History Today

Hello, and welcome to the Christmas edition of This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 25th. It’s a reminder that the holiday spirit can persist even in the toughest of times: Just after midnight on Christmas 1914, the majority of German troops engaged in World War I stopped firing their guns and artillery and began to sing Christmas carols.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 24th. It’s become a beloved annual tradition, and it all began on this day in 1923, when President Calvin Coolidge lit the first national Christmas tree ever to grace the White House grounds. Not only was this the first White House “community” Christmas tree, but it was the first to be decorated with electric lights–a strand of 2,500 red, white and green bulbs.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 23rd.

If you know anything about Vincent Van Gogh, you likely know what happened on this day in 1888. That’s when the Dutch painter, suffering from severe depression, cut off the lower part of his ear with a razor.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 22nd.

Talk about a close call. On this day in 1849, Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was led before a firing squad and prepared for execution, after having been convicted and sentenced to death for anti-government activity.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 21st.

What’s a 9-letter word for a popular word game? The first ever published crossword puzzle debuted on this day in 1913.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 20th.

You know him as the handsome singer behind hits like “Blue Suede Shoes” and “Hound Dog,” but Elvis Presley was also a U.S. army veteran, who received his draft notice on this day in 1957, while spending the holidays at his newly purchased Tennessee mansion, Graceland.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 19th.

With Christmas right around the corner, we look back to this day in 1843, when the decidedly anti-Christmas character Scrooge was introduced to the world as part of Charles Dickens’ classic story A Christmas Carol.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 18th.

Thanksgiving may already feel like a distant memory, but it was actually on this day in 1777 that Americans celebrated the first day of national thanksgiving, commemorating the American victory over the British at the Battle of Saratoga.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 17th.

In an era when plane travel is routine, it’s hard to imagine the time before human flight was possible. Everything changed on this day in 1903, when Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight in a self-propelled, heavier-than-air craft, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.

Hello, and welcome to This Day in History. Here’s what happened on December 16th. If you remember nothing else from American history class, you likely remember what happened on this day in 1773. That’s when a group of Massachusetts colonists boarded three British tea ships and dumped 342 chests of tea, worth more than $1 million, into Boston Harbor.