This Week in History 12/19 – 12/25

This Week in History:

December 19:

• A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is published, 6,000 copies sold (1843)
• Bill Wallace, missionary to China, was martyred by Chinese Communists soldiers (1950)
• Benjamin Franklin under the name Richard Saunders begins publication of Poor Richard’s Almanack (1732)
• US Revolutionary War: Thomas Paine published his first essay, in which he wrote, “These are the times that try men’s souls” (1776)
• The United States House of Representatives forwards Articles I and III of impeachment against President Bill Clinton to the Senate because of the Lewinsky scandal (1998)
• US Revolutionary War: General Washington settles his troops at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania for winter (1777)
• WW2: Hitler takes complete command of German Army (1941)
• First radio broadcast from space with President Eisenhower voice “To all mankind, America’s wish for Peace on Earth & Good Will to Men Everywhere” (1958)
• Music Man opens at Majestic Theater NYC for 1375 performances (1957)
• WW2: US Office of Censorship created to control info pertaining to the war (1941)
• US recognizes independence of Hawaii (1842)
• British Broadcasting Corp begins transmitting overseas (1932)
• William Pitt the Younger becomes the youngest ever British Prime Minister at age 24 (1783)
• Theresa Vaughn, 24, confesses in court in Sheffield, England, to being married 61 times over 5 years in 50 cities in three countries (1922)
• South Carolina declares right of states to nullify federal laws (1828)
• Georgia passes first US state birth registration law in US (1823)

December 20:

• A revival broke out among the Shakers igniting a religious fervor among other denominations especially in Kentucky and other colonial frontier regions (1787)
• Montgomery, Alabama removed race-based seat assignments on its buses (1956)
• Virginia Company settlers leave London to establish Jamestown, Virginia (1606)
• 14 republics form Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics – USSR (1922)
• Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life starring James Stewart and Donna Reed premieres in New York (1946)
• Bob Hope becomes an American citizen (1920)
• French flag lowered in New Orleans to mark formal transfer of Louisiana Purchase from France to US for 27 million (1803)
• Grimm’s Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm is published (1812)
• Civil War: South Carolina secedes from the Union (1860)
• Vietnam War: National Front for the Liberation of Vietnam is formed (1960)
• Harvey starring James Stewart premieres in New York (1950)
• Phileas Fogg completes around world trip according to Jules Verne (1892)
• Thomas Edison privately demonstrated incandescent light at Menlo Park (1879)
• First successful US cotton mill to spin yarn in Rhode Island (1790)
• Pneumatic automobile tire patented (1892)
• WW2: World War II: First battle of the American Volunteer Group, better known as the Flying Tigers, in Kunming, China (1941)
• Osmond brothers debut on Andy Williams Show (1962)
• First state anti-lynching statute approved in Georgia (1893)
• Elvis Presley given draft notice to join US Army for National Service (1957)
• Archbishop Edmund Grindal  challenge Queen Elizabeth when she ordered him to squelch a Puritan movement in England (1576)
• Missouri imposes a $1 bachelor tax on unmarried men between 21 & 50 (1820)
• Civil War: Vicksburg Campaign begins (1862)
• Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II becomes the oldest ever monarch of the United Kingdom, surpassing Queen Victoria, who lived for 81 years, 7 months and 29 days (2007)
• Broadway lit by electricity, becomes known as “Great White Way” (1880)
• Baldwin Institute, now known as Baldwin Wallace University, was founded (1845)

December 21:

• 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock (1620)
• French Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discover radium (1898)
• John Jay becomes first US Secretary of State (1784)
• Apollo 8, Borman, Lovell & Anders, first manned Moon voyage (1968)
• US Civil War: General Sherman conquers Savannah, Georgia (1864)
• Fox Films signs Shirley Temple, age 5, to a studio contract (1933)
• Walter L. Wilson, founder of Calvary Bible College and pioneer of Christian radio, was converted to Christianity (1896)
• Martin Luther King Jr. and others sit in the new integrated bus (1956)
• Flanders adopts Gregorian calendar, tomorrow is Jan 1 1583 (1582)
• The first full-length animated feature film and the earliest in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, premieres at the Carthay Circle Theatre (1937)
• J. Edgar Hoover deports anarchists/feminist Emma Goldman to Russia (1919)
• Flying Down to Rio becomes Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers first movie together (1932)
• Soviet Union formally dissolves as 11 of 12 republics sign treaty forming Commonwealth of Independent States (1991)
• First game of basketball, based on rules created by James Naismith, played by 18 students in Springfield, Massachusetts (1891)
• First crossword puzzle (with 32 clues) printed in NY World (1913)

December 22:

• 

  Moravian missionary constructs first schoolhouse west of Allegheny in Schoenbrunn Village, Ohio (1772)

• Continental navy organized with seven ships (1775)
• Romania ousts communist president Nicolae Ceausescu after police try to arrest a pastor and are stopped by a crowd that grows into a mob and marches to the palace, the first domino in the fall of the USSR (1989)
• French officer Alfred Dreyfus court-martialed for treason, triggers worldwide charges of antisemitism. Dreyfus later vindicated. (1894)
• Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony given world premiere in Vienna (1808)
• Attendees at a prayer meeting for indigenous causes in the small village of Acteal in the Mexican state of Chiapas are massacred by paramilitary forces (1927)
• Julie Nixon, daughter of President Nixon, and David Eisenhower, grandson of President Eisenhower, marry each other at the White House (1968)
• Hugh McKail, a Covenanter preacher in Scotland, was martyred by being tortured and hung (1666)
• Samuel Marsden of the Church Missionary Society arrives in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand to establish the country’s first mission station (1814)
• John Hunt, first missionary to Fiji, arrived on the Fiji Islands (1836)
• The execution of author Fyodor Dostoevsky is called off at the last second (1849)
• The first U.S. commercial radio license assigned to a religious broadcaster was awarded to the National Presbyterian Church of Washington, D.C. (1921)
• First string of Christmas tree lights created by Thomas Edison (1882)

December 23:

• US Revolutionary War: General George Washington resigns his military commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to Congress (1783)
• Visit from St Nicholas by Clement Moore published (1823)
• US Revolutionary War: Thomas Paine writes “These are the times that try men’s souls” (1776)
• Maryland votes to cede a 10 sqaure mile area for District of Columbia (1788)
• US Revolutionary War: Benedict Arnold court-martialed for improper conduct (1779)
• The first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts (1954)
• “Emma” By Jane Austen by published (1815)
• Birth of Jean Francois Champollion, founder of modern Egyptology and man who successfully decoded the hieroglyphics of the Rosetta Stone (1790)
• Philip of Moscow, leader of the Russian Church, was martyred for speaking out against Ivan the Terrible’s mass executions (1569)
• English astronomer John Flamsteed observes Uranus without realizing it’s undiscovered (1690)
• Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops stormed city of Aleppo, recovering the tattered tunic of John the Baptist (1962)
• Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear with a razor, and sends it to a prostitute for safe keeping (1888)
• First Keystone Kops film, entitled Hoffmeyer’s Legacy (1912)
• Birth of Robert Barclay, Scottish Quaker theologian (1648)
• BBC Radio began daily newscasts (1922)

December 24:

• Astronauts James A. Lovell, William Anders, and Frank Borman read passages from Genesis to the world as Apollo VIII became the first manned vehicle to circle the moon (1968)
• Silent Night sung for the very first time at St. Nicholas Church in Austria (1818)
• The Northside Tabernacle in Chicago was dedicated by evangelist Dwight L. Moody (1871)
• Fire devastates US Library of Congress in Washington, destroys 35,000 volumes (1851)
• Henry Ford completes his first useful petrolm fuelled engine (1893)
• WW2: FDR appoints General Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces
• US Civil War: Several Confederate veterans form Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski, Tennessee (1865)
• Henry Ford completes his first useful petroleum fueled engine (1893)
• War of 1812: The Treaty of Peace and Amity between His Britannic Majesty and the United States of America is signed by British and American representatives at Ghent, Belgium, ending the war (1814)
• Irving Fisher patents archiving system with index cards (1912)
• Methodism was officially organized in the newly-independent United States of America (1784)
• Americans remembered Iran hostages by shining lights for 417 seconds (1980)
• WW1: German plane drops bombs on Dover England (1914)

December 25:

• Christ was born according to calendar-maker Dionysius Exiguus (1 AD)
• The first recorded celebration of Christmas (336 AD)
• First known Christmas carol Silent Night, Holy Night sung in Austria (1818)
• Handel’s Messiah, premieres in the US in Boston (1818)
• US Revolutionary War: Washington crosses Delaware where he surprises and defeats 1,400 Hessians (1776)
• WW1: Legendary Christmas Truce ceased fighting among enemies (1914)
• Francis of Assisi assembles first Nativity scene Greccio, Italy (1223)
• Bing Crosby sings White Christmas in public for the first time (1941)
• The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web (1990)
• Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the 9th reindeer (1939)
• US Civil War: President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all persons involved in Southern rebellion (1868)
• US Civil War: Christmas for Union soldier Elisha Hunt Rhodes, famous for his diary of the Civil War that span four years (1862)
• Massachusetts General Court ordered a five shilling fine for “observing any such day as Christmas” (1651)
• The Dunkards, German Baptists, held their first immersion service in America at Germantown, Pennsylvania (1723)
• Physician Ephraim McDowell performs the first abdominal surgery in the U.S, an ovariotomy to remove a 22 lb ovarian tumor (1809)
• First electrically-lit Christmas tree appeared in the White House while Calvin Coolidge was president (1923)
• Governor William Bradford of Plymouth Colony forbids game playing on Christmas (1621)
• Clovis, the first French Christian king, and 4,000 of his troops became Christians and were baptized (496 AD)
• England adopts Julian calendar (597 AD)
• Astronomer Anders Celsius introduces Centigrade temperature scale (1741)
• Christmas Island founded and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel, the Royal Mary (1643)