December 26th is

Candy Cane Day

Thank-you Note Day

Spiced Caramel Apple Martini Day

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MORE! Charles Babbage, Madame Curie and George Gershwin, click

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WORLD FESTIVALS AND NATIONAL HOLIDAYS

• Christianity – Feast of St. Stephen,  
• Juledag (Northern Europe – 2^nd day of Christmas)
• Zoroastrian – Zartusht No Diso (death of Zoraster)
• Kwanzaa

British Commonwealth – Boxing Day

Faulkland Islands – Annual Sports Day

South Africa – Day of Goodwill

Namibia – Family Day

Slovenia – Independence Day

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On This Day in HISTORY

1716 – Thomas Gray, English poet, is born

1780 – Mary Farifax Somerville born, Scottish polymath and author, “On the Magnetizing Power of the More Refrangible Solar Rays”

1791 – Charles Babbage is born, mathematician-engineer,  inventor of the adding machine, and the cowcatcher, the V shaped front end on locomotives

1799 – Four thousand people attend George Washington’s funeral where Henry Lee III declares he was “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”

1825 – Advocates of liberalism in Russia rise up against Czar Nicholas I but are suppressed in the Decembrist revolt in Saint Petersburg

1862 – The USS Red Rover is commissioned by the U.S. Navy as a hospital ship and takes aboard Sisters of the Order of the Holy Cross, the first women to serve as nurses aboard a navy ship

1865 – James H. Mason patents a coffee percolator

1871 – Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera, Thespis

1891 – Henry Miller is born, controversial American novelist

1893 – Mao Tse-tung is born, leader of the communist revolution in China

1898 – Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium

1908 – Jack Johnson becomes the first black heavyweight boxing champion when he knocks out Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia

1921 – The Catholic Irish Free State becomes a self-governing dominion of Great Britain

1931 – George Gershwin’s musical, “Of Thee I Sing,” opens at New York’s Music Box Theatre, the first musical to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize

1938 – Bahram Beyzai born, Iranian director-producer-screenwriter

1939 – W.C. Handy records the classic “St. Louis Blues” for the movies

1941 – Winston Churchill is the first British prime minister to address a joint session of the U.S. Congress

1944 – Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie debuts at Chicago’s Civic Theatre

1963 – The Beatles release “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “I Saw Her Standing There” in the U. S.

1966 – The first Kwanzaa is celebrated by Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University, Long Beach

1975 – Tu-144, world’s first commercial supersonic aircraft, goes into service

1995 – Israel turned dozens of West Bank villages over to the Palestinian Authority

2002 – The first cloned human baby is born,  announced on December 27 by Clonaid

2004 – Orange Revolution: The final run-off election in Ukraine is held under heavy international scrutiny

2009 – China opens the world’s longest high-speed rail route between Beijing and Guangzhou

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Visuals

• Candy cane
• Thank You Note
• Spiced Caramel Apple Martini
• International flags
• Thomas Gray with gratitude quote
• Charles Babbage with wrong information quote
• George Washington’s Funeral – Eulogy pamphlet
• Henry Miller – naked woman quote
• Jack Johnson – Getty image
• Still photo from The Glass Menagerie at Chicago’s Civic Theatre
• Beijing-Guangzhou high-speed train

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