actress Sissy Spacek was born.

1950 The Coronation Stone, taken from Scone in Scotland by Edward I in 1296, was stolen from Westminster Abbey and smuggled back to Scotland.
1950 Baseball player Manny Trillo was born.

1953 An avalanche of lava from Ruapehu volcano in New Zealand killed 150 persons.

1954 Singer Annie Lennox was born.

1955 NORAD headquarters answered its very first "where's Santa?" call.

1958 Baseball player Rickey Henderson was born.
1958 Singer Alannah Myles was born.

1959 Astronaut Michael P. Anderson was born.

1971 Fire ravaged the Taeyokale Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, and killed 163 persons.
1971 Justin Trudeau, the 23rd Prime Minister of Canada, was born.

1974 Cyclone Tracy destroyed 90 percent of Darwin, Australia, and killed more than 60 people.

1977 Actor-director-producer Charlie Chaplin died.

1978 Venera 11 deployed a probe that descended to the surface of Venus.

1979 Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan.

1989 Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife were executed.
1989 Billy Martin, five-time manager of the New York Yankees, died.

1991 Mikhail Gorbachev publicly announced his resignation as President of the Soviet Union.

1995 Singer Dean Martin died.

1997 Actor Denver Pyle died.

2006 Singer James Brown died.

2008 Singer Eartha Kitt died.

2012 An Antonov An-72 crashed near Shymkent, Kazakhstan, killing 27 persons.
2012 Two fires in Manila, Philippines, killed 8 persons and left thousands homeless.

2016 A Russian military plane crashed into the Black Sea after taking off from Sochi, Russia, killing all 92 persons aboard.
2016 Singer George Michael died.

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This page was last updated on December 25, 2018.