Events

• 274 - Roman Emperor Aurelian dedicates a temple to Sol Invictus on the supposed day of the winter solstice and day of rebirth of the Sun.
• 800 - Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.
• 1000 - The foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary: Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.
• 1066 - Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.
• 1100 - Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned as the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity
• 1130 - Roger II of Sicily is crowned as the first King of Sicily
• 1223 - St. Francis of Assisi assembles the first Nativity scene.
• 1261 - John IV Lascaris of the restored Eastern Roman Empire is deposed and blinded by orders of his co-ruler Michael VIII Palaeologus.
• 1553 - Battle of Tucapel: Mapuche rebels under Lautaro defeats the Spanish conquistadors and exetutes the governor of Chile Pedro de Valdivia.
• 1599 - The city of Natal, Brazil is founded.
• 1643 - Christmas Island founded and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel, the Royal Mary.
• 1776 - George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey.
• 1818 - The first performance of "Silent Night" takes place in the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.
• 1837 - Battle of Lake Okeechobee: United States forces defeat Seminole Native Americans.
• 1868 - U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.
• 1914 - World War I: Known as the Christmas truce, German and British troops on the Western Front temporarily cease fire.
• 1926 - Emperor Taishō of Japan dies. His son, Prince Hirohito succeeds him as Emperor Shōwa.
• 1932 - A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Gansu, China kills ~70,000 people.
• 1941 - Admiral Chester W Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
• 1941 - World War II: Battle of Hong Kong ends, beginning the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong.
• 1947 - The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect.
• 1950 - The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.
• 1963 - Turkish Cypriot Bayrak Radio begins transmitting in Cyprus after Turkish Cypriots were forcibly excluded from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.
• 1965 - The Yemeni Nasserite Unionist People's Organisation is founded in Taiz
• 1968 - Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.
• 1968 - 42 Dalits are burned alive in Kilavenmani village, Tamil Nadu, India, a retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit labourers.
• 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.
• 1974 - Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Northern Territory Australia.
• 1974 - Marshall Fields drives a vehicle through the gates of the White House, resulting in a four-hour standoff.
• 1977 - Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with President of Egypt Anwar Sadat.
• 1979 - The Soviet Union airlifts forces into Afghanistan to begin its costly occupation.
• 1989 - Nicolae Ceauşescu, former communist dictator of Romania, and his wife Elena are condemned to death and executed under a wide range of charges.
• 1990 - The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web.
• 1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.
• 2000 - Four-story Dongdu Commercial Plaza building fire, at Luoyang, Henan, China, 309 killed.
• 2003 - The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe which was released from the Mars Express Spacecraft on December 19, disappears shortly before its scheduled landing.
• 2004 - Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.

Births