December 20

December 21

WINTER SOLSTICE: shortest day of the year, but it's neither the latest sunrise nor the earliest sunset. Check your ephemerides!

December 22

1894 Dreyfus Affair commenced in France

1989 Ceausescu oligarchy overthrown
"The Romanian army defects to the cause of anti-communist demonstrators, and the government of Nicolae Ceausescu is overthrown. The end of 42 years of communist rule..." wait a minute. COMMUNIST RULE? Weren't we taught that Romanian government was a dictatorship?? Which commune ruled???

December 23

1620 Plymouth Settlement began constructing first permanent European settlement in New England. (383 years ago)

December 24

December 25

O Little Town of Bethlehem,
The hopes and fears of all the years...
Let there be Peace On Earth.

December 26 in history, Boxing Day; servants' day off...

For the history, thanks to THE HISTORY CHANNEL

JACK JOHNSON WINS HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE:
Jack Johnson becomes the first African American to win the world heavyweight title when he knocks out Canadian Tommy Burns in the 14th round in a championship bout near Sydney, Australia. Johnson, who held the heavyweight title until 1915, was reviled by whites for his defiance of the "Jim Crow" racial conventions of early 20th-century America.

The boxer who is still remembered as the greatest defensive boxer in heavyweight history was born in Galveston, Texas, in 1878. Johnson dropped out of school after fifth grade and worked the docks of Galveston before taking up professional boxing. He proved himself a powerful fighter, but the rarity of champion white boxers agreeing to meet black challengers limited his opportunities and purses. In 1903, Johnson won the "Colored Heavyweight Championship of the World" and the next year issued a challenge to Jim Jeffries, the white American who held the world title at the time. Jeffries refused to meet him, and it was not until 1908 that Tommy Burns agreed to give Johnson a shot at the more prestigious white heavyweight title.

On a more peaceful note:

1966: The first Kwanzaa --
The first day of the first Kwanzaa is celebrated in Los Angeles under the direction of Maulana Karenga, the chair of Black Studies at California State University at Long Beach. The seven-day holiday, which has strong African roots, was designed by Dr. Karenga as a celebration of African American family, community, and culture.

In 1965, a deadly riot broke out in the predominantly black Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, leaving 34 people dead, 1,000 injured, and $40 million worth of property destroyed. Karenga, a former black activist, was deeply disturbed by the devastation and searched for a way to overcome the despair he felt had gripped the African American community in the riot's aftermath. He founded Us, a black cultural organization, and looked to Africa in search of practices and concepts that might empower and unite the nation's African American community. Inspired by Africa's harvest celebrations, he decided to develop a nonreligious holiday that would stress the importance of family and community while giving African Americans an opportunity to explore their African identities.

Karenga combined aspects of several different harvest celebrations, such as those of the Ashanti and those of the Zulu, to form the basis of Kwanzaa. The name Kwanzaa is derived from the phrase matunda ya kwanza, which means "first fruits" in Swahili. Each family celebrates Kwanzaa in its own way, but celebrations often include songs and dances, African drums, storytelling, poetry readings, and a large traditional meal. On each of the seven nights, the family gathers and a child lights one of the candles on the kinara, or candleholder, then one of the seven principles is discussed. The principles, called the Nguzo Saba, are values of African culture that contribute to building and reinforcing community among African Americans. These values include unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, economic cooperation, purpose, creativity, and faith. An African feast, called a Karamu, is held on December 31. Today, Kwanzaa is celebrated by millions people of African descent all across the United States and Canada.

December 27

1978: Spanish king ratifies democratic constitution (__ years ago)
Following its approval in a national referendum, King Juan Carlos ratifies Spain's first democratic constitution in nearly five decades. [How strange.]

Juan Carlos' grandfather was Alfonso XIII, the last ruling monarch of Spain, who was forced into exile in 1931 after Spain was declared a republic. Born in Italy in 1938, Juan Carlos returned to Spain in 1955 under the invitation of General Francisco Franco, dictator of Spain since 1936. In 1969, Franco designated Juan Carlos his successor. In 1975, Juan Carlos became Spain's acting head of state after Franco conceded that he was too ill too govern. The 83-year-old dictator had been suffering serious health problems for nearly a year. Three weeks after Juan Carlos assumed power, Franco died of a heart attack. Two days later, on November 22, Juan Carlos was crowned king.

Despite having pledged loyalty to Franco's authoritarian regime, King Juan Carlos immediately began a transition to democracy in Spain. During the next decade, he presided over a period of extensive democratization in Spain.

Kind of a different path to democracy... Democracy?

December 28

1869: America's first Labor Day
The Knights of Labor, a labor union of tailors in Philadelphia, hold the first Labor Day ceremonies in American history. The Knights of Labor was established as a secret society of Pennsylvanian tailors earlier in the year and later grew into a national body that played an important role in the labor movement of the late 19th century.

The first annual observance of Labor Day was organized by the American Federation of Labor in 1884, which resolved in a convention in Chicago that "the first Monday in September be set aside as a laborer's national holiday." In 1887, Oregon became the first state to designate Labor Day a holiday, and in 1894 Congress designated the first Monday in September a legal holiday for all federal employees and the residents of the District of Columbia.

December 29

1940: London, England, suffered its most devastating air raid ever when Germans firebombed the city this date, early in the Battle of Britain. Sometimes... oh,

December 30

1853: Southern U.S. border established
James Gadsden, the U.S. minister to Mexico, and General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, sign the Gadsden Purchase in Mexico City. The treaty settled the dispute over the location of the Mexican border west of El Paso, Texas, and established the final boundaries of the southern United States. For the price of $15 million, later reduced to $10 million, the United States acquired approximately 30,000 square miles of land in what is now southern New Mexico and Arizona.

Jefferson Davis, the U.S. secretary of war under President Franklin Pierce, had sent Gadsden to negotiate with Santa Anna for the land, which was deemed by a group of political and industrial leaders to be a highly strategic location for the construction of the southern transcontinental railroad. In 1861, the "big four" leaders of western railroad construction--Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker--established the Southern Pacific branch of the Central Pacific Railroad.

1916: Rasputin murdered
Grigory Rasputin, a self-fashioned Russian holy man, is murdered by Russian nobles eager to end his sway over the royal family.

Rasputin won the favor of Czar Nicholas II and Czarina Alexandra through his ability to stop the bleeding of their hemophiliac son, Alexei. Although the Siberian-born peasant was widely criticized for his lechery and drunkenness, he exerted a powerful influence on the ruling family of Russia. He particularly influenced the czarina, and when Nicholas departed to lead Russian forces in World War I, Rasputin effectively ruled Russia through her.

In the early hours of December 30, 1916, a group of nobles lured Rasputin to Yusupovsky Palace, where they attempted to poison him. Seemingly unaffected by the large doses of poison placed in his wine and food, he was finally shot at close range and collapsed. A minute later he rose, beat one of his assailants, and attempted to escape from the palace grounds, where he was shot again. Rasputin, still alive, was then bound and tossed into a freezing river. A few months later, the imperial regime was overthrown by the Russian Revolution.

1922: USSR established
In post-revolutionary Russia, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is established, comprising a confederation of Russia, Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation (divided in 1936 into the Georgian, Azerbaijan, and Armenian republics). Also known as the Soviet Union, the new communist state was the successor to the Russian Empire and the first country in the world to be based on Marxist socialism.

During the Russian Revolution of 1917 and subsequent three-year Russian Civil War, the Bolshevik Party under Vladimir Lenin dominated the soviet forces, a coalition of workers' and soldiers' committees that called for the establishment of a socialist state in the former Russian Empire. In the USSR, all levels of government were controlled by the Communist Party, and the party's politburo, with its increasingly powerful general secretary, effectively ruled the country. Soviet industry was owned and managed by the state, and agricultural land was divided into state-run collective farms.

In the decades after it was established, the Russian-dominated Soviet Union grew into one of the world's most powerful and influential states and eventually encompassed 15 republics--Russia, Ukraine, Georgia, Belorussia, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. In 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved following the collapse of its communist government.

[more history channel filler; gracias]

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