This Day In History: December 24, 1818 On a cold Christmas Eve, Pastor Joseph Franz Mohr walked to the home of his friend Franz Xaver Gruber carrying a poem he had written two years earlier. He was in dire need of a Christmas carol for midnight mass and was hoping Gruber, a teacher who also served as the church organist […]

This Day In History: December 23, 1805 “You don’t know me – you never will. You never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it; I shall never undertake it. I don’t blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself.”– Joseph Smith, […]

This Day In History: December 22, 1849 Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, journalist, and philosopher. He worked within, and was obviously influenced by, the constraints of 19th century Russia. Some of his major works include Crime and Punishment (1866), The Idiot (1869), Demons (1872), and The Brothers Karamazov (1880). In 1847, Dostoyevsky joined the Petrashevsky Circle, a group […]

This Day In History: December 19, 1732 Ben Franklin was, by all accounts, a busy guy. Throughout his life, he made a name for himself as a printer, postmaster, author, scientist, satirist, inventor, diplomat and statesman. Aside from his indisputable political influence on the fledgling United States, his most memorable contribution to American culture was Poor Richard’s Almanack. Not only […]

This Day In History: December 18, 1966 “Christmas day will always be, just so long as we have we.” When “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” first aired on December 18, 1966, the most optimistic projection for the cartoon was a ten-year run. Almost half a century later, it has exceeded all expectations, becoming a cherished Christmas classic eagerly awaited by […]

This Day In History: December 17, 1969 On December 17, 1969, the oddly engaging ukulele strumming pop sensation Tiny Tim, most famous for the song “Tiptoe Through the Tulips”, married his girlfriend, Miss Vicki, on the Tonight Show while 45 million people watched at home. The wedding attracted the most viewers in the show’s history up to that time. Tim […]

This Day In History: December 16, 1977 “Would ya just watch the hair? Ya know, I work on my hair a long time and you hit it. He hits my hair.” – Tony Manero At first, all you see are highly-shined shoes and swishing black flared pants strutting down a New York City street in perfect rhythm to the Bee […]

This Day In History: December 15, 1944 Glenn Miller was on the top of his game in 1944. He led the most popular recording group in the world. His only rival for king of Big Band music was the great Benny Goodman. During World War II, 40-year-old Miller was serving as a major in the United States Army Air Force […]

This Day In History: December 12, 1980 When an ordinary person doodles, the results eventually get tossed in the trash without a second thought. But when one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance era’s hastily scribbled drawings are discovered in centuries-old notebooks, they cause multi-million dollar bidding wars. And so it was that on December 12, 1980, Armand Hammer, […]

This Day In History: December 11, 1792 On August 13, 1792, during the height of the French Revolution, Louis XVI was arrested. He was taken to a Paris fortress being used as a prison called the Temple to await his fate. (He probably had a pretty good idea of what it would be; it was more a matter of when […]

This Day In History: December 10, 1907 On December 10, 1907, a reported thousand men, many medical students, marched through London defending the practice of surgery on live animals (vivisection). This demonstration ended in Trafalgar Square when the police charged the rioters on horseback, culminating in a street battle of several hours’ duration. Incredibly, all of this ire was directed […]

This Day In History: December 9, 1992 “’Well, there were three of us in the marriage so it was a bit crowded.”- Princess Diana It was an announcement that would have been no surprise at all had they been any other British couple. Even after all the very public tiffs and extramarital dalliances, the House of Commons let out a […]

This Day In History: December 8, 1980 It was the last thing people expected. On December 8, 1980, Howard Cosell announced during Monday Night Football that John Lennon, legendary musician and peace activist, had been shot and killed outside his home in New York City. The shooter, 25-year-old Mark David Chapman, made no attempt to flee the scene or resist […]

This Day In History: December 5, 1901 On December 5, 1901 Walter Elias Disney, the man who would turn a rodent into a beloved icon and go on to create a global empire of family-friendly movies, merchandise and theme parks, was born in Chicago, Illinois. Always the artist and entrepreneur, he used to sell his drawings to his neighbors to […]

This Day In History: December 3, 1947 On December 3, 1947, a young Marlon Brando first delivered the anguished cry “STELLA” across the Ethel Barrymore Theatre during the debut performance of Tennessee Williams’ drama A Streetcar Named Desire. The play explores the tension between tough, working class Stanley Kowalski (played by Marlon Brando), and Blanche Dubois, a genteel Southern belle […]

This Day In History: December 1, 1955 When Rosa Parks, a 42-year-old African American seamstress, climbed aboard a bus in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, she had no intention of striking a blow for the civil rights movement. After a long shift at work, Parks just wanted to get home to her family and unwind from her day. The […]

This Day In History: November 28, 1925 On November 28, 1925 at 8 p.m., George D. Hay, who dubbed himself “The Solemn Old Judge”, and an 80-year-old fiddler named “Uncle” Jimmy Thompson launched the inaugural broadcast of the Grand Ole Opry, the longest continuously running radio program in history. As you might have guessed from the date, the Grand Ole […]