25 December 2024 (MIA)

– Christians using the Gregorian Calendar celebrate Christmas

1066 – William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy is crowned king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.

1076 – Coronation of Bolesław II the Generous as king of Poland.

1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

1130 – Count Roger II of Sicily is crowned the first king of Sicily.

1261 – John IV Laskaris of the restored Eastern Roman Empire is deposed and blinded by orders of his co-ruler Michael VIII Palaiologos.

1492 – The carrack Santa María, commanded by Christopher Columbus, runs onto a reef off Haiti due to an improper watch.

1553 – Battle of Tucapel: Mapuche rebels under Lautaro defeat the Spanish conquistadors and executes the governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia.

1559 – Pope Pius IV is elected.

1776 – George Washington and the Continental Army cross the Delaware River at night to attack Hessian forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.

1809 – Dr. Ephraim McDowell performs the first ovariotomy, removing a 22-pound tumor.

1814 – Rev. Samuel Marsden holds the first Christian service on land in New Zealand at Rangihoua Bay.

1815 – The Handel and Haydn Society, oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States, gives its first performance.

1826 – The Eggnog Riot at the United States Military Academy concludes after beginning the previous evening.

1831 – The Great Jamaican Slave Revolt begins; up to 20% of the island’s slaves mobilize in an ultimately unsuccessful fight for freedom.

1837 – Second Seminole War: American general Zachary Taylor leads 1100 troops against the Seminoles at the Battle of Lake Okeechobee.

1868 – United States President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans.

1903 – Krste Petkov Misirkov’s On Macedonian Matters is published in Sofia.

1914 – A series of unofficial truces occur across the Western Front to celebrate Christmas.

1920 – Macedonian writer, literary and film critic, translator Jovan Boskovski is born in Skopje. His famous works include “Thessaloniki Assassins,” “Blockade,” and “Man and Birds”.

1927 – The Vietnamese Nationalist Party is founded.

1932 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Gansu, China kills 275 people.

1941 – Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

1941 – World War II: Battle of Hong Kong ends, beginning the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong.

1941 – Admiral Émile Muselier seizes the archipelago of Saint Pierre and Miquelon, which become the first part of France to be liberated by the Free French Forces.

1946 – The first European self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction is initiated within the Soviet Union’s F-1 nuclear reactor.

1947 – The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect.

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.

1962 – The Soviet Union conducts its final above-ground nuclear weapon test, in anticipation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

1963 – Turkish Cypriot Bayrak Radio begins transmitting in Cyprus after Turkish Cypriots are forcibly excluded from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.

1965 – The Yemeni Nasserist Unionist People’s Organisation is founded in Ta’izz.

1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans-Earth injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

1968 – Kilvenmani massacre, 44 Dalits (untouchables) are burnt to death in Kizhavenmani village, Tamil Nadu, a retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit laborers.

1977 – Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with its president Anwar Sadat.

1989 – Deposed President of Romania Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, First-Deputy Prime-Minister Elena are condemned to death and executed after a summary trial.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine’s referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.

2000 – Russian President Vladimir Putin signs a bill into law that officially establishes a new National anthem of Russia, with music adopted from the anthem of the Soviet Union that was composed by Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov.

2003 – The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express spacecraft on December 19, stops transmitting shortly before its scheduled landing.

2004 – The Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn’s moon Titan on January 14, 2005.

2009 – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab unsuccessfully attempts a terrorist attack against the US while on board a flight to Detroit Metro Airport Northwest Airlines Flight 253.

2012 – An Antonov An-72 plane crashes close to the city of Shymkent, killing 27 people.