December 26 is the 361th day of 2020. There are 5 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
2004: A massive tsunami triggered by earthquakes tears across the Indian Ocean, devastating coastal communities in 12 countries, killing at least 216,000 people, and leaving more than a million people homeless.
OTHER EVENTS
1492: Explorer Christopher Columbus finds a European settlement on the island of Hispaniola.
1865: American inventor James H Nason receives patent for the coffee percolator.
1908 African-american boxer Jack Johnson stops Canadian defending champion Tommy
Burns in the 14th round in
Sydney, Australia, to become the first black man to win world heavyweight title.1962: Eight East Germans escape to West Berlin by crashing a bus through barriers at border checkpoint.
1971: Sixteen Vietnam War veterans seize the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour to dramatise their anti-war stand.
1978: India’s former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi is released from jail.
1995 Paul Adams becomes South Africa’s youngest Test Cricket player at 18 yrs 340 days
1996 Start of the largest strike in South Korean history.
1996 The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification goes into force
1996 Six-year-old beauty queen Jonbenét Ramsey is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colorado
1997 The Soufriere Hills volcano on the island of Montserrat explodes, creating a small tsunami offshore.
1999 Severe weather in France kills over 100 people and causes extensive damage to property, trees and the French national power grid.
2003: An earthquake rocks the Iranian city of Bam, 980 kilometers (610 miles) southeast of the capital Teheran, killing 50,000 people and destroying 90 per cent of the city’s residential area.
2004: A large earthquake shakes the Indian Ocean floor west of the island of Sumatra, triggering a devastating tsunami that swamped coastal areas from Thailand to Africa and killed more than 200,000 people.
2006: Gerald R Ford, who picked up the pieces of Richard Nixon’s scandal-shattered White House as the 38th and only unelected president in America’s history, dies at 93.
2012: China opens the world’s longest high speed rail route from Beijing to Guangzhou.
2015: Floods in Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay displace 150,000, blamed on El Nino.
2018: American Colin O’brady is the first person to cross Antarctica solo and unassisted after 54 days at the Ross Ice Shelf
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS
Charles Babbage, English mathematician and inventor of first computer (1791-1871); George Romney, English artist (1734-1802); Henry Miller, US writer (1891-1980); Mao Tsetung, Chinese leader (1893-1976); Leopold Mannes, US co-developer of Kodachrome film (1899-1964); Yohan Blake, Jamaican sprinter, double Olympian champion, and four-time World Champion (1986- )