TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Saturday, December 24, 2016

It is

Christmas Eve Independence Day (Libya)

On this day in history:

1814 - The War of 1812 between the U.S. and Britain was ended with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.

1818 - Franz Gruber of Oberndorf, Germany composed the music for “Silent Night” to words written by Josef Mohr.

1828 - William Burke who, with his partner William Hare, dug up the dead and murdered to sell the corpses for dissection, went on trial in Edinburgh. 1836 - Colonel William Light enthusiastically approves the site for Adelaide.

1865 - Several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, TN, called the Ku Klux Klan. 1875 - A cyclone hits Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia, killing 59.

1914 - In the First World War, the first air raid on Britain was made when a German aeroplane dropped a bomb on the grounds of a rectory in Dover.

1938 - Australia hosts the first ever Carols by Candlelight 1944 - A German submarine torpedoed the Belgian transport ship S.S. Leopoldville with 2,235 soldiers aboard. About 800 American soldiers died. The soldiers were crossing the English Channel to be reinforcements at the battle that become known as the Battle of the Bulge.

1951 - Libya achieved independence as the United Kingdom of Libya, under King Idris.

1979 - Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan in support of the country’s Marxist government. 1989 - Ousted Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega took refuge at the Vatican’s diplomatic mission in Panama City.

1997 - Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, known as “Carlos the Jackal,” was sentenced by a French court to life in prison for the 1975 murders of two French investigators and a Lebanese national.

1999 - An Indian Airlines plane was seized during a flight from Katmandu, Nepal, to New Delhi. In Afghanistan, the 150 hostages were freed on December 31 after India released three Kashmir militants from prison.