On December 17, 1538, King Henry VIII of England is excommunicated from the Catholic Church by Pope Paul III. Henry's differences with the church had begun 7 years earlier with the annulment of his marriage to his first (of six) wife, Catherine of Aragon. Paul's predecessor, Pope Clement VII, actively discouraged the annulment, and Henry responded by initiating reforms that led to the establishment of the Church of England. Henry appointed himself Supreme Head of the new church, and when he began to attempt to dissolve Catholic monasteries and convents, Paul had had enough. On December 17, 1941, Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel is relieved of duty as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Kimmel had been CINCPAC for less than a year, and came from the old school class of "battleship admirals", as opposed to the "carrier admirals" who believed air power would be indispensable in the upcoming, anticipated war with Japan. Following Pearl Harbor, Kimmel "requested" early retirement and avoided a likely court martial; in an "as told to" biography published in 1955, Kimmel claimed he was a scapegoat for the real person who was to blame for Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt himself, adding (with no proof offered) that FDR had prior knowledge of the attack. On December 17, 1933, the Chicago Bears beat the New York Giants 23-21 in the first National Football League championship game. Prior to '33, the league championship was awarded to the team with the best regular season record. Before the '33 season, new Boston Redskins owner George Preston Marshall suggested several rules changes, among them that the ten-team league be divided into two divisions, with the championship determined by a game between the two division winners. Before a crowd of about 26,000 in Chicago's Wrigley Field, the Bears scored the go ahead touchdown with under 2 minutes left on a trick play. Running back Bronco Nagurski took a handoff but pulled up behind the line of scrimmage to throw a jump pass to Bill Hewitt, a play they had run earlier in the game. The Giants defense converged, but Hewitt then added a second wrinkle, lateraling the ball to Bill Karr, who ran 31 yards for the game winning points.
Was out all day yesterday, so did not get to post this one: On December 23, 1972, the Pittsburgh Steelers pull off "The Immaculate Reception." The Steelers were trailing the Oakland Raiders 7-6 with 22 seconds remaining in an AFC Divisional Playoff game. Facing 4th and 10 from their own 40-yard line, quarterback Terry Bradshaw scrambled and then threw downfield to running back Henry "Frenchy" Fuqua. Raider safety Jack Tatum arrived at Fuqua at the same instant as the football, which bounced back several yards and was snatched out of the air just inches off the turf by running back Franco Harris, who took the ball for the winning touchdown. The play is considered by many to be both the greatest play in NFL history and one of the most controversial, as the rules of the time prohibited two offensive players from touching a passed ball without a defensive player touching it in between, and there is no conclusive evidence to show whether the ball bounced off Tatum or Fuqua before being caught by Harris. Immaculate Reception Original Broadcast - BEST QUALITY - YouTube
On December 24, 1814, representatives of the U.S. and British governments sign the Treaty of Ghent (Belgium), bringing the War of 1812 to an end. The US declared war in June of 1812 over the British support of Native American actions against US frontier expansion in the Great Lakes region, and over "impressment", the British naval practice of boarding American merchant ships and forcing sailors into its navy. British army incursions were repelled in the north at the Battle of Lake Champlain, and at Baltimore (this after the British had entered Washington DC and burned several government buildings, including the White House and Capitol) before the king called the Americans to the peace table. The treaty did nothing to resolve impressment (the British voluntarily halted the practice) and formed a commission to establish formal boundaries between the US and Canada. Word of the treaty failed to reach America before a third British spearhead, this one to gain control of the Mississippi River by capturing New Orleans, was launched and repelled three weeks later. On December 24, 1955, Colonel Harry Shoup, USAF, is the duty officer at the Continental Air Defense Command Center (CONAD) in Colorado when his phone rings. Shoup answers in military fashion and is greeted by a timid voice asking if he is Santa Claus. Shoup is angry; this is an unlisted military phone line being used for a practical joke at the height of the Cold War, and he launches into a tirade. But when the voice on the other end begins crying, Shoup realizes it really is a child on the line. He thinks fast and begins imitating Santa, calming the child down before asking to speak to "Mom." The child's mother revealed the phone number had been published in a local newspaper, promising children who made the call a message from Santa. Realizing an error had been made that would soon launch a flood of calls to the base, Shoup ingeniously instructs his troops to "report" Santa's location on his Christmas journey to any child callers. The clever move starts a tradition; ever since, CONAD (later renamed North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)), has run its Santa Tracker, answering more than 100,000 calls every Christmas Eve. It has also developed a Santa Tracker website.
Forgive me if I quote myself from page 41 of this thread: December 25, 336 A.D. is considered to be the first time the date is celebrated as the birth of Jesus Christ. In the early days of Christianity, the date of death was considered much more important than the date of birth, as it marked the transition to the afterlife. Historians do not know the actual date of Jesus' birth; December 25 is chosen as it coincides with a number of festivals celebrated in other religions from which many Christians are converting. Christmas is not celebrated much after 336, until Charlemagne is crowned Holy Roman Emperor on Christmas Day, 800 A.D. Merry Christmas to all. On December 25, 1914, German, French and British soldiers in the trenches of France stage an unplanned cease fire to celebrate Christmas. It is the opening months of World War I. Three weeks earlier, Pope Benedict XV proposed an official cease fire, but neither side agreed. Shortly after midnight on the 25th, German soldiers stopped firing, and Allied soldiers heard the sound of Christmas carols from the enemy trenches. Moments later, Germans began climbing from the trenches and beckoning to their enemies. The Allied troops were slow to respond, but on realizing the Germans were unarmed, entered the no man's land themselves and began exchanging food and trinkets with their enemies. Someone produced a soccer ball, and soldiers from both sides staged a friendly game in the no man's land. By Christmas of 1915, hostilities had escalated to the point where a ceasefire - official or unofficial - was impossible, and the Christmas Truce of 1914 was never duplicated. The Christmas Truce | History - YouTube On December 25, 1971, the Miami Dolphins beat the Kansas City Chiefs 27-24 in the longest game in NFL history. It is the first round of the AFC Divisional playoffs. The Dolphins' Bob Griese hit Marv Fleming with a game tying TD pass with 1:25 left, then Chiefs' kicker Jan Stenerud missed a game winning FG at the end, sending the game into overtime, then missed another in the first OT period. (The overtime rule then was first score wins, period.) Garo Yepremian's 37 yard FG in the second OT was the game winner, ending the longest game (at 80 minutes, 22 seconds) ever, a game that featured 14 future Hall of Fame players and 2 Hall of Fame head coaches.
On the morning of December 26, 1776, the Continental Army under General George Washington enters the town of Trenton, NJ and captures about 1,000 of the garrison of 1,400 "Hessian" (German mercenaries) holding the town. Washington's troops crossed the nearly frozen Delaware River in the dead of night in hopes of catching the Hessians unprepared and groggy after a night of Christmas revelry. Most of Washington's army was unable to get across the river, leaving him unable to hold Trenton, but the victory, while minor strategically, is a huge morale boost to the Continental Army and the Revolution. On December 26, 1943, the HMS Duke of York surprises and sinks the German battlecruiser Scharnhost off the Arctic coast. Along with her sister ship Gneisenau, the Scharnhorst had been a thorn in the Admiralty's side since the beginning of the war, as the two heavily armored vessels ravaged the maritime supply lines between Europe and the Americas. With the Gneisenau docked for overhaul, the Scharnhorst was sent north to pair with the battleship Tirpitz to attack convoys headed into Russia. But Tirpitz was damaged by British bombers, forcing Scharnhorst to sail with only a destroyer escort. The Admiralty learned of her plans thanks to the Enigma code breaking system, and the Duke of York and her cruiser escort intercepted and sank the infamous commerce raider, despite suffering severe damage herself. On December 26, 1973, The Exorcist premiers in American theatres. Based on William Blatty's novel of the same name, the film's portrayal of a 12-year old Washington D.C. girl's demonic possession, and the demon's "exorcism" by 2 Catholic priests, both enthralls and horrifies audiences with its gruesome special effects. The film vaults brings child star status to unknown 14-year old model named Linda Blair for her portrayal of the possessed Regan; she would earn a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, one of 10 Oscars for which the movie was nominated (it won only one, for Blatty's screenplay; Blair lost out to another child star, Tatum O'Neal in Paper Moon). In 2001, The Exorcist was named the 3rd best thriller of all time by the American Film Institute. The Exorcist (3/5) Movie CLIP - Head Spin (1973) HD - YouTube
On December 27, 1944 the War Department, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt's orders, seizes all assets of the Montgomery Ward Corporation. The nation's largest retailer at the time, MW's contributions to the war effort ranged from automobiles to raw materials for uniforms. Fearing that labor unrest could hamper the war effort, FDR had created the National War Labor Relations Board in 1942, and that board had hammered out several labor agreements with the major unions. But Montgomery Ward refused to comply with several of the agreements, and when 12,000 MW workers went on strike in '44, FDR ordered the War Department to step in. Plants in six state were seized, and at the corporate offices in Chicago, National Guardsmen physically carried CEO Sewell Avery (a staunch capitalist who consider calling someone a "New Dealer" to be the ultimate insult) out of the building. Avery appealed to the courts, but the war ended and President Truman returned the company to private control before the appeal was heard. On December 27, 1900, a hatchet-wielding Caroline Amelia Nation lays waste to the bar of the Carey Hotel in Wichita, KS. Carrie Nation's disgust with alcohol stemmed from her first marriage, to a man who drank himself to death and left Carrie as a single mother. She remarried and became active with the Women's Christian Temperance Movement, which advocated for a variety of women's rights issues as well as prohibition. Kansas had passed prohibition laws years earlier, but the laws were haphazardly enforced, and the vigilante Nation began vandalizing bars with rocks. After one such attack, her husband David suggested she use a hatchet for maximum damage. Carrie said, "That's the most sensible idea you've had since we've been married." The Carey Hotel attack is believed to be the first time she used a hatchet, which became the symbol of her crusade. On December 27, 537, the third Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is consecrated.. The first two, built as the basilica of the Greek Orthodox Christian Church, burned in the previous 200 years. The Hagia Sophia is one of the architectural marvels of the First Millenium, featuring a dome 180 feet tall and more than 100 feet wide. Byzantine emperors were crowned in the basilica until the Roman Catholic Church gained control of the region in the 1300's. The city fell again in 1453, this time to the Ottomans, who converted the basilica into a mosque (the four minarets seen in the photo were added during this period). With the fall of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a museum until 2020, when Islamic elements in the Turkish government successfully campaigned for it to be returned to its use as a mosque.
On December 28, 1908, a massive earthquake measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale with a modified Mercalli (a scale of earthquake intensity, ranging from 1 to 12) rating of 11, strikes in the Straits of Messina off the coast of Sicily. It is the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in Europe, leveling the cities of Messina on Sicily and Reggio di Calabria on the Italian mainland. An estimated 100,000 are killed. December 28, 1972 is scheduled to be the last day American men will enter the army via the draft, the draft being discontinued in 1973. About 300 men around the country are scheduled to be inducted, but they avoid military service on a technicality; the day before, President Richard Nixon declared the 28th a national day of mourning for President Harry Truman, who died on the 26th. With federal buildings closed, the 300 were unable to report. On December 28, 1975, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach pulls off a miracle, and creates a new sports phrase. Trailing the Minnesota Vikings 14-10 in an NFC Divisional Playoff game, Staubach throws a 50-yard touchdown pass to Drew Pearson in the closing seconds to steal a victory. Afterward, Staubach described the play as a "Hail Mary" pass: "You throw it up, and pray he catches it."
In 1616, Jamestown Colony officer Captain John Smith wrote a letter to Queen Anne of Denmark, hoping to win an audience with the queen for his friend John Rolfe and his wife, the "converted savage" and Powhatan Princess Pocahontas. In the letter, Smith details how, on December 29, 1607, he was about to be executed by his Powhatan captors (he was held prone against two large stones and natives prepared to beat him about the head with clubs) when Pocahontas, the daughter of Chief Powhatan, shielded his head with her body, preventing the execution. Over the years, historians and descendants of Pocahontas have called one of colonial America's most famed tales into question, pointing out that earlier writings by Smith spoke of Pocahontas but made no mention of her as his savior. Others suggest the incident may have been a ritual of acceptance by the Powhatan, and Smith misunderstood its meaning. On December 29, 1860, the HMS Warrior is launched. Commissioned by the Royal Navy as a response to the French ocean-going ironclad Gloire, the Warrior is steel hulled with armor plating and steam powered, and her 40-gun battery includes 14 breach loading, rifled guns. Along with her sister ship HMS Black Prince, the Warrior essentially makes all other warships obsolete. She would serve with the Royal Navy for 22 years, and is now a museum ship docked at Portsmouth. On December 29, 2003, Maria Sergina dies. The Russian is the last known fluent speaker of Akkala Sami, a language of the villages of the Kola Peninsula of northwest Russia. There are few written examples of the language on record, and though there may be a few aging villagers of the peninsula with some knowledge of Akkala Sami, most linguists now consider it to be an extinct language.
