TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, Dec. 26, the 360th day of 2022. There are five days left in the year. On this date in:

1865: James H. Nason of Franklin, Massachusetts, received a patent for “an improved coffee percolator.”

1908: Jack Johnson became the first African-American boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.

1917: During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.

1941: During World War II, Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

1966: Kwanzaa was first celebrated.

1980: Iranian television footage was broadcast in the United States showing a dozen of the American hostages sending messages to their families.

1990: Nancy Cruzan, the 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.

1994: French commandos stormed a hijacked Air France jetliner on the ground in Marseille, killing four Algerian hijackers and freeing 170 hostages.

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.)

2003: An earthquake struck the historic Iranian city of Bam, killing at least 26,000 people.

2004: More than 230,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, were killed by a 100-foothigh tsunami triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.

2006: Former President Gerald R. Ford died in Rancho Mirage, California, at age 93.

2012: Toyota Motor Corp. said it had reached a settlement worth more than $1 billion in a case involving unintended acceleration problems in its vehicles.