Today is Monday, Dec. 26, the 360th day of 2022.
There are five days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On Dec. 26, 2004, more than 230,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, were killed by a 100-foot-high tsunami triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.
On this date:
In 1799, former President George Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
In 1865, James H. Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts, received a patent for “an improved coffee percolator.”
In 1908, Jack Johnson became the first African-American boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
In 1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.
In 1941, during World War II, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.
In 1966, Kwanzaa was first celebrated.
In 1980, Iranian television footage was broadcast in the United States showing a dozen of the American hostages sending messages to their families.
In 1990, Nancy Cruzan, the young woman in an irreversible vegetative state whose case led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right to die, died at a Missouri hospital.
In 1994, French commandos stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner on the ground in Marseille, killing four Algerian hijackers and freeing 170 hostages.
In 1996, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. (To date, the slaying remains unsolved.)
In 2003, an earthquake struck the historic Iranian city of Bam, killing at least 26,000 people.
In 2006, former President Gerald R. Ford died in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 93.
