- False Confession Day
- Ratification Day-North Carolina
- National Stuffing Day
- National Kiwifruit Day
- World Televisions Day
- World Hello Day
- On This Day
- 1620 --- The Mayflower reached Provincetown, MA. The ship discharged the Pilgrims at Plymouth, MA, on December 26, 1620.
- 1783 --- French physician Jean-François Pilatre de Rozier and François Laurent, the marquis d' Arlandes, make the first untethered hot-air balloon flight, flying 5.5 miles over Paris in about 25 minutes. Their cloth balloon was crafted by French papermaking brothers Jacques-Étienne and Joseph-Michel Montgolfier, inventors of the world's first successful hot-air balloons.
- 1789 --- The 12th of the 13 original colonies to become the United States of America, did so on this day. North Carolina or the Tar Heel State, boasts the brilliant red cardinal as its state bird, the graceful dogwood as its state flower, and lays claim to being the nation’s largest producer of tobacco and textiles. Raleigh is the state capital.
- 1864 --- Legend holds that, President Abraham Lincoln composes a letter to Lydia Bixby, a widow and mother of five men who had been killed in the Civil War. A copy of the letter was then published in the Boston Evening Transcript on November 25 and signed "Abraham Lincoln." The original letter has never been found.
- 1877 --- Thomas A. Edison unveiled the phonograph.
- 1916 --- The Britannic, sister ship to the Titanic, sinks in the Aegean Sea on this day in 1916, killing 30 people. More than 1,000 others were rescued.
- 1927 --- Time magazine puts the week-old Holland Tunnel on its cover. The tunnel, which runs under the Hudson River between New York City and Jersey City, New Jersey, had opened to traffic the week before, at the stroke of midnight on November 13. (Earlier that day, President Calvin Coolidge had ceremonially opened the tunnel from his yacht on the Potomac by turning the same key that had "opened" the Panama Canal in 1915—Time called it "the golden lever of the Presidential telegraphic instrument"—which rang a giant brass bell at the tunnel's entrances.) On that first day, 51,694 vehicles traveled through the tunnel.
- 1931 --- The University of Southern California surprises Notre Dame with a last-minute game-winning field goal at the new Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend. The victory won USC the national championship and was, according to that year’s Trojan yearbook, "the biggest upset since Mrs. O’Leary’s cow knocked over that lantern."
- 1934 --- Ritz Crackers were introduced by the National Biscuit Company (now Nabisco).
- 1934 --- The New York Yankees purchased the contract of Joe DiMaggio from the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific Coast League.
- 1934 --- A young and gangly would-be dancer took to the stage of Harlem's Apollo Theater to participate in a harrowing tradition known as Amateur Night. Finding herself onstage as a result of pure chance after her name was drawn out of a hat, the aspiring dancer spontaneously decided to turn singer instead—a change of heart that would prove momentous not only for herself personally, but also for the future course of American popular music. The performer in question was a teenaged Ella Fitzgerald, whose decision to sing rather than dance on this day in 1934 set her on a course toward becoming a musical legend. It also led her to victory at Amateur Night at the Apollo, a weekly event that was then just a little more than a year old but still thrives today.
- 1941 --- 'King Biscuit Time' radio show was first broadcast from Helena, Arkansas. It is the longest running daily radio program in history, broadcasting live blues music, interviews, etc. It is named for its sponsor, King Biscuit Flour. The ‘King Biscuit Flour Hour’ rock and roll radio program took its name from 'King Biscuit Time.'
- 1944 --- “Happy trails to you, until we meet again....” The Roy Rogers Show was first heard on the Mutual Broadcasting System. Singing along with Roy (‘The King of the Cowboys’), were the Whippoorwills and The Sons of the Pioneers.
- 1960 --- George Harrison was deported from Germany for being too young to perform there with the Beatles.
- 1963 --- U.S. President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, arrived in San Antonio, TX. They were beginning an ill-fated, two-day tour of Texas that would end in Dallas.
- 1973 --- U.S. President Richard M. Nixon's attorney, J. Fred Buzhardt, announced the presence of an 18½-minute gap in one of the White House tape recordings related to the Watergate case.
- 1976 --- Rocky, starring Sylvester Stallone as the underdog prizefighter Rocky Balboa, debuts in New York City. The movie, which opened in theaters across the United States on December 3, 1976, was a huge box-office hit and received 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay for the then-little known Stallone. Rocky ultimately took home three Oscars, including one for Best Picture, and made Stallone one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.
- 1980 --- Don Henley was arrested after paramedics treated a nude sixteen year-old girl suffering from drug intoxication at his home in Los Angeles, CA. Henley was charged with unlawful possession of marijuana, cocaine and Quaaludes and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
- 1980 --- 350 million people around the world tune in to television's popular primetime drama "Dallas" to find out who shot J.R. Ewing, the character fans loved to hate. J.R. had been shot on the season-ending episode the previous March 21, which now stands as one of television's most famous cliffhangers. The plot twist inspired widespread media coverage and left America wondering "Who shot J.R.?" for the next eight months. The November 21 episode solved the mystery, identifying Kristin Shepard, J.R.'s wife's sister and his former mistress, as the culprit.
- 1985 --- Jonathan Jay Pollard, a civilian U.S. Navy intelligence analyst and Jewish American, is arrested on charges of illegally passing classified U.S. security information about Arab nations to Israel. Pollard, an employee at the navy intelligence center in Suitland, Maryland, was eventually convicted and sentenced to life in prison under the recommendation of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. The Israeli government did not officially object to the sentencing and most of Israel regarded the incident as an unfortunate embarrassment. However, Israeli calls for Pollard's release mounted during the next decade, and top Israeli officials complained that Pollard received a far stiffer sentence than other individuals found in the past to have been passing information to "friendly" nations. In 1995, Israel awarded Pollard Israeli citizenship. He remains behind bars for his espionage.
- 1986 --- National Security Council staff member Oliver North and his secretary, Fawn Hall, begin shredding documents that would have exposed their participation in a range of illegal activities regarding the sale of arms to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to a rebel Nicaraguan group. On November 25, North was fired but Hall continued to sneak documents to him by stuffing them in her skirt and boots. The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, became an embarrassment and a sticky legal problem for the Reagan administration.
- 1995 --- The presidents of three rival Balkan states agreed to make peace in Bosnia, ending nearly four years of terror and ethnic bloodletting that have left a quarter of a million people dead in the worst war in Europe since World War II.
- 2003 --- In Santa Barbara, CA, Michael Jackson was booked on suspicion of child molestation. Jackson immediately posted the $3 million bail and then flew back to Las Vegas where he had been filming a video. He was given an arraignment date of January 9, 2004.
- 2004 --- The NBA suspended Indiana's Ron Artest for the rest of the season following a brawl in the stands during a game against the Detroit Pistons.
- Birthdays
- Coleman Hawkins
- Stan Musial
- Francois Voltaire
- Rene Magritte
- Eleanor Luckman
- Joe Campanella
- Jean Shepard
- Dr John (Mac Rebenac)
- Natalia Makarova
- Marcy Carsey
- Lorna Luft
- Bjork Gudmundsdottir
- 325th Day of 2014 / 41 Remaining
- Winter Begins in 31 Days
- Sunrise:6:57
- Sunset:4:54
- 9 Hours 57 Minutes
- Moon Rise:4:57am
- Moon Set:4:01pm
- Moon Phase:1%
- Next Full Moon December 6 @ 4:27am
- Full Cold Moon
- Full Long Nights Moon
During this month the winter cold fastens its grip, and nights are at their longest and darkest. It is also sometimes called the Moon before Yule. The term Long Night Moon is a doubly appropriate name because the midwinter night is indeed long, and because the Moon is above the horizon for a long time. The midwinter full Moon has a high trajectory across the sky because it is opposite a low Sun.
- Tides:
- High Tide:9:12am/10:50pm
- Low Tide:3:07am/4:03pm