Today’s Highlight in History:
On Dec. 26, 2004, more than 230,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, were killed by a 100-foot-high tsunami triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.
On this date:
In 1799, former President George Washington was eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
In 1865, James H. Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts, received a patent for “an improved coffee percolator.”
In 1908, Jack Johnson became the first Black boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
In 1917, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.
In 1941, during World War II, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.
In 1966, Kwanzaa was first celebrated.
In 1980, Iranian television footage was broadcast in the United States showing a dozen of the American hostages sending messages to their families.
In 1990, Nancy Cruzan, a young woman in an irreversible vegetative state whose case led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right to die, died at a Missouri hospital.
In 1994, French commandos stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner on the ground in Marseille, killing four Algerian hijackers and freeing 170 hostages.
In 1996, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado. (To date, the slaying remains unsolved.)
In 2003, an earthquake struck the historic Iranian city of Bam, killing at least 26,000 people.
In 2006, former President Gerald R. Ford died in Rancho Mirage, California at age 93.
In 2018, Japan announced that it was leaving the International Whaling Commission in order to resume commercial whale hunts for the first time in 30 years, but said it would no longer go to the Antarctic for annual killings that had been harshly criticized.
In 2021, South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Desmond Tutu died at 90; the retired archbishop had been an uncompromising foe of apartheid and a modern-day activist for racial justice and LGBT rights.