This day in history

Today is Monday, Dec. 25, the 359th day of 2023. There are six days left in the year. This is Christmas Day.

Birthdays: Author Anne Roiphe is 88. Actor Hanna Schygulla is 80. R&B singer John Edwards of The Spinners is 79. Actor Gary Sandy is 78. Football Hall-of-Famer Larry Csonka is

77. Country singer Barbara Mandrell is 75. Actor Sissy Spacek is

74. Blues singer-guitarist Joe Louis Walker is 74. Former White House adviser Karl Rove is 73. Actor CCH Pounder is 71. Singer Annie Lennox is 69. Reggae singer-musician Robin Campbell of UB40 is 69. Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson is 65. The former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, Christina Romer, is 65. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is

52. Rock musician Noel Hogan of The Cranberries is 52. Singer Dido is 52. Pop singers Jess and Lisa Origliasso of The Veronicas are 39. Actor Perdita Weeks is

38.

In A.D. 336, the first known commemoration of Christmas on Dec. 25 took place in Rome.

In 1066, William the Conqueror was crowned King of England.

In 1651, the Massachusetts General Court, reflecting Puritan attitudes, ordered a five shilling fine for “observing any such day as Christmas.”

In 1776, General George Washington and his troops crossed the Delaware River for a surprise attack against Hessian forces at Trenton, N.J., during the American Revolutionary War.

In 1818, “Silent Night (Stille Nacht)” was publicly performed for the first time during the Christmas Midnight Mass at the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

In 1821, Clara Barton, founder of the Red Cross, was born in North Oxford, Mass.

In 1926, Hirohito became emperor of Japan, succeeding his father, Emperor Yoshihito.

In 1946, comedian and actor W.C. Fields died in Pasadena, California, at age 66.

In 1977, comedian and filmmaker Sir Charles Chaplin died in Switzerland at age 88.

In 1989, ousted Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, were executed following a popular uprising.

In 1991, Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev went on television to announce his resignation as the eighth and final leader of a communist superpower that had already gone out of existence.

In 1999, Space Shuttle Discovery’s astronauts finished their repair job on the Hubble Space Telescope and released it back into orbit.

In 2009, passengers aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 foiled an attempt to blow up the plane as it was landing in Detroit by seizing Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to set off explosives in his underwear. (Abdulmutallab later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.)

In 2017, Russian election officials formally barred opposition leader Alexei Navalny from running for president, prompting him to call for a boycott of the March 2018 vote.

In 2021, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, the world’s largest and most powerful space telescope, rocketed away from French Guiana in South America on a quest to see light from the first stars and galaxies and search the universe for signs of life.

In 2020, a recreational vehicle parked in the deserted streets of downtown Nashville exploded early Christmas morning, damaging dozens of buildings, causing widespread communications outages, and grounding holiday travel at the city’s airport; investigators later determined that the bomber, a 63-year-old Nashville-area man, was killed in the explosion.