1066 William the Conqueror is crowned king of England.
Following his invasion of the British Isles and victory over 
King Harold II at the Battle of Hastings, William is crowned 
king of England at Westminster Abbey in London on 
Christmas Day. His 21-year rule would change the course 
of European history.

​He brought Norman customs and laws into English life. 
He built famous structures like the Tower of London and 
Windsor Castle. He gave land grants to his French allies, 
which not only permanently changed the development of 
the English language (nearly one third of modern English 
is derived from French words) but also gave rise to the 
feudal system of government that characterized much of 
the Middle Ages. http://www.history.com/news/history-
​lists/7-historical-events-that-place-on-christmas

​1492 Columbus’ Santa Maria runs aground and sinks on Hispaniola. The Santa Maria was the largest of the three ships, with a single deck and three masts. She was the slowest of the three, but performed well in 
the Atlantic crossing. After 
festivities that included 
drinking, Columbus ordered 
that the crew continue 
sailing to Cuba late into the 
night. One by one the crew 
kept falling asleep until 
only a cabin boy was 
steering the ship, which 
caused it to run aground 
on December 25, 1492.

​Columbus’ voyage resulted 
in the discovery of America 
and initiated a period of 
European exploration and 
colonization of the 
American continents. His voyage started the first lasting European contact with the Americas, and led to ​the widespread knowledge of the existence of a new continent, for the first time in history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_(ship)

1582 Ten Days Went Missing. In 1582, in the Dutch 
provinces of Brabant, Zeeland and Staten-Generaal, 
the people went to bed on December 25, and when 
they woke up the next morning it was January 4, 1583. 
They had lost ten days of their lives. The provinces 
were among the first countries to adopt the new 
Gregorian calendar.

The Gregorian calendar reformed the previous Julian 
calendar, introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 BC. 
Though Caesar had based his calendar on 
astronomical data, his scientists had miscalculated the 
lunar and solar times, so that by the 16th century, the 
spring equinox (which included Easter) was starting 
to seem a little wintry, and New Years Day was 
​celebrated in late March. 

​To deal with this, Pope Gregory XIII assembled a team 
of expert mathematicians and astronomers to create a new, official calendar. It would take more than 341 years before most of the rest of the world completed the change to the calendar that we now take for ​granted.

The Gregorian calendar is the most widely used calendar in the world today. For decades it has been the unofficial global standard, adopted for pragmatic interests of international communication, transportation, and commercial integration, and recognized by international institutions such as the United Nations and the Universal Postal Union. http://mentalfloss.com/article/20446/9-other-things-happened-christmas-day

1642 The birth of Isaac Newton. Born on December 25, Isaac
Newton was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer and 
philosopher. He formulated the laws of motion and universal 
gravitation, demonstrated that the motion of objects on earth and 
in space could be described by the same principles, built the first 
practical reflecting telescope, developed a theory of color based 
on observing that a prism decomposes white light, formulated 
an empirical law of cooling, studied the speed of sound, created 
the Binomial Theorem and was one of the two creators of 
​calculus. 

​By many accounts he was the single most influential scientist of 
the 17th Century, his work forming the basis for modern physics. 
He was the greatest product of the Enlightenment, the explosion 
of intellectual knowledge that occurred in his century, a key 
figure in the scientific revolution, and widely recognized as one 
​of the most influential scientists of all time. 
http://www.universetoday.com/38643/what-did-isaac-newton-discover/#ixzz2xeCsTGfU

​

1758 Return of Halley’s 
comet. The comet is best 
known of the short-period 
comets and is visible from 
Earth every 75-76 years. 
It is the only short-period 
comet that is clearly visible 
to the naked eye from 
Earth, and the only naked-
eye comet that might 
appear twice in a human 
lifetime. 
The confirmation of Halley’s 
prediction of the comet’s 
return was made on 
December 25th by Johann 
Georg Palitzsch, a German 
farmer and amateur astronomer. Importance? The confirmation of the comet’s return was the first time anything other than ​planets had been shown to orbit the Sun. It was also one of the earliest successful tests of Newtonian physics, and a clear demonstration of its explanatory power. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halley’s_Comet

1776 Washington crosses 
the Delaware River. At the 
end of 1776 it looked like 
the Revolutionary War might 
be lost for the colonial forces. 
Defeat by the British had 
lessened morale, and many 
soldiers had deserted the 
Continental Army. Desperate 
to strike a decisive victory, 
on Christmas Day General 
George Washington led 
2,400 troops on a daring 
nighttime crossing of the icy 
Delaware River. Stealing into 
New Jersey the Continental 
forces launched a surprise 
attack on Trenton.

The gamble paid off. The colonial forces defeated the Hessians with minimal bloodshed. The audacious crossing of the frozen Delaware river served as a crucial rallying cry for the 
​beleaguered Continental Army and Washington would go on to defeat the British. The result was the establishment of a new country, the United States of America. http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-historical-events-that-took-place-on-christmas

1851 The Library of Congress burns. By 1814, when the British burned the nation’s Capitol and the Library of Congress during the War of 1812, Jefferson had acquired the largest personal collection of books in the 
​United States. He offered to sell his 
library to Congress as a 
replacement for the collection 
destroyed by the British. Congress 
purchased Jefferson’s library for 
$23,950 in 1815. But a second fire, 
on Christmas Eve of 1851, 
destroyed nearly two thirds of the 
6,487 volumes Congress had 
purchased from Jefferson, along 
​with over 50,000 other volumes. 

The importance? With the sale of 
his collection to the Library, 
Jefferson helped to establish the 
​principle of purchasing 
acquisitions. ​In the years to come 
the Library would be not only the nation’s oldest cultural institution, but it would also become the largest library in the world. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html  and  http://www.loc.gov/about

1906 First successful radio program of voice and music in the U.S. Guglielmo Marconi and Reginald Fessenden competed over the best way to broadcast  radio signals to a receiver. Marconi has been acclaimed as the 
"father of wireless", and history has accredited 
him with the invention of an early form of 
radio telegraphy. But on Christmas Eve, 1906, 
it was Fessenden who made the first 
successful wireless broadcast. The 
transmission included a speech, selected 
music and Fessenden playing the violin. 

That first broadcast, from his transmitter at 
Brant Rock, MA  was heard by radio operators 
on board US Navy and United Fruit Company 
ships at various distances over the South and 
North Atlantic, and in the West Indies. The 
wireless broadcast was repeated on New 
Year's ​Eve. Fessenden, a genius, and a 
​mathematician was the inventor of radio as 
we know it. today. http://www.ieee.ca/
millennium/radio/radio_differences.html

Fessenden’s work led quickly to the modern radio, AM and FM. And today radio is a worldwide medium. A source of information, entertainment, politics and news, in homes and businesses everywhere.

1914 The Christmas Truce. World War I, the “war to end all wars,” was underway and on the European front, in Belgium battlefield, British and French troops were entrenched on one side and across the “no man’s 
land” German troops were 
entrenched on the other. 
Starting on Christmas Eve 
scores of the German, British 
and French troops laid down 
their arms and initiated a 
spontaneous holiday 
ceasefire not sanctioned by 
the officers on either side. 
During the ceasefire some 
members of both sides met 
in the “no man’s land”, 
sharing cigarettes, 
handshakes, drinks of whiskey, a few Christmas presents and a pick-up game of soccer on the frozen ​battlefield. Eventually the men were called back to their respective trenches to resume fighting. But the unplanned, informal, truce of that day stands as a remarkable example of shared humanity and brotherhood, even on the battlefield. http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-historical-events-that-took-place-on-christmas
​

1926 Hirohito becomes emperor of Japan. On December 25 
Emperor Yoshihito dies, and his son, Hirohito, assumes the 
throne as the 124th Emperor of Japan, according to the 
traditional order. Hirohito's reign was the longest in Japan's 
history and he ​presided over a period of significant changes.

At the start of his reign Japan was already the ninth largest 
economy in the world, after Italy, the third largest naval power, 
and one of the four permanent members of the council of the 
League of Nations.

Hirohito was the emperor when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor 
and declared war on the United States. He was emperor when 
the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 
He was emperor during the reconstruction after the war, and 
he was emperor as Japan emerged and took its place as the 
world's second largest economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hirohito

1968 Apollo 8 orbits the moon. On Christmas Eve Apollo 8’s astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders spent the night orbiting the moon. Upon entering the moon’s orbit the three astronauts 
broadcast back to earth. 
As viewers were shown 
pictures of the moon and 
Earth from lunar orbit, 
Borman, Lovell and Anders 
read the opening lines of 
the book of Genesis from 
the Bible. The broadcast 
became one of the most 
watched television events 
​in history.

​The Apollo 8 mission was 
the first manned flight to 
leave Earth’s gravitational 
pull, the first to orbit the 
moon, the first to view all 
of Earth from space and the first to see the dark side of the moon. And, on the return flight, astronaut ​Lovell informed ground control “please be informed there is a Santa Claus.” http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/7-historical-events-that-took-place-on-christmas

First successful trial run of the World Wide Web. WWW is a system of web sites, storage and browsers that make it possible to create, store, search, access, view and modify any information (data) that is connected to the Internet. Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau developed the prototype, 
which consisted of two 
computers, a server, a web 
browser and several web 
pages. On December 25, 
Christmas Day, they 
successfully tested the 
​system.

In the years since that first 
test, the World Wide Web has 
grown to billions of websites 
on every topic imaginable. 
More importantly, the world 
has connected to the WWW 
in ways that have altered 
how we live our lives, do our 
work, and communicate with 
​each other. For the first time, 
we live in the age of 
​information. 
​​https://blog.hmns.org/tag/
​world-wide-web/