December 25

~4BC – Forced to stay in the equivalent of a modern stable due to all the inns in the city of Bethlehem being full up because of a census and taxing ordered by the Romans, Mariam, the wife of Yosef ben Yakov gives birth to a son they name Yeshua.

336 – Christmas is  celebrated in Rome for the first time.

508 – Clovis I, King of the Franks, is baptized at Reims, France by Bishop Remigius.

597 – Augustine of Canterbury baptizes more than 10,000 Anglo Saxons at Kent, England.

800 – Charlemagne is crowned Holy Roman Emperor at the ‘Old’ St. Peter’s Basilica in  Rome

1000 – Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by King Stephen I

1025 – Mieszko II Lambert is crowned king of Poland at the Gniezno Cathedral

1046 – Henry III is crowned Holy Roman Emperor at ‘Old’ St. Peter’s Basilica in  Rome

1066 – William the Conqueror is crowned King of England at Westminster Abbey

1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem.

1130 – Count Roger II is crowned the first King of Sicily at Palermo.

1758 – Halley’s Comet is sighted by Johann Georg Palitzsch, confirming Edmund Halley’s prediction of its passage, the first passage of a comet predicted ahead of time.

1776 – George Washington leads 2400 members of the Continental Army across the Delaware River, Christmas night to attack Hessian mercenary forces serving Great Britain at Trenton, New Jersey, the next day.

1814 – Rev. Samuel Marsden holds the first Christian service on land in New Zealand at Rangihoua Bay.

1868 – President Andrew Johnson grants an unconditional pardon to all Confederate veterans.

1941 – Admiral Chester W. Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command as Commander in Chief U.S. Pacific Fleet.

1968 – Apollo 8 performs the first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.

1989 – Deposed Romanian President Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife, Elena, are arrested, condemned to death after a summary trial, and executed by firing squad.

1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as President of the Soviet Union.

2020 – Anthony Quinn Warner blows himself and his RV to bits in downtown Nashville, Tennessee injuring 8 more people.

2021 – NASA launches thehe James Webb Space Telescope