December 24th is

Eggnog Day *

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MORE! Franz Gruber, Noël Streatfeild and Enrico Caruso, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

Christianity – Christmas Eve
Judaism – First Night of Hannukah

Micronesia – Constitution Day

Peru – Cusco: Santuranticuy
(Nativity scene market)

Tunisia – Douz: International
Sahara Festival & Camel Races

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On This Day in HISTORY

1679 – Domenico Sarro, Italian composer, is born

1761 – Jean-Louis Pons born, French astronomer, greatest naked-eye comet discoverer

1777 – James Cook finds Kiritimati, which he calls Christmas Island

1779?  (exact date unknown) – George Washington writes down his Eggnog * recipe, but forgets to say how many eggs he uses – other recipes from the period call for as many as a dozen eggs – Eggnog has been popular in the U.S. since colonial times, but beware! A single cup can have as many 400 calories, half of them from fat – a cup of Hot Mulled Apple Cider has 150-175 calories, and none of them are from fat

1809 – Kit Carson, American frontiersman, is born

1818 – Franz Gruber of Oberndorf, Germany composes the music for “Silent Night” for words written by Josef Mohr – performed that night at the Church of St. Nicholas in Oberndorf, Austria

1822 – Matthew Arnold is born, English poet

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

1869 – Henriette Roland Holst born, Dutch poet and socialist labor leader, founding member of Revolutionair Socialistische Vereeniging, an anti-Stalinist Communist Party coalition in the Netherlands

1868 – Emanuel Lasker born , German chess champion, mathematician

1871 – In Cairo, Egypt, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Aida has its world premiere at the Khedivial Opera House

1881 – Charles Wakefield Cadman born, American composer

1895 – Noël Streatfeild, English children’s author, Ballet Shoes

1905 – Howard Hughes born, American engineer-businessman-pilot

1906 – Reginald A. Fessenden is the first person to broadcast a music program over radio, from Brant Rock, MA; and Franz Waxman is born, German-American composer

1914 – The WWI ‘Christmas Truce’ begins, unofficial ceasefire started by the troops

1920 – Enrico Caruso gives his last public performance in Jacques Halevy’s La Juive at New York’s Metropolitan Opera

1924 – Albania becomes a republic

1930 – Robert Joffrey born, American dancer-choreographer, founder Joffrey Ballet

1931 –Ray Bryant born, American Jazz pianist and composer

1943 – U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces as part of Operation Overlord

1948 – A midnight Mass was broadcast for the first time on television,  from St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City

1950 –Dana Gioia, American poet and critic, chair of NEA (2003-2009)

1951 – NBC’s first broadcast of Amahl and the Night Visitors, an opera written for television, and the first production for the Hallmark Hall of Fame

1965 – A meteorite weighing about 100 pounds lands in Leicestershire

1966 -NASA unmanned spacecraft Luna 13 lands on the moon

1968 – Three astronauts, James A. Lovell, William Anders and Frank Borman, reach the moon, orbiting it 10 times before coming back to Earth

1973 – District of Columbia Home Rule Act is passed, allowing residents of Washington DC to elect their own local government

1979 – Soviet troops invade Afghanistan in support its Marxist government

1989 – Ousted Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega takes refuge at the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City

1992 – President George H.W. Bush pardons former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others involved in the Iran-Contra scandal

2009 – The Senate passed health care legislation, 60-39, in the chamber’s first Christmas Eve vote since 1895

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Visuals

• Eggnog
• International flags
• George Washington’s eggnog recipe
• Matthew Arnold with quote
• Ballet Shoes book cover
• Luna 13
• New York Times headline ‘Bush Pardons 6 in Iran affair’

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