December 25
It’s Christmas Day and National Pumpkin Pie Day
ON THIS DAY…
1 First Christmas, according to Scythian monk and calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus
337 Earliest possible date that Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th
352 First definite date Christmas was celebrated on Dec 25th
597 England adopts Julian calendar
800 Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor
1066 Coronation of William the Conqueror as King of England, at Westminster Abbey, London
1223 St. Francis of Assisi assembles the first Nativity scene in Greccio, Italy
1741 Astronomer Anders Celcius introduces Centigrade temperature scale
1758 Halley’s comet is first sighted by astronomer Johann Georg Palitzsch during its return
1776 George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack Great Britain’s Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey
1868 Despite bitter opposition, U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers
1896 “Stars & Stripes Forever” is written by John Philip Sousa
1923 During Calvin Coolidge’s first Christmas as President, the first electrically-lit Christmas tree appears in the White House
1938 George Cukor announces Vivien Leigh will play Scarlett O’Hara
1939 Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is read on the radio for the first time
1939 Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is introduced by Montgomery Ward stores
1950 Dick Tracy marries Tess Truehart
1957 Ed Gein judged insane and committed to Waupan State Hospital for a life sentence for the murders of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden
1963 Walt Disney’s The Sword in the Stone is released
1973 The ARPANET crashes when a programming bug causes all ARPANET traffic to be routed through the server at Harvard University, causing the server to freeze
1981 After 6 years of hosting the daytime version of Wheel of Fortune, Chuck Woolery leaves the show
1990 The first successful communication between a client and server via the Internet is established
BORN:
1642 Sir Isaac Newton, physicist/mathematician/astronomer
1821 Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross
1863 Charles Pathé, film pioneer
1893 Robert L. Ripley, cartoonist (Believe It or Not)
1899 Humphrey Bogart, actor (Casablanca, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre)
1906 Lord Lew Grade,TV mogul/movie producer (The Muppet Movie, The Boys from Brazil)
1907 Cab Calloway, musician/bandleader
1908 Quentin Crisp, author/model/raconteur (The Naked Civil Servant, How to Become a Virgin)
1911 Burne Hogarth, illustrator/author (Tarzan, Pieces of Eight)
1921 Eeyore, gloomy grey stuffed donkey (this is the day Christopher Robin Milne recieved a stuffed toy donkey)
1924 Rod Serling, writer/producer (The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery)
1928 Dick Miller, actor (Amazon Women on the Moon, The Howling, Gremlins)
1929 Irish McCalla, actress (Sheena Queen of Jungle, The Beat Generation)
1931 Carlos Castaneda, writer/mystic (Eagle’s Gift, Fire From Within)
1944 Kenny Everett, DJ/TV personality (Kenny Everett Video Show, The Kenny Everett Television Show)
1944 Rick Berman, producer (Star Trek)
1945 Gary Sandy, actor (WKRP in Cincinnati)
1945 Noel Redding, musician (The Jimi Hendrix Experience)
1945 Ken “The Snake” Stabler, NFL quarterback (Oakland Raiders, Super Bowl XI)
1946 Jimmy Buffett, musician/author/parrothead
1949 Sissy Spacek, actress (Carrie, Badlands)
1954 Annie Lennox, musician (Eurythmics)
1957 Shane McGowan, musician (The Pogues)
1971 Dido Armstrong, musician
1984 Georgia Moffett, actress/daughter of Peter Davison (Peak Practice, Where the Heart Is)
DIED:
1938 Karel Capek, author/antifascist (R.U.R., Bílá Nemoc), dies at 48
1946 W.C. Fields, writer/comedian/actor (The Bank Dick, It’s A Gift), dies at 67
1977 Charlie Chaplin, actor/director (Modern Times, The Kid), dies at 88
1979 Joan Blondell, actress (Gold Diggers of 1937, The Public Enemy), dies at 70
1995 Dean Martin, singer/actor (Rio Bravo, Ocean’s Eleven), dies at 78
1996 Jon Benet Ramsey, child beauty queen, murdered at 6
1997 Denver Pyle, actor (The Dukes of Hazzard, Bonnie and Clyde), dies at 77
1999 Peter Jeffrey, actor (If…., The Abominable Dr. Phibes ) dies at 70
2006 James Brown, singer/The Hardest Working Man in Show Business