December 24 in History
On this day in 1814, the War of 1812 concluded with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent by American and British representatives.
In 1851, a fire caused significant damage to the Library of Congress and a section of the Capitol building in Washington.
The Ku Klux Klan was established as a secret society in 1865 by Confederate veterans in Pulaski, Tennessee.
Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida" had its first performance in Cairo in 1871, commissioned to mark the opening of the Suez Canal.
Reginald A. Fessenden, a Canadian-born radio pioneer, made history in 1906 by broadcasting the first musical program from Brant Rock, Massachusetts, featuring a female singer performing "O Holy Night" with violin accompaniment. He is credited with discovering the superheterodyne principle, fundamental to modern radio receivers.
In 1909, Jean L. Clemens, the younger daughter of Mark Twain, was discovered deceased in a bath tub at her father's residence, with her death attributed to an epileptic convulsion.
President Calvin Coolidge initiated the tradition of lighting the national Christmas tree on the White House lawn in 1923, accompanied by carolers from the First Congregational Church and performances by the Marine band.
German rocket engineers achieved a milestone in 1942 with the launch of the first surface-to-surface guided missile.
In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as the supreme commander of the Allied forces.
The Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 marked the beginning of the nine-year Soviet-Afghan War.
One of the United States' most severe early-season cold waves in history was reported in 1983, resulting in nearly 300 fatalities.
In 1990, the bells of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow rang to celebrate Christmas for the first time since Lenin's death in 1924.
President George H.W. Bush granted a pardon to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in 1992 for his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair.
Air France Flight 8969 was hijacked in 1994 as it prepared to depart Algiers for Paris, leading to the deaths of three hostages. The hijackers were killed and the remaining hostages were freed two days later.
In 1997, the international terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, was convicted by a French court for the 1975 killings of three men in Paris and received a life sentence. He was given an additional life sentence in 2017.
South Korean scientist Hwang Woo-suk, renowned for his stem cell and cloning research, resigned in 2005 after admitting to fabricating his groundbreaking paper, which claimed the creation of stem cell colonies from 11 patients.
In 2024, NASA's Parker Solar Probe made history by entering the sun's upper atmosphere, orbiting it, and exiting unharmed, setting a record for the closest approach to the sun by a human-made object.
