TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Dec. 24, 1943

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe as part of Operation Overlord. ALSO ON THIS DATE

1814

The United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 following ratification by both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate.

1865

Several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, that was the original version of the Ku Klux Klan.

1871

Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Aida” had its world premiere in Cairo, Egypt.

1906

Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to transmit the human voice as well as music over radio, from Brant Rock, Massachusetts.

1913

73 people, most of them children, died in a crush of panic after a false cry of “Fire!” during a Christmas party for striking miners and their families at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan.

1914

During World War I, impromptu Christmas truces began to take hold along parts of the Western Front between British and German soldiers.

1968

The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.

1974

Cyclone Tracy began battering the Australian city of Darwin, resulting in widespread damage and causing some 65 deaths.

1980

Americans remembered the U.S. hostages in Iran by burning candles or shining lights for 417 seconds _ one second for each day of captivity.