See what makes December 25 special at Famous Daily.
History, birthdays, holiday, and a quote!
What happened on December 25
- December 25, 0001 "Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus"
- December 25, 0274 Roman Emperor Aurelian dedicates a temple to Sol Invictus on the supposed day of the winter solstice and day of rebirth of the Sun.
- December 25, 0336 The first1st recorded celebration of Christmas on Dec 25 occurs in Rome
- December 25, 0597 England adopts Julian calendar
- December 25, 0795 Adrian I ends his reign as Catholic Pope
- December 25, 0800 "Coronation of Charlemagne (742-814) as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome. While attending Mass in Rome, he was unexpectedly crowned Emperor of the Romans by Pope Leo III. Unified most of Europe under his rule."
- December 25, 1066 "Harold II is killed in the Battle of Hastings, and William the Conqueror is crowned as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London."
- December 25, 1100 Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned as the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity
- December 25, 1223 "St Francis of Assisi assembles first Nativity scene (Greccio, Italy)"
- December 25, 1261 John IV Lascaris of the restored Eastern Roman Empire is deposed and blinded by orders of his co-ruler Michael VIII Palaeologus.
- December 25, 1599 "The city of Natal, Brazil is founded."
- December 25, 1621 Gov William Bradford forbids game playing on this day
- December 25, 1635 "Samuel de Champlain c1567-1635 dies at Quebec on Christmas Day, age 68, after stroke paralyzed him in October;"
- December 25, 1643 "Christmas Island founded and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel, the Royal Mary."
- December 25, 1650 "Thomas Cooper, former Usher of Gresham's School, England, hanged as a Royalist rebel."
- December 25, 1745 Treaty of Dresden gives much of Silesia to the Prussians
- December 25, 1758 Halley's comet first sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch during return
- December 25, 1760 "Juptier Hammon, New York slave, publishes poetry in ""An Evening Thought""
- December 25, 1775 Pope Pius VI encyclical on the problems of the pontificate
- December 25, 1776 "George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey."
- December 25, 1776 "Washington crosses Delaware and surprises and defeats 1,400 Hessians"
- December 25, 1818 """Silent Night," by Franz Joseph Gruber and Joseph Mohr sung for first time"
- December 25, 1818 "First US performance of Handel's Messiah, Boston"
- December 25, 1837 Battle of Lake Okeechobee: United States forces defeat Seminole Native Americans.
- December 25, 1837 Battle of Okeechobee-US forces defeat Seminole Indians
- December 25, 1843 "First theatre matinee (Olympic Theatre, NYC)"
- December 25, 1848 New Haven Railroad opens
- December 25, 1854 "Opening of the Bytown and Prescott Railway between Prescott and Bytown (now Ottawa), 54 miles. First rail service to what is now Canada's Capital. Bytown was renamed Ottawa in 1855 and the railway became the Ottawa and Prescott Railway Company, now part of Canadian Pacific."
- December 25, 1855 Soldiers of the Royal Canadian Rifles at the Tˆte du Pont barracks clear ice from Lake Ontario and use field hockey sticks and lacrosse balls to play what is reputed to be the first game of ice hockey
- December 25, 1862 "40,000 watch the Union army men play baseball at Hilton Head, SC"
- December 25, 1868 "Despite bitter opposition, President A Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all persons involved in the Southern rebellion (the Civil War)"
- December 25, 1868 U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.
- December 25, 1881 "The ship Lord Bute, left Newcastle on Tyne and was not heard of again. It is speculated that she was lost with all hands the following day."
- December 25, 1914 "Just after midnight on Christmas morning, the German troops along the Eastern and Western fronts cease firing their guns and artillery, and start singing Christmas carols and playing brass musical instruments; at first light, many German soldiers emerge from their trenches and cross No Man's Land, calling out Merry Christmas in English and French; at first the Allied soldiers suspect a trick, but soon they are shaking hands with the Boche; swapping cigarettes and plum pudding, and even playing soccer; the Christmas Truce lasts a few days, then it is back to the bloody conflict of World War I; there are no more Christmas Truces."
- December 25, 1914 "SS Therese Heymann. This Ropner ship left the Tyne and was posted missing thereafter. No information about her fate is known but she may have been mined off Filey, Yorkshire as was the fate of many other vessels."
- December 25, 1914 "World War I: Known as the Christmas truce, German and British troops on the Western Front temporarily cease fire."
- December 25, 1917 "Why Marry?, first dramatic play to win a Pulitzer Prize, opens at the Astor Theatre in New York City."
- December 25, 1926 "Emperor Taish of Japan dies. His son, Prince Hirohito succeeds him as Emperor Shwa."
- December 25, 1926 Hirohito became emperor of Japan (1926-1989)
- December 25, 1930 First US bobsled run open to the public (Lake Placid NY)
- December 25, 1931 New York's Metropolitan Opera broadcasts an entire opera over radio
- December 25, 1932 "A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Gansu, China kills ~70,000 people."
- December 25, 1932 "December 25: First Empire Christmas Broadcast, with address by King George V. included contributions from Canada, and was distributed to all Canadian stations"
- December 25, 1939 Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the 9th reindeer
- December 25, 1941 Admiral Chester W Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
- December 25, 1941 Japan announces surrender of British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong
- December 25, 1941 "Japan announces the surrender of the British-Canadian garrison by radio broadcast; 290 members of the Royal Rifles of Canada (a Qu‚bec unit) and the Winnipeg Grenadiers are dead, 493 wounded; Canadian survivors spend rest of war in Japanese POW camps"
- December 25, 1944 "Canadian Army captures Adriatic coast city of Ravenna, Italy"
- December 25, 1946 Constitution accepted in Taiwan
- December 25, 1947 The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect.
- December 25, 1950 "The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951."
- December 25, 1953 "Avalanche of lava kills 150 (Ruapehu volcano, New Zealand)"
- December 25, 1959 A synagogue in Cologne Germany desecrated with swastikas
- December 25, 1963 Turkish Cypriot Bayrak Radio begins transmitting in Cyprus after Turkish Cypriots were forcibly excluded from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.
- December 25, 1963 "Walt Disney's ""The Sword In The Stone"" is released"
- December 25, 1965 The Yemeni Nasserite Unionist People's Organisation is founded in Taiz
- December 25, 1967 Paul McCartney and Jane Asher get engaged
- December 25, 1968 Frank Borman's Christmas reading while orbiting Moon
- December 25, 1971 "In the longest game in NFL history (82m40s of game time), the Miami Dolphins defeat the Kansas City Chiefs at Kansas City Municipal Stadium 27-24."
- December 25, 1971 Worst hotel fire in history kills 163 at Taeyokale Hotel in Seoul
- December 25, 1973 "The ARPANET crashes when a programming bug causes all ARPANET traffic to be routed through the server at Harvard University, causing the server to freeze."
- December 25, 1973 "Tommy Chambers (Scotland) finishes 51 yr cycle tour (799,405 miles)"
- December 25, 1974 Cyclone Tracy virtually destroys Darwin Australia
- December 25, 1974 "Marshall Fields drives a vehicle through the gates of the White House, resulting in a four-hour standoff."
- December 25, 1976 Number one hit on UK music charts - Johnny Mathis - When A Child Is Born (Soleado)
- December 25, 1977 Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with President of Egypt Anwar Sadat.
- December 25, 1979 The Soviet Union airlifts forces into Afghanistan to begin its costly occupation.
- December 25, 1983 Live telecast of Christmas Parade
- December 25, 1989 "Japanese scientist achieve -271.8?C, coldest temp ever recorded"
- December 25, 1989 "Nicolae Ceauescu, former communist dictator of Romania, and his wife Elena are condemned to death and executed under a wide range of charges."
- December 25, 1990 """Godfather III"" premiers"
- December 25, 1990 The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web.
- December 25, 1991 "The hammer & sickle red flag that symbolized 75 years of Soviet communism was lowered for the last time and replaced by 15 flags of 15 newly-independent republics. On January 1, 1992, the Soviet Union and the Soviet Communist party officially ceased to exist."
- December 25, 1993 "SS South of Ireland, a passenger steamer, built for the Great Western Railway, and completed in 1867, she was lost at Warbarrow near Lulworth on December 25th, inward bound to Weymouth."
- December 25, 2000 A bank machine in a supermarket in the town of Antibes France paid double the withdrawal amount while only recording the correct amount (Merry Christmas)
- December 25, 2000 A Christmas day fire killed 309 people at a dance hall in the central Chinese city of Luoyang
- December 25, 2003 "The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe which was released from the Mars Express Spacecraft on December 19, disappears shortly before its scheduled landing."
- December 25, 2004 "Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005."
- December 25, 2007 The Queen's Annual Christmas Address to the nation and the Commonwealth is made available on the internet-site YouTube.
- December 25, 2009 A Viva Palestina supply convoy is stranded in Aqaba due to actions of the Egyptian government.
- December 25, 2009 American officials investigate a possible attempted terrorist attack after an incident on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
- December 25, 2009 "China sentences activist Liu Xiaobo to 11 years in prison for ""subversion of state power""."
- December 25, 2009 China's National Bureau of Statistics revised the growth rate of its gross domestic product (GDP) for 2008 to 9.6 percent from 9 percent.
- December 25, 2009 Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom remembers the dead soldiers of Afghanistan in the Royal Christmas Message.
- December 25, 2009 Six Filipino sailors and three Greek officers are missing after fire engulfs a ship in an incident off the coast of Venezuela.
- December 25, 2009 The 19th century St Mel's Cathedral of Longford in Ireland is destroyed by an ongoing fire in the town.
- December 25, 2009 "The death by gunshot wound of Expresiones de Tulum journalist Alberto Vel zquez, the 12th journalist to be killed in Mexico in 2009, is announced."
- December 25, 2009 "The number of suicides in Japan exceeded 30,000 in 2009 according to officials, for the twelfth consecutive year."
- December 25, 2009 Two more bishops ? Eamonn Oliver Walsh and Raymond Field ? resign due to child sex abuse allegations contained within the Murphy Report. They were Dublin's only remaining two serving auxiliary bishops.
- December 25, 2009 Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab a Nigerian Muslim citizen attempted to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 with 289 people on board. - Nigeria
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