On this day, Dec. 24
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.
1851 Fire devastated the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.
1865 Several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tenn., that was the original version of the Ku Klux Klan. 1906 Canadian physicist Reginald A. Fessenden became the first person to transmit the human voice (his own) as well as music over radio, from Brant Rock, Mass.
1913 Seventy-three 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, Mich.
1914 During World War I, impromptu Christmas truces began to take hold along parts of the Western Front between British and German soldiers. 1943 President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe as part of Operation Overlord.
1951 Gian Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” the first opera written specifically for television, was broadcast by NBC-TV.
1968 The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.
1990 Actor Tom Cruise married his “Days of Thunder” costar, Nicole Kidman, during a private ceremony at a Colorado ski resort.
1992 President George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.
2012 Actors Charles Durning, 89, and Jack Klugman, 90, died on the same day.
2013 Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II granted a posthumous pardon to code-breaker Alan Turing, who was convicted of homosexual behavior in the 1950s.
2017 Peru’s president announced that he had granted a medical pardon to jailed former strongman Alberto Fujimori, 79, who had been serving a 25-year sentence for human rights abuses, corruption and the sanctioning of death squads.
2020 Bethlehem ushered in Christmas Eve with a stream of joyous marching bands and the triumphant arrival of the top Catholic clergyman in the Holy Land, but few people were there to greet them as the pandemic and a strict lockdown dampened celebrations. 2021 Pope Francis celebrated Christmas Eve Mass before an estimated 2,000 people in St. Peter’s Basilica, going ahead with the service despite the resurgence in COVID-19 cases that had prompted a new vaccine mandate for Vatican employees.
2022 Kathy Whitworth, the golfer whose 88 career LPGA victories were the most by any player on a single professional tour, died at age 83.
Today’s birthdays: Dr. Anthony Fauci, 83. Recording company executive Mike Curb, 79. Former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, 77. Actor Grand L. Bush, 68. Actor Stephanie Hodge, 67. The former president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, 66. Rock musician Ian Burden (The Human League), 66. Actor Anil Kapoor, 64. Actor Eva Tamargo, 63. Actor Wade Williams, 62. Rock singer Mary Ramsey (10,000 Maniacs), 60. Actor Mark Valley, 59. Actor Diedrich Bader, 57. Actor Amaury Nolasco, 53. Singer Ricky Martin, 52. Author Stephenie Meyer, 50. TV personality Ryan Seacrest (TV: “Live With Kelly & Ryan”), 49. Actor Michael RaymondJames, 46. Actor Austin Stowell, 39. Actor Sofia BlackD’Elia, 32. Rock singer Louis Tomlinson (One Direction), 32. NFL wide receiver Davante Adams, 31.