What happened on December 26 ?
Events
1481 - Battle of Westbroek - Holland defeats troops of Utrecht.
1620 - Elizabeth Báthory's crimes are uncovered.
1620 - Pilgrim Fathers land at what becomes New Plymouth in Massachusetts.
1776 - American Revolutionary War: The British are defeated in the Battle of Trenton.
1790 - Louis XVI of France gives his public assent to Civil Constitution of the Clergy during the French Revolution.
1792 - The final trial of Louis XVI of France begins in Paris.
1793 - Battle of Geisberg: French defeat Austrians.
1793 - The wedding of Prince Friedrich Ludwig of Prussia and Frederica of Mecklenburg-Strelitz takes place.
1825 - Several Imperial Russia army officers lead circa 3000 soldiers on the Senate Square in the failed Decembrist uprising.
1825 - The Erie Canal opens.
1848 - The Phi Delta Theta fraternity is founded.
1861 - American Civil War: Confederate diplomatic envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and Britain.
1862 - American Civil War: The Battle of Chickasaw Bayou begins.
1870 - The 12.8-km long Fréjus Rail Tunnel through the Alps is completed.
1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.
1908 - Jack Johnson becomes the first African American heavyweight boxing champion by defeating Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
1916 - Joseph Joffre is made Marshal of France.
1925 - The Communist Party of India is founded.
1925 - Turkey adopts the Gregorian Calendar.
1931 - Phi Iota Alpha, the oldest existing Latino fraternity is founded.
1933 - The Nissan Motor Company is organized in Tokyo, Japan.
1933 - FM radio is patented.
1943 - World War II: The German warship Scharnhorst sinks off the coast of North Cape in Norway after being attacked by the British Royal Navy late the previous evening.
1944 - The play The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams is first publicly performed.
1944 - World War II: U.S. troops repulse German forces at Bastogne.
1945 - CFP franc and CFA franc are created.
1946 - The Flamingo Hotel opens in Las Vegas.
1947 - Twenty-six inches of snow falls in 16 hours in New York City.
1948 - Cardinal Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy.
1966 - The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach.
1973 - Comet Kohoutek reaches perihelion but is not such a display as expected.
1973 - Soyuz 13 lands on earth after a week in orbit.
1974 - Salyut 4 is launched.
1975 - The Tupolev Tu-144 goes into service in Soviet Union.
1976 - The Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) is founded.
1979 - Soviet Special forces troops take over presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan.
1979 - Opening night of the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea at the Hammersmith Odeon; a benefit concert for the citizens of Cambodia who were victims of dictator Pol Pot
1980 - Aeroflot puts the Ilyushin Il-86 into service.
1982 - TIME magazine's Man of the Year was for the first time given to a non-human, the personal computer.
1984 - Princess Astrid of Belgium marries Archduke Lorenz of Austria-Este.
1986 - The first long-running American television soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, airs its final episode after thirty-five years on the air.
1988 - The Nanjing Anti-African protests in Nanjing, China begin.
1991 - Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolves the USSR.
1991 - Mount Pinatubo erupts.
1996 - JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old beauty queen, is found murdered in her family's basement in Boulder, Colorado.
1996 - The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification goes into force.
1998 - Iraq announced its intention to fire upon U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones.
1998 - Severe gales over Ireland, northern England, and southern Scotland cause widespread disruption and widespread power outages in Northern Ireland and southern Scotland.
1999 - Severe weather in France kills over 100 people and causes extensive damage to property and trees and the French national power grid (see Lothar).
2002 - French Raelian scientist Brigitte Boisselier says Clonaid has delivered the first of a supposed five clone babies through cesarean section.
2003 - A major earthquake devastates southeast Iranian city of Bam, killing tens of thousands and destroying the citadel of Arg-é Bam.
2004 - An earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter magnitude scale creates a tsunami causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, The Maldives and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing more than 300,000.
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