Trevor WholohanThis Day in History, December 24th
December 24th 2007 01:55
This Day in History
1814 - The War of 1812 between the U.S. and Britain was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.
1818 - Franz Gruber of Oberndorf, Germany composed the music for "Silent Night" to words written by Josef Mohr.
1828 - William Burke who, with his partner William Hare, dug up the dead and murdered to sell the corpses for dissection, went on trial in Edinburgh.
1851 - A fire devastated the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, destroying about 35,000 volumes.
1865 - Several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, TN, called the Ku Klux Klan.
1906 - Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to broadcast a music program over radio, from Brant Rock, MA.
1914 - In World War I, the first air raid on Britain was made when a German airplane dropped a bomb on the grounds of a rectory in Dover.
1928 - The first broadcast of "The Voice of Firestone" was heard.
1943 - U.S. President Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord.
1944 - The Andrews Sisters starred in the debut of "The Andrews Sisters’ Eight-To-The-Bar-Ranch" on ABC Radio.
1944 - A German submarine torpedoed the Belgian transport ship S.S. Leopoldville with 2,235 soldiers aboard. About 800 American soldiers died. The soldiers were crossing the English Channel to be reinforcements at the battle that become known as the Battle of the Bulge.
1948 - For the first time ever, a midnight Mass was broadcast on television. It was held at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City.
1948 - The first completely solar-heated house became occupied in Dover, MA.
1951 - NBC-TV presented, "Amal and the Night Visitors," the first opera written for television.
1951 - Libya achieved independence as the United Kingdom of Libya, under King Idris.
1965 - A meteorite landed on Leicestershire. It weighed about 100lbs.
1966 - Luna 13 landed on the moon.
1967 - Joe Namath (New York Jets) became the first NFL quarterback to pass for 4,000 yards.
1968 - The crew of the U.S. Navy ship, Pueblo, was released by North Korea. The Captain of the Pueblo, Commander Lloyd M. Bucher, and 82 of his crew were held for 11 months after the ship was seized by North Korea because of suspected spying by the Americans.
1968 - Three astronauts, James A. Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman, reached the moon. They orbited the moon 10 times before coming back to Earth. Seven months later man first landed on the moon.
1979 - Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in support of the country's Marxist government.
1981 - Reggie Jackson announced that he would join Gene Autry’s California Angels for the 1982 season.
1985 - Fidel Castro, the Cuban president, announced that he was a non-smoker.
1989 - Ousted Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega took refuge at the Vatican's diplomatic mission in Panama City.
1990 - Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were married.
1992 - U.S. President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.
1997 - Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as "Carlos the Jackal," was sentenced by a French court to life in prison for the 1975 murders of two French investigators and a Lebanese national.
1998 - At Disneyland in Anaheim, CA, a tourist was hit by a piece of flying metal while waiting to board a ride. The man's wife and a Disneyland employee were also injured. Luan Phi Dawson died December 26th from his injuries.
1999 - Ivory Coast President Henri Konan Bédié was overthrown in a coup.
1999 - An Indian Airplines plane was seized during a flight from Katmandu, Nepal, to New Delhi. In Afghanistan, the 150 hostages were freed on December 31 after India released three Kashmir militants from prison.
2000 - 36 minutes after the end of a game, both the New England Patriots and the Miami Dolphins were called back to the playing field. The teams had to play the final 3 seconds of the game which the Dolphins had won 27-24. The end result did not change.
2000 - The "Texas 7," seven convicts that had escaped a Texas prison, robbed a sports store in Irving, TX. The suspects killed Officer Aubrey Hawkins, stole $70,000, 25 weapons and clothing. The men had escaped on December 13.
2002 - Saddam Hussein said in an address read on television that Iraqis were ready to fight a holy war against the United States.
2002 - Israeli PM Sharon said Saddam Hussein had transferred chemical and biological weapons to Syria.
2002 - North Korea ratcheted up its standoff with Washington, starting repairs at a long-frozen nuclear reactor and warning that U.S. policy was leading to an "uncontrollable catastrophe" and the "brink of nuclear war."
2003 - Several Air France flights to Los Angeles were cancelled stranding hundreds of people in Paris on Christmas Eve amid fears of a terrorist attack.
2003 - It was reported that U.S. and Russian experts recovered 37 pounds of weapons-grade uranium, enough to develop a nuclear warhead, from a closed atomic facility in Bulgaria.
2004 - US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, bearing gifts of praise and encouragement, paid a surprise Christmas Eve visit to US troops in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq
Famous Birthday’s
1809 - Christopher "Kit" Carson Kentucky, Union Brigadier-General/Indian fighter
1905 - Howard Hughes reclusive billionaire (Hughes Aircraft)/inventor(Spruce Goose)
1922 - Ava Gardner Grabtown NC, actress (On the Beach, Night of the Iguana)
1971 - Ricky Martin Puerto Rico, singer (Menudo)/actor (General Hospital)
Joke of the Day
Dirty Sheets
An extremely modest man was in the hospital for a series of tests, the last
of which had left his bodily systems extremely upset.
Upon making several false alarm trips to the bathroom, he decided the latest
episode was another and stayed put. He suddenly filled his bed with diarrhea
and was embarrassed beyond his ability to remain rational.
In a complete loss of composure he jumped out of bed, gathered up the bed
sheets, and threw them out the hospital window.
A drunk was walking by the hospital when the sheets landed on him. He
started yelling, cursing, and swinging his arms violently trying to get the
unknown things off, and ended up with the soiled sheets in a tangled pile at his feet.
As the drunk stood there, unsteady on his feet, staring down at the sheets,
a hospital security guard (barely containing his laughter) who had watched
the whole incident walked up and asked, "What the heck is going on here?"
The drunk, still staring down replied: "I think I just beat the shit out of a ghost"
Visiting Grandparents
A man came to visit his grandparents and noticed that his grandfather was sitting on the porch in a rocking chair wearing nothing but a shirt... nothing on from the waist down.
"Grandpa, what are you doing? Your weenie is out in the wind for everyone to see" he said
The old man looked off in the distance without answering.
"Grandpa, what are you doing sitting out here with nothing on below your waist?'
The old man slowly turned and looked at him and said 'Last week I sat out here with no shirt on, and I got a stiff neck. This is your grandmother's idea.'
State Of The Art Watch
A rather confident man walks into a bar and takes a seat next to a very attractive woman. He gives her a quick glance, then casually looks at his watch for a moment.
The woman notices this and asks, "Is your date running late?"
"No," he replies, "I just bought this state-of-the-art watch and I was just testing it."
The intrigued woman says, "A state-of-the-art watch? What's so special about it?"
"It uses alpha waves to telepathically talk to me," he explains.
"What's it telling you now?" she asked.
"Well, it says you're not wearing any panties." he said.
The woman giggles and replies, "Well it must be broken then because I am wearing panties!"
The man explains, "Damn thing must be an hour fast."
World Records
World's Longest Fingernails
Twenty seven years ago, Lee Redmond's life was too busy for beauty treatments, so she decided to cut corners and stop filing her nails. Now, 33 inches later, the Salt Lake City woman holds the world's record for longest fingernails: Astonishingly, she claims it does not hamper her efforts to cook, clean and look after her husband. But the extraordinarily long fingernails are a sight so bizarre, many feel they have to look away - and even Mrs Redmond admits her unsightly nails terrify children.
World's Longest Eyebrow
Leonard Traenkenschuh of Port Townsend, Washington, has a 3 and a half inches eyebrow hair (and still growing!): Leonard has two - count 'em, two - hairs past that length. His longest strand is 3½ inches. "I didn't set out to grow a hair to set a record," says the man who has lived in Port Townsend since 1980 and works at the hospital transcribing medical records. "This just happened." Leonard, 56, has never been a particularly hairy person. He does not have a beard and does not have thick sideburns or a mustache. "I just have fertile brows," he says.
World’s Largest Testes
Victims of elephantiasis, a disease caused by the obstruction of lymph vessels due to parasitic filarial worms, may find their gonads swelling to the size of a watermelon and beyond. The largest on record is an African whose scrotum weighed 154 lbs. and measured almost 2 ft. in diameter.
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