1 – 1st Christmas, according to calendar-maker Dionysus Exiguus.
352 – 1st definite date Christmas was celebrated on December 25th.
1492 – Christopher Columbus’ flagship the Santa Maria runs aground and sinks on Hispaniola.
1621 – Gov. William Bradford of Plymouth Colony (now in Massachusetts) forbids game playing on Christmas.
1741 – Astronomer Anders Celsius introduces Centigrade temperature scale.
1818 – Handel’s Messiah, premieres in the US in Boston.
1831 – Louisiana & Arkansas are first states to observe Christmas as holiday.
1862 – 40,000 watch Union army men play baseball at Hilton Head, SC.
1896 – “Stars & Stripes Forever” written by John Phillip Sousa.
1915 – Irving Berlin & Harry B. Smith’s musical premieres in NYC.
1939 – Montgomery Ward introduces Rudolph the 9th reindeer.
1958 – Alan Freed’s Christmas Rock & Roll Spectacular opens.
1962 – “To Kill a Mockingbird”, a film adaptation of the novel by Harper Lee, directed by Robert Mulligan and starring Gregory Peck, is released.
1968 – Frank Borman’s Christmas reading while orbiting Moon.
1973 – “The Sting” directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford premieres in Los Angeles and New York (Best Picture 1974).
1983 – 1st live telecast of Christmas Parade at the EPCOT Centre, Disney World Florida.
1990 – The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web.
1997 – Jerry Seinfeld says this is the final season of his TV show.
1997 – For 1st time US movie box office receipts pass $6 billion.
2009 – Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab unsuccessfully attempts a terrorist attack against the US while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253.
2013 – “The Wolf of Wall Street”, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Johah Hill, is released.
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