A look at this week in years past
21 December
1620 103 Mayflower pilgrims land at Plymouth Rock
1835 HMS Beagle sails into Bay of Islands (New Zealand)
1898 Scientists Pierre & Marie Curie discover radium
1919 J Edgar Hoover deports anarchists/feminist Emma Goldman to Russia
1939 Hitler named Adolf Eichmann leader of "Referat IV B"
1948 State of Eire (formerly Irish Free State) declares its independence
1957 Indonesia proclaims end to state of war
1962 US & Cuba accord, releases bay of pigs captive
1972 Soviet Union signs a separate peace with East Germany
1988 New York bound Pan Am jumbo jet (Flight 103) explodes over Scotland, killing all 259 people on the plane and 11 people on the ground
1989 Romania’s dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s final speech (he is executed 12/25)
1989 US invades Panamá and ousts General Noriega
1991 Soviet Union formally dissolves 11 of 12 republics sign treaty forming Commonwealth of Independent States
22 December
1731 Dutch people revolt against meat tax
1815 Spaniards execute Mexican revolutionary priest José Maria Morelos
1882 1st string of Christmas tree lights created by Thomas Edison
1930 6 West europe lands signs Convention of Oslo
1941 Tito establishes 1st Proletarian Brigade in Yugoslavia
1944 Germans demand surrender of American troops at Bastogne, Belgium
1956 Last British/French troops leave Egypt
1983 Egyptian President Mubarak meets with PLO leader Yasser Arafat
1989 After 23 years of dictatorial rule, Romania ousts Nicolae Ceausescu
1990 Lech Walesa sworn in as Poland’s 1st popularly elected president
23 December
1620 French huguenots declare war on King Louis XIII
1793 Thomas Jefferson warned of slave revolts in West Indies
1888 Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear
1899 Tentative Turkish & German treaty on construction of Baghdad railway
1919 Alice H Parker patents gas heating furnace
1941 American forces on Wake Island surrender to Japanese
1943 General Montgomery told he is appointed commandant for D-day
1947 Transistor invented by Bardeen, Brattain & Shockley in Bell Labs
1961 Fidel Castro announces Cuba will release 1,113 prisoners from failed 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion for $62 million worth of food & medical supplies
1967 Brussels: NATO-Council accept "Flexible Response" “ strategy
1983 Journal Science publishes 1st report on nuclear winter
24 December
1865 Several Confederate veterans form the Ku Klux Klan in Pulaski TN
1904 German SW Africa abolishes slavery of young children
1914 German plane drops bombs on Dover England
1942 1st powered flight of V-1 buzz bomb, Peenemünde, Germany
1943 FDR appoints General Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces
1946 US General MacNarney gives 800,000 "minor nazis" amnesty
1966 Luna 13 lands on Moon
1974 Cyclone Tracy virtually destroys Darwin Australia
1989 Panamá’s dictator, Manual Noriega seeks asylum at the Vatican embassy
1991 Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as head of the Soviet Union
25 December
0001 1st Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus
1066 William the Conqueror, crowned king of England
1223 St Francis of Assisi assembles 1st Nativity scene (Greccio, Italy)
1741 Astronomer Anders Celcius introduces Centigrade temperature scale
1758 Halley’s comet 1st sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch during return
1776 Washington crosses Delaware & surprises & defeats 1,400 Hessians
1914 Legendary/unofficial "Christmas Truce" takes place (British & Germans)
1922 Lenin dictates his "Political testament"
1926 Hirohito becomes emperor of Japan (1926-1989)
1939 Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the 9th reindeer
1941 Japan announces surrender of British-Canadian garrison at Hong Kong
1959 A synagogue in Cologne Germany desecrated with swastikas
26 December
1492 1st Spanish settlement in New World founded by Columbus
1805 France & Austria sign Peace of Pressburg
1848 1st gold seekers arrive in Panamá en route to San Francisco
1918 1st day of 1st-class cricket in Australia after WWI (Victoria vs New South Wales)
1933 US forswears armed intervention in the Western Hemisphere
1944 Budapest surrounded by soviet army
1963 US furnishes cereal to USSR
1978 India’s former PM, Indira Gandhi, released from jail
1982 TIME’s Man of the Year is a computer
1986 Hijackers take over an Iraqi Airways Boeing 737 with 91 people on board during a flight from Baghdad to Amman – it lands in Arar, Saudi Arabia where it explodes, killing 62 people.
27 December
0537 St Sofia-church in Constantinople, initiated
1825 1st public railroad using steam locomotive completed in England
1845 Ether 1st used in childbirth in US, Jefferson GA
1927 Stalin’s faction wins All-Union Congress in USSR, Trotsky expelled
1934 Shah of Persia declares Persia now Iran
1945 International Monetary Fund established – World Bank founded
1974 FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional/Sandinista National Liberation Front) seizes government hostages at a private Managua party
1979 Soviet troops invade Afghánistán, President Hafizullah Amin overthrown
1985 Terrorists kill 20 & wound 110 attacking El Al at Rome & Vienna airports; President Reagan blamed Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Qaddafi
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