Capitol Hill Blue Forums Hot Topics & Breaking News The RoundTable Round Table for Christmas Day, 2009

Christmas Day greetings and welcome to the Round Table for Friday, December 25, 2009.
Read all about the history of Christmas[/size]



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Grab a cup and relax

Events

* 800 – Coronation of Charlemagne as Holy Roman Emperor, in Rome.
* 1000 – The foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary: Hungary is established as a Christian kingdom by Stephen I of Hungary.
* 1066 – William the Conqueror is crowned as king of England, at Westminster Abbey, London.
* 1100 – Baldwin of Boulogne is crowned as the first King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Nativity.
* 1130 – Count Roger II of Sicily is crowned as the first King of Sicily.
* 1223 – St. Francis of Assisi assembles the first Nativity scene.
* 1261 – John IV Lascaris of the restored Eastern Roman Empire is deposed and blinded by orders of his co-ruler Michael VIII Palaeologus.
* 1553 – Battle of Tucapel: Mapuche rebels under Lautaro defeats the Spanish conquistadors and executes the governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia.
* 1599 – The city of Natal, Brazil is founded.
* 1643 – Christmas Island founded and named by Captain William Mynors of the East India Ship Company vessel, the Royal Mary.
* 1776 – George Washington and his army cross the Delaware River to attack the Kingdom of Great Britain's Hessian mercenaries in Trenton, New Jersey.
* 1818 – The first performance of "Silent Night" takes place in the church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.
* 1837 – Battle of Lake Okeechobee: United States forces defeat Seminole Native Americans.
* 1868 – U.S. President Andrew Johnson grants unconditional pardon to all Civil War Confederate soldiers.
* 1914 – World War I: Known as the Christmas truce, German and British troops on the Western Front temporarily cease fire.
* 1926 – Emperor Taishō of Japan dies. His son, Prince Hirohito succeeds him as Emperor Shōwa.
* 1932 – A magnitude 7.6 earthquake in Gansu, China kills ~70,000 people.
* 1941 – Admiral Chester W Nimitz arrives at Pearl Harbor to assume command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
* 1941 – World War II: Battle of Hong Kong ends, beginning the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong.
* 1947 – The Constitution of the Republic of China goes into effect.
* 1950 – The Stone of Scone, traditional coronation stone of British monarchs, is taken from Westminster Abbey by Scottish nationalist students. It later turns up in Scotland on April 11, 1951.
* 1963 – Turkish Cypriot Bayrak Radio begins transmitting in Cyprus after Turkish Cypriots are forcibly excluded from Cyprus Broadcasting Corporation.
* 1965 – The Yemeni Nasserite Unionist People's Organisation is founded in Taiz
* 1968 – Apollo program: Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneouver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.
* 1968 – 42 Dalits are burned alive in Kilavenmani village, Tamil Nadu, India, a retaliation for a campaign for higher wages by Dalit labourers.
* 1973 – The ARPANET crashes when a programming bug causes all ARPANET traffic to be routed through the server at Harvard University, causing the server to freeze.
* 1974 – Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Northern Territory Australia.
* 1974 – Marshall Fields drives a vehicle through the gates of the White House, resulting in a four-hour standoff.
* 1977 – Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin meets in Egypt with President of Egypt, Anwar Sadat.
* 1989 – Nicolae Ceauşescu, former communist dictator of Romania and his wife Elena are condemned to death and executed under a wide range of charges.
* 1990 – The first successful trial run of the system which would become the World Wide Web.
* 1991 – Mikhail Gorbachev resigns as president of the Soviet Union (the union itself is dissolved the next day). Ukraine's referendum is finalized and Ukraine officially leaves the Soviet Union.
* 2003 – The ill-fated Beagle 2 probe, released from the Mars Express Spacecraft on December 19, disappears shortly before its scheduled landing.
* 2004 – Cassini orbiter releases Huygens probe which successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005.

Since there are more than enough places to find Christmas music today, here are some musical talents born this date:
# 1946 – Jimmy Buffett, American singer and songwriter

You didn't think I would pick THAT song did you?

# 1949 – Simone Bittencourt de Oliveira, Singer and icon of the Brazilian music


# 1954 – Annie Lennox, Scottish singer


# 1971 – Dido, English singer



And finally, in case you were getting sleepy:
# 1976 – Armin van Buuren, Dutch DJ & Producer




Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and all that jazz