December 18th
 

1737 ~ Death of Antonio Stradivari, Italian violin maker.

1786 ~ Birthday of Carl Maria von Weber, Composer.

1912 ~ Official presentation of the discovery of Piltdown Man.

1936 ~ Death of Andrija Mohorovičić, Croatian seismologist.

1957 ~ The first U.S. civilian nuclear facility to generate electricity went online.

1989 ~ The British Labour Party under Neil Kinnock dropped its policy on trade union closed shops.

1996 ~ "Ebonics" was declared a language or dialect by the outgoing school board of Oakland, California, whose vote was overturned by the incoming board. The Clinton administration declared "black English" a form of slang that did not belong in the classroom.

2002 ~ California Governor Grey Davis announced that the state would face a budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier. The budget issue was used to support his 2003 recall from office.

2006 ~ Death of Joseph Barbera, of Hanna-Barbera, creators of The Flintstones, The Huckleberry Hound Show, The Jetsons, Scooby-Doo, The Smurfs, and Yogi Bear.

2010 ~ Governmental protests begin in Tunisia, which brought about the Arab Spring!

December 19th
 

1733 ~ Benjamin Franklin first published Poor Richard's Almanack.

1848 ~ Death of Emily Brontë, Author.

1888 ~ Birthday of Fritz Reiner, Conductor.

1906 ~ Birthday of Leonid Brezhnev, Soviet politician.

1971 ~ Birthday of Tiffany Towers, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ ”Kramer vs. Kramer”, starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, opened in theaters.

1984 ~ The UK and People's Republic of China signed the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which returned Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty in 1997.

1997 ~ "Titanic" the highest-grossing movie of all-time, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, opened in theaters.

1988 ~ The House of Representatives passed articles of impeachment against President Clinton over the Lewinsky scandal.

2003 ~ Libya announced that it would begin to destroy its weapons of mass destruction.

December 20th
 

1833 ~ Birthday of Samuel Mudd, physician, convicted conspirator in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

1860 ~ South Carolina became the first state to secede from the US.

1951 ~ Birthday of Joey Silvera, Porn Actor and director.

1968 ~ Death of John Steinbeck, awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1962.

1989 ~ American troops invaded Panama to remove dictator Manuel Noriega.

1991 ~ Paul Keating became the 24th Prime Minister of Australia.

1995 ~ IFOR (Implementation Force), a NATO-led multinational force, began peacekeeping in Bosnia. The task of IFOR was transfered to SFOR (Stabilisation Force) on 21-DEC-96, and transfered to EUFOR on 02-DEC-05.

1996 ~ Death of Carl Sagan, Astronomer & Writer.

1999 ~ Vermont's Supreme Court ruled that homosexual couples are entitled to the same benefits and protections as married heterosexual couples.

1999 ~ Macau was returned to the People's Republic of China by Portugal.

December 21st
 

1898 ~ Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.

1913 ~ The first crossword puzzle was published, in the New York World.

1918 ~ Birthday of Kurt Waldheim, U.N. Secretary-General & Federal President of Austria.

1937 ~ Premiere of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the world's first full-length animated feature.

1940 ~ Death of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Writer.

1945 ~ Death of George S. Patton, U.S. General.

1958 ~ Charles de Gaulle became the first leader of the Fifth Republic.

1979 ~ Apollo 8 was launched on a mission to orbit the moon.

1988 ~ A terrorist bomb exploded in Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland killing 270, including 11 on the ground.

1990 ~ Death of Clarence Johnson, Aeronautical engineer, led the design of the Lockheed U-2 and Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.

December 22nd
 

1858 ~ Birthday of Giacomo Puccini, Composer.

1864 ~ Savannah, Georgia fell to the Union army of General Sherman.

1942 ~ Adolf Hitler signed the order to develop the V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe 2)rocket as a weapon.

1944 ~ Battle of the Bulge – German troops under the command of General Heinrich Freiherr von Lüttwitz demand the surrender of U.S. troops at Bastogne, Belgium, prompting the famous one word reply by General Anthony McAuliffe: "Nuts!"

1949 ~ Birthday of Maurice & Robin Gibb, English musicianS (The Bee Gees) .

1989 ~ Berlin's Brandenburg Gate re-opened, ending the division of East and West Germany.

1989 ~ Death of Samuel Beckett, Irish author, poet, and playwright, Nobel Prize laureate.

2001 ~ The Afghan Northern Alliance, handed over power in Afghanistan to the government headed by President Hamid Karzai.

2001 ~ Richard Reid tried to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes.

2001 ~ Cc the cat, the first cloned pet, was born.

December 23rd
 

1783 ~ George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis, Maryland.

1790 ~ Birthday of Jean François Champollion, Egyptologist. He deciphered the Rosetta Stone.

1823 ~ “A Visit From St. Nicholas”, by Clement Clarke Moore, was first published.

1834 ~ Death of Thomas Malthus, Demographer and Economist.

1947 ~ The transistor was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.

1953 ~ Death of Lavrenty Beria, Soviet Communist leader.

1956 ~ British and French forces withdrawn from Suez, Egypt.

1975 ~ Birthday of Sky Lopez, Porn Actress.

1986 ~ Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, around-the-world flight without refueling.


Feastdays & Holidays

Fans of Seinfeld - Festivus (for the restofus) held.

December 24th
 

1818 ~ "Silent Night" composed by Franz Xaver Gruber.

1873 ~ Death of Johns Hopkins, Baltimore philanthropist and businessman.

1910 ~ Birthday of Fritz Leiber, Science Fiction writer.

1914 ~ World War I: The "Christmas truce" begins.

1914 ~ Death of John Muir, Naturalist.

1951 ~ Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors", the first opera written specifically for TV, was first broadcast

1957 ~ Birthday of Hamid Karzai, first democratically elected President of Afghanistan.

1968 ~ The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve TV broadcast.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Australia.

1992 ~ President Bush pardoned 6 people involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

December 25th
 

800 ~ Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.

1066 ~ Coronation of William the Conqueror as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1223 ~ Saint Francis of Assisi assembled the first Nativity scene.

1868 ~ President Johnson granted unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.

1938 ~ Birthday of Karel Čapek, Czech author, inventor of the word robot.

1974 ~ Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin, Northern Territory Australia.

1977 ~ Death of Charlie Chaplin, Entertainer.

1977 ~ Birthday of Priya Rai, Porn Actress.

1989 ~ Death of Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator (executed).

1991 ~ Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on TV to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day).


Feastdays & Holidays

The Nativity of Jesus.

December 26th
 

1610 ~ Elizabeth Bathory's crimes were uncovered.

1791 ~ Birthday of Charles Babbage, Mathematician and designer of computing machines.

1890 ~ Death of Heinrich Schliemann, German archaeologist.

1893 ~ Birthday of Mao Zedong, Chinese Politician.

1941 ~ Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress.

1948 ~ Cardinal Mindszenty arrested in Hungary.

1957 ~ Birthday of Mike South, Porn Actor and Director.

1966 ~ The first Kwanzaa was celebrated.

1991 ~ Supreme Soviet meets and formally dissolved the USSR.

2004 ~ A tsunami triggered by an earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean left more than 216,000 people dead or missing, mostly in southern Asia.

Feastdays & Holidays

Boxing Day.

December 27th
 

1571 ~ Birthday of Johannes Kepler, astronomer.

1822 ~ Birthday of Louis Pasteur, Scientist.

1831 ~ Charles Darwin embarked on his journey aboard the HMS Beagle.

1871 ~ The world's first cat show was held at the Crystal Palace in London.

1932 ~ Radio City Music Hall opened in New York City.

1945 ~ The World Bank was created with an agreement signed by 28 nations.

1945 ~ Queen Juliana of the Netherlands granted Indonesia sovereignty.

1979 ~ The Soviet Union invaded the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

1985 ~ Naturalist Dian Fossey was found murdered in Rwanda.

2001 ~ The U.S. announced plans to hold Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

December 28th
 

1065 ~ Westminster Abbey consecrated.

1869 ~ William F. Semple patented chewing gum.

1895 ~ The Lumiere Brothers gave birth to Cinema at the Grand Cafe in Paris.

1937 ~ Death of Maurice Ravel, French composer.

1951 ~ The Peak District became the UK’s first National Park.

1969 ~ Birthday of Linus Torvalds, Benevolent Dictator for Life of Linux.

1970 ~ Birthday of Francesca Le, Porn Actress.

1973 ~ Alexander Solzhenitsyn published Gulag Archipelago.

1989 ~ Death of Hermann Oberth, German physicist.

2010 ~ The Arab Spring began with popular protests begin in Algeria against the government.

December 29th
 

1170 ~ Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered by knights acting under the orders of Henry II.

1851 ~ The first Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) in the U.S. opened in Boston.

1890 ~ Defeat at the Battle of Wounded Knee effectively ended American Indian resistance to European settlement of the U.S.

1916 ~ Death of Grigori Rasputin, Russian monk.

1937 ~ The Constitution of Ireland, changing the Irish Free State into Eire, went into effect.

1940 ~ The Luftwaffe began dropping incendiary bombs on London.

1951 ~ Birthday of Stanley Tookie Williams, Gang Leader, Author, & Racist Murderer.

1975 ~ The UK's Sex Discrimination Act went into effect.

1845 ~ Birthday of Alexis Amore, Peruvian Porn Actress.

1989 ~ Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.

December 30th
 

1853 ~ The U.S. bought 45,000 sq miles of land from Mexico in the Gadsden Purchase.

1879 ~ The Pirates of Penzance was first performed.

1911 ~ Sun Yat-sen was elected the first president of the Republic of China.

1922 ~ The Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was formed by the confederation of Russia, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Transcaucasian Federation.

1924 ~ Edwin Hubble announced the existence of other galaxies.

1937 ~ Birthday of Gordon Banks, the best Goalkeeper ever.

1973 ~ Birthday of Nacho Vidal, Spanish Porn Actor.

1981 ~ Birthday of Haley Paige, Porn Actress.

1993 ~ Israel and the Vatican established diplomatic relations.

2006 ~ Saddam Hussein hanged for crimes committed during his brutal reign.

December 31st
 

1879 ~ Thomas Edison gave the first public demonstration of an electric incandescent lamp.

1880 ~ Birthday of George Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State, recipient of 1953 Nobel Peace Prize.

1937 ~ Birthday of Sir Anthony Hopkins, Actor.

1943 ~ Birthday of Sir Ben Kingsley, Actor.

1960 ~ The farthing coin ceased to be legal tender.

1964 ~ One of my boyhood heroes, Donald Campbell set the world water speed record, the only man to set both the world land and water speed records in the same year.

1980 ~ Death of Marshall McLuhan, Canadian writer.

1995 ~ The last new Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strip was published.

1999 ~ Control of the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone passed to Panama from the U.S.A.

1999 ~ Russian President Boris Yeltsin resigned. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was designated acting president.

I have one of these coins. They were legal tender in Oz, but the numbers in circulation were so low that we used the Brit coin. It was not cost-effective to mint our own. I can't remember how mine came into my possession.