Today is Friday December 26, 2014 360 day of 2014, 5 remaining Sunrise: 7:23am Sunset: 4:57 pm 9 hours and 33 minutes of daylight today Moonrise: 10:44 a.m. Moonset: 10:41 p.m. Special Celebrations today: Today is National Whiners Day, Candy Cane Day and Boxing Day in Canada as well as National Coffee Percolator Day on this day in.... 1620 - The Pilgrim Fathers landed at New Plymouth, MA, to found Plymouth Colony, with John Carver as Governor. 1776 - The British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolutionary War. 1865 - The coffee percolator was patented by James H. Mason. 1871 - The "Gods Grown Old" was performed for the first time. It ran for 64 shows. 1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium. 1908 - Texan boxer "Galveston Jack" Johnson knocked out Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, to become the first black boxer to win the world heavyweight title. 1917 - During World War I, the U.S. government took over operation of the nation's railroads. 1921 - The Catholic Irish Free State became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain. 1927 - The East-West Shrine football game featured numbers on both the front and back of players’ jerseys. 1941 - Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress. 1943 - The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was sunk in the North Sea, during the Battle of North Cape. 1944 - Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie" was first performed publicly, at the Civic Theatre in Chicago, IL. 1947 - Heavy snow blanketed the Northeast United States, burying New York City under 25.8 inches of snow in 16 hours. The severe weather was blamed for about 80 deaths. 1953 - "Big Sister" was heard for the last time on CBS Radio. The show ran for 17 years. 1954 - "The Shadow" aired on radio for the last time. 1956 - Fidel Castro attempted a secret landing in Cuba to overthrow the Batista regime. All but 11 of his supporters were killed. 1959 - The first charity walk took place, along Icknield Way, in aid of the World Refugee Fund. 1974 - Comedian Jack Benny died at age 80. 1982 - The Man of the Year in "TIME" magazine was a computer. It was the first time a non-human received the honors. 1986 - Doug Jarvis, age 31, set a National Hockey League (NHL) record as he skated in his 916th consecutive game. Jarvis eventually set the individual record for most consecutive games played with 964. 1986 - "Search for Tomorrow" was seen for the last time on CBS-TV. The show had been on the air for 35-years. 1990 - Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov to retain the chess championship. 1991 - The Soviet Union's parliament formally voted the country out of existence. 1995 - Israel turned dozens of West Bank villages over to the Palestinian Authority. 1996 - Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, CO. 1998 - Iraq announced that it would fire on U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the skies over northern and southern Iraq. 1999 - Alfonso Portillo, a populist lawyer, won Guatemala's first peacetime presidential elections in 40 years. 2000 - Michael McDermott, age 42, opened fire at his place of employment killing seven people. McDermott had no criminal history. 2002 - The first cloned human baby was born. The announcement was made the December 27 by Clonaid. 2004 - Under the Indian Ocean, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent 500-mph waves across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The tsunami killed at least 283,000 people in a dozen countries, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sumatra, Thailand and India. If today is your birthday you share it with: Henry Miller Mao Tse-Tung Richard Widmark Phil Spector Steve Allen John Walsh Lar Ulrich Tags: Daily Almanac/tides
December 26, 2014
