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Hear from the grave, great Taliessin, hear;
They breathe a soul to animate thy clay.
Bright Rapture calls, and soaring, as she sings,
Waves in the eye of Heav'n her many-colour'd wings.
~ Thomas Gray
Wikiquote (Thomas Gray (December 26, 1716 – July 30, 1771) an English poet, classical scholar, and professor of history at Cambridge University.)
December 26th, 1135
Coronation of King Stephen of England.
Wikipedia Image: King Stephen of England; Pope Boniface VIII; Contemporary depiction of Stephen's brother Henry of Blois, with his bishop's staff and ring; A 13th century depiction of the coronation of Stephen, by Matthew Paris.
December 26th, 1776
American Revolutionary War:
1776 - Battle of Trenton; The Continental Army attacks and successfully defeats a garrison of Hessian Mercenaries action.
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
December 26th, 1790
French Revolution:
1790 - Louis XVI of France gives his public assent to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy.
1792 - The final trial of Louis XVI of France begins in Paris.
Wikipedia Painting: Maximilien Robespierre, Musée Carnavalet, Paris The National Assembly, by Jacques-Louis David
December 26th, 1793
French Revolutionary Wars / Napoleonic Wars:
1793 - Second Battle of Wissembourg; the French are defeated by the Austrians.
1805 - Austria and France sign the Treaty of Pressburg.
1806 - Battles of Pultusk and Golymin forces hold French forces under Napoleon
Wikipedia Painting: Battle of Trafalgar: The British HMS Sandwich fires to the French flagship Bucentaure (completely dismasted) in the battle of Trafalgar;
Napoleon in Berlin (Meynier). After defeating Prussian forces at Jena, the French Army entered Berlin on 27 October 1806;
Battle of the Bridge of Arcole Napoleon Bonaparte leading his troops over the bridge of Arcole, by Horace Vernet;
Napoleon as King of Italy (Appiani);
Napoleon Crossing the Alps (David). In 1800 Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at Marengo;
Charge of the Russian Imperial Guard cavalry against French cuirassiers at the Battle of Friedland, 14 June 1807;
Battle of Borodino as depicted by Louis Lejeune. The battle was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the Napoleonic Wars;
Napoleon's withdrawal from Russia, a painting by Adolph Northen;
Wellington at Waterloo by Robert Alexander Hillingford;
Napoleon is often represented in his green colonel uniform of the Chasseur à Cheval, with a large bicorne and a hand-in-waistcoat gesture.
Battle of the Nile (Battle of Aboukir Bay).
December 26th, 1799
Four thousand people attend George Washington's funeral where Henry Lee declares him as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen".
Wikipedia Painting: George Washington, 1st President of the United States, Gilbert Stuart Williamstown Portrait; George Washington at Valley Forge, John Trumbull Portrait.
Photo: Mount Rushmore; Sculptures of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln represent the first 130 years of the history of the United States.
December 26th, 1846
Trapped in snow in the Sierra Nevadas and without food, members of the Donner Party resort to cannibalism.
Wikipedia Image: Sierra Nevadas; James F. Reed and his wife, Margret W. Keyes Reed, seen in this file photo taken in the 1850s, were survivors of the tragic Donner Party, credit AP / Discovery (Detailed analysis of the bones instead found that the 84 Donner Party members consumed a family dog, "Uno," along with cattle, deer and horses. Cattle, likely eaten after the animals themselves died of starvation, appear to have been their mainstay); Wagon train with families.
December 26th, 1861
American Civil War:
1861 - Trent Affair Confederate diplomatic envoys James M. Mason and John Slidell are freed by the United States government, thus heading off a possible war between the United States and United Kingdom.
1862 - Battle of Chickasaw Bayou begins.
1862 - Four nuns serving as volunteer nurses on board USS Red Rover are the first female nurses on a United States Navy hospital ship.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
December 26th, 1862
American Indian Wars:
1862 - The largest mass-hanging in United States history took place in Mankato, Minnesota, 38 Native Americans die.
Wikipedia Photos: American Indians - Chief Crazy Horse, Tashunca-uitco (1849 - 1877) ● Geronimo Apache Chief (1829 - 1909) ● Indian Chief 'Two Eagles'; Crow Indian Chief ● Snake Cheif ● Band of Chiricahua Apache Indians, followers of legendary renegade Geronimo, attending a peace negotiation after a long struggle against U.S. government attempts to force them onto reservations - Tombstone, Arizona (1886), Life Magazine ● American Horse - Oglala ● Native American Arapaho Indian ● Washakie, Shoshone leader ● Arapaho American Indian Chief.
Painting: In Mankato, Minnesota the largest mass-hanging in United States history takes place.
December 26th, 1871
Gilbert and Sullivan collaborate for the first time, on their lost opera Thespis.
Wikipedia Photo: Gilbert and Sullivan: refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the librettist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896
December 26th, 1898
Marie and Pierre Curie announce the isolation of radium.
Wikipedia Photo: Pierre Curie and Marie; Missy Maloney, Irène, Marie and Ève Curie in the USA. (Photo provided by William Brown Maloney Papers, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, USA.), NobelPrize.org
December 26th, 1919
Babe Ruth of the Boston Red Sox is sold to the New York Yankees by owner Harry Frazee.
Wikipedia Photo: Babe Ruth, Outfielder / Pitcher, best known as 'Babe' Ruth and nicknamed 'the Bambino' and 'the Sultan of Swat', an American baseball player who spent 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) playing for three teams (1914–1935)
December 26th, 1933
FM radio patented.
Wikipedia Image: Frequency modulation (A signal may be carried by an AM or FM radio wave).
December 26th, 1941
World War II:
1941 - United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs a bill establishing the fourth Thursday in November as Thanksgiving Day in the United States.
1943 - Battle of North Cape; German warship Scharnhorst is sunk by Royal Navy forces off of Norway's North Cape.
1944 - Siege of Bastogne; Patton's Third Army breaks the encirclement of surrounded United States forces at Bastogne, Belgium.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
December 26th, 1948
Cardinal József Mindszenty is arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy. (He was an opponent of communism and the Stalinist persecution in his country.)
Wikipedia Painting: József Mindszenty arrested in Hungary and accused of treason and conspiracy. (He was an opponent of communism and the Stalinist persecution in his country.)
December 26th, 1972
Vietnam War:
1972 - As part of Operation Linebacker II, 120 American B-52 Stratofortress bombers attacked Hanoi, including 78 launched from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam the largest single combat launch in Strategic Air Command history.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, credit Free Republic;
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.
December 26th, 1975
Tupolev Tu-144 SST (supersonic transport) goes into service in Soviet Union.
Wikipedia Photo: The Tupolev Tu-144 (NATO name: "Charger'") a supersonic transport aircraft (SST) at the time, one of only two SSTs to enter commercial service, the other being Concorde.
December 26th, 1991
Dissolution of the Soviet Union: Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union meets and formally dissolves the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia Image: Russia Satellite Map.
December 26th, 1998
Gulf War - Iraq War:
1998 - Iraq announces its intention to fire upon U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the northern and southern no-fly zones.
Wikipedia Photo: USAF F-15Es, F-16s, and a USAF F-15 flying over burning Kuwaiti oil wells; Iraqi Army T-72 main battle tanks. The T-72 tank was a common Iraqi battle tank used in the Gulf War; F-15Es parked during Operation Desert Shield; The oil fires caused were a result of the scorched earth policy of Iraqi military forces retreating from Kuwait; Aerial view of destroyed Iraqi T-72 tank, BMP-1 and Type 63 armored personnel carriers and trucks on Highway 8 in March 1991.
December 26th, 2003
Earthquake:
2003 - Bam earthquake; A 6.6 magnitude earthquake devastates southeast Iranian city of Bam, killing tens of thousands and destroying the citadel of Arg-é Bam.
2004 - Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami; A 9.3 magnitude earthquake creates a tsunami, causing devastation in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Maldives and many other areas around the rim of the Indian Ocean, killing over 230,000 people including over 1700 in the Sri Lanka tsunami-rail disaster.
2006 - Hengchun earthquake; A 7.1 magnitude earthquake hits Hengchun, Pingtung, Taiwan, killing two people and causing severe communication disruptions in southeast Asia.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
December 26th, 2006
Abule Egba pipeline explosion: An oil pipeline in Lagos, Nigeria explodes, killing at least 260.
Wikipedia Image: Nigeria Pipeline Explosion Incinerates Hundreds. National Geographic, Photos in the News.