On This Day:
Wednesday December 25, 2013 This is the 359th day of the year, with 6 days remaining in 2013. Fact of the Day: Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera broadcast a complete opera for the first time on NBC radio on December 25, 1931. NBC paid $5,000 for the rights to broadcast the Saturday matinee performance of "Hansel and Gretel." The box office gate for the show was $4,233.50. Texaco began to sponsor the Saturday matinee broadcast in 1940 and continued its sponsorship until the end of the 2004 season, making it the longest continuous sponsorship in broadcast history. The broadcast continues under different sponsorship.
Holidays Christmas Day.
Feast day of the Martyrs of Nicomedia, St. Eugenia, St. Alburga, and St. Anastasia of Sirmium.
United Kingdom (except Scotland): Quarter Day.
Events 336 - The first recorded celebration of Christmas on December 25 took place in Rome. Church fathers designated December 25th, the birthday of the popular pagan god Mithras, as Jesus's official birth date. The celebration of the birth of Christ also took over the pagan winter solstice holiday, which like the birthday of the sun god Mithras, fell in late December. From thereon, December 25 was to be observed at a holy mass, or "Christ's Mass."
800 - Charlemagne was crowned first Holy Roman Emperor in Rome by Pope Leo III.
1066 - William the Conqueror was crowned king of England at Westminster Abbey.
1776 - General George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, New Jersey.
1818 - "Silent Night" was performed for the first time, at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorff, Austria.
1830 - The first regularly scheduled passenger train in the United States began operation, the South Carolina Canal and Railroad Company.
1868 - President Andrew Johnson granted unqualified amnesty to all those who participated in the "insurrection or rebellion" against the United States, i.e. the Civil War.
1914 - During World War I, Allied and German troops observed an unofficial truce, even playing football together on the Western Front's "no man's land."
1926 - Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito.
1941 - Hong Kong was surrendered to the Japanese.
1972 - The Nicaraguan capital Managua was devastated by an earthquake which killed over 10,000 people.
1989 - Dissident playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia.
1991 - Soviet Union President Mikhail S. Gorbachev announced his resignation.
Births 1642 - Sir Isaac Newton, British mathematician.
1821 - Clara Barton, American nurse, founder of American Red Cross.
1887 - Conrad Hilton, American hotel magnate.
1899 - Humphrey Bogart, American Academy Award-winning actor.
1907 - Cab Calloway, American bandleader, singer.
1918 - Anwar el-Sadat, Egyptian president; Nobel Peace Prize winner with Israel's Menachim Begin in 1978.
1924 - Rod Serling, American scriptwriter.
1946 - Jimmy Buffett, American singer and songwriter, in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
Deaths 1946 - W.C. Fields (William Claude Dukenfield), brilliant American comedian, actor, and screenwriter.
1977 - Charlie Chaplin, legendary English comedian, actor, director, and producer.
1989 - Billy Martin, former New York Yankees player and manager.
1995 - Dean Martin, (Dino Paul Crocetti) American singer and film actor.
2006 - James Brown (born James Joseph Brown, Jr.), commonly referred to as "The Godfather of Soul" and "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business," an American entertainer.
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