EVENTS
- 800 – Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor
- 1066 – William the Conqueror was crowned King of England after he had invaded England from France, defeated and killed King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, then marched on London.
- 1223 – St. Francis of Assisi builds the first Nativity scene.
- 1643 – Christmas Island discovered. Captain William Mynors on the East India Company ship Royal Mary did not stop at the Australian island, which owes its name to the date of its discovery by Europeans. It was not until 44 years later that the first Europeans stepped on the Island. Sparsely populated, the Indian Ocean island is rich in phosphate, which is mined from the guano – bird droppings.
- 1776 – George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River
- 1809 – First abdominal surgery performed. American physician Ephraim McDowell became the first person in recorded history to successfully remove an ovarian tumor. He is known as the father of ovariotomy and abdominal surgery. The procedure took about 30 minutes and was performed without any anesthesia.
- 1868 – President Andrew Johnson granted general amnesty to all those involved in the Civil War.
- 1926 – Hirohito became Emperor of Japan.
- 1939 – Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is introduced in a 1939 booklet written by Robert L. May and published by Montgomery Ward.
- 1979 – USSR invades Afghanistan. The airlift of Soviet troops into Afghanistan started a 9 year long war. The anti-Soviet insurgents, the mujahideen, received support from the United States and other western allies.
- 1989 – In Romania, a television broadcast of a Christmas symphony was interrupted with the announcement that Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife had been executed following a popular uprising. A pro-democracy coalition then took control. Ceausescu, a hard-line Communist, had been ousted from power after ordering his black-shirted state police to suppress a disturbance in the town of Timisorara, resulting in the deaths of an estimated 4,500 persons.
- 1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as leader of the Soviet Union
BIRTHDAYS
- 1642 – Sir Issac Newton (Scientist)
- 1821 – Clara Barton (Founder of the American Red Cross)
- 1876 – Muhammad Ali Jinnah (Indian/Pakistani lawyer, politician, founder of Pakistan)
- 1878 – Louis Chevrolet (Car Company Founder)
- 1887 – Conrad Hilton (Founder of Hilton hotels)
- 1899 – Humphrey Bogart (Actor)
- 1918 – Anwar Sadat (Egyptian president)
- 1924 – Rod Serling (American screenwriter, producer, created The Twilight Zone)
- 1946 – Jimmy Buffet (Singer)
- 1949 – Sissy Spacek (Actress)
- 1958 – Ricky Henderson (Baseball player)
- 1968 – Helena Christensen (Model)
- 1984 – Alastair Cook (English cricketer)
DEATHS
- 1963 – Tristan Tzara (Romanian/French poet, critic)
- 1977 – Charlie Chaplin (English actor, director, producer, screenwriter, composer)
- 1983 – Joan Miró (Spanish painter)
- 1989 – Nicolae Ceaușescu (Romanian politician, 11th President of Romania)
- 2006 – James Brown (American singer-songwriter, producer, actor)