What happened on December 24 ?
Events
640 - John IV becomes Pope.
1294 - Pope Boniface VIII is elected Pope, replacing St. Celestine V, who had abdicated.
1515 - Thomas Wolsey is named the English Lord Chancellor.
1715 - Swedish troops occupy Norway.
1777 - Kiritimati, also called Christmas Island, was discovered by James Cook.
1800 - Assassination attempt on Napoleon Bonaparte's life.
1814 - The Treaty of Ghent was signed which ended the War of 1812.
1818 - "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.
1851 - Library of Congress burns.
1865 - Several US Civil War Confederate veterans form the Ku Klux Klan.
1906 - The first radio program, consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech, is broadcast.
1914 - World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.
1924 - Albania becomes a republic.
1941 - Hong Kong falls to the Japanese Imperial Army.
1941 - Wake Island is conquered by Japanese forces.
1943 - US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the supreme Allied commander.
1946 - France's Fourth Republic founded.
1951 - Libya becomes independent from Italy. Idris I is proclaimed King of Libya.
1953 - Tangiwai disaster: A railway bridge collapse at Tangiwai, New Zealand sends a fully loaded passenger train into the Whangaehu River, killing 153 people.
1953 - NBC's Dragnet becomes the first network-sponsored television program.
1954 - Laos becomes independent.
1966 - A Canadair CL44 chartered by the United States military crashes into a small village in South Vietnam, killing 129.
1968 - The crew of the USS Pueblo is released by North Korea after being held for 11 months on suspicion of spying.
1968 - The crew of Apollo 8 enter into orbit around the Moon, becoming the first humans to do so.
1969 - Curt Flood writes to Bowie K. Kuhn, the Commissioner of Baseball, asking to be declared a free agent .
1974 - Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Australia.
1979 - The Soviet Union invades Afghanistan to support the country's Marxist government.
1979 - The first European Ariane rocket is launched.
1985 - A black bull blocks the Cross Harbour Tunnel in Hong Kong for three hours.
1987 - Japanese legendary rock band BOÿWY declares their breakup at the Shibuya Kokaido.
1997 - The Sid El-Antri massacre (or Sidi Lamri) in Algeria kills 50-100 people.
1997 - The Dominican Republic becomes a member of the Berne Convention copyright treaty.
2000 - The Texas 7 holds up a sports store in Irving, Texas. Police officer Aubrey Hawkins is shot during the robbery.
2002 - The New Delhi Metro opens.
2003 - The Spanish police thwarts an attempt by ETA to detonate 50 kg of explosives at 3:55 p.m. inside Madrid's busy ChamartÃn Station.
2004 - The 2004 Christmas Eve Snowstorm delivers an extremely unusual snowfall to the southern United States.
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