December 25 in History

Mieszko II Lambert was King of Poland from 1025 to 1031 and Duke from 1032 until his death.

William the Conqueror, sometimes called William the Bastard, was the first Norman king of England, reigning from 1066 until his death. A descendant of Rollo, he was Duke of Normandy from 1035 onward. By 1060, following a long struggle, his hold on Normandy was secure. In 1066, following the death of Edward the Confessor, William invaded England, leading a Franco-Norman army to victory over the Anglo-Saxon forces of Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. He suppressed subsequent English revolts in what has become known as the Norman Conquest. The rest of his life was marked by struggles to consolidate his hold over England and his continental lands, and by difficulties with his eldest son, Robert Curthose.

Baldwin I was the first count of Edessa from 1098 to 1100 and king of Jerusalem from 1100 to his death in 1118. He was the youngest son of Eustace II, Count of Boulogne, and Ida of Lorraine and married a Norman noblewoman, Godehilde of Tosny. He received the County of Verdun in 1096, but he soon joined the crusader army of his brother Godfrey of Bouillon and became one of the most successful commanders of the First Crusade.

John IV Doukas Laskaris was the fourth emperor of the Nicaean Empire from August 16, 1258 to December 25, 1261, one of the Greek successor states formed after the Sack of Constantinople by the Roman Catholics during the Fourth Crusade. He was the last emperor from the prominent Laskarid dynasty and the last to only rule Nicaea before the Reconquest of Constantinople by his successor in 1261.

A carrack is a three- or four-masted ocean-going sailing ship that was developed in the 14th to 15th centuries in Europe, most notably in Portugal and Spain. Evolving from the single-masted cog, the carrack was first used for European trade from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and quickly found use with the newly found wealth of the trade between Europe and Africa and then the trans-Atlantic trade with the Americas. In their most advanced forms, they were used by the Portuguese and Spaniards for trade between Europe, Africa and Asia starting in the late 15th century, before being gradually superseded in the late 16th and early 17th centuries by the galleon.

Pope Pius IV, born Giovanni Angelo Medici, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 25 December 1559 to his death, in December 1565.

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral Brandenburg Concertos; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin; keyboard works such as the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier; organ works such as the Schübler Chorales and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the St. Matthew Passion and the Mass in B minor. He is known for his mastery of counterpoint, as heard in The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue. Felix Mendelssohn precipitated the Bach Revival with a performance of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. Ever since, Bach has been acclaimed as one of the greatest composers of classical music.

The Mapuche, also known as Araucanians, are a group of Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who share a common social, religious, and economic structure, as well as a common linguistic heritage as Mapudungun speakers. Their homelands once extended from Choapa Valley to the Chiloé Archipelago and later spread eastward to Puelmapu, a land comprising part of the Argentine pampa and Patagonia. Today, the Mapuche represent 77.16% of Chile’s indigenous peoples and about 8.8% of the total national population. The Mapuche are concentrated in the Araucanía region. Many have migrated from rural areas to the cities of Santiago and Buenos Aires to pursue economic opportunities. Around 92% of the Mapuches are from Chile.

The Northwest Indian War was an armed conflict for control of the Northwest Territory between the United States and a loose confederation of Native American peoples who called themselves the United Indian Nations but are better known today as the Northwestern Confederacy. The United States Army considers the conflict to be the first of the American Indian Wars.

Samuel Marsden was an English-born priest of the Church of England in Australia and a prominent member of the Church Missionary Society. He played a leading role in cross-cultural interchange with Māori people and bringing Christianity to New Zealand. Marsden was a prominent figure in early New South Wales, partly through his role as the colony's senior Anglican cleric and as a pioneer of the Australian wool industry. He is also remembered for his harsh punishments meted out as a magistrate at Parramatta, his bigoted social views and his self-serving financial dealings, all of which attracted contemporary criticism.

The eggnog riot, sometimes known as the grog mutiny or the Christmas 1826 cadet mutiny, was a riot that took place at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York, on 24–25 December 1826. It was caused by a drunken Christmas party in the north barracks of the academy. Two days prior to the incident, a large quantity of whiskey was smuggled into the academy to make eggnog for the party, giving the riot its name. As described by Albert E. Church, who was absent on Christmas leave and missed the happenings but later became a math professor at the academy, "A large number of the cadets got on a spree, and became excessively riotous, setting all officers at defiance and even, with a drawn sword, chasing one to his room-throwing missiles through the halls, breaking windows and the railings of the stairs, &c. The scene, as described to me two days afterwards, was fit for Bedlam."

The Second Seminole War, also known as the Florida War, was a conflict from 1835 to 1842 in Florida between the United States and groups of people collectively known as Seminoles, consisting of Creek and Black Seminoles as well as other allied tribes. It was part of a series of conflicts called the Seminole Wars. The Second Seminole War, often referred to as the Seminole War, is regarded as "the longest and most costly of the Indian conflicts of the United States". After the Treaty of Payne's Landing in 1832 that called for the Seminoles' removal from Florida, tensions rose until fierce hostilities occurred in Dade's massacre in 1835. This engagement officially started the war although there were a series of incidents leading up to the Dade battle. The Seminoles and the U.S. forces engaged in mostly small engagements for more than six years. By 1842, only a few hundred native peoples remained in Florida. Although no peace treaty was ever signed, the war was declared over on August 14, 1842, by Colonel William Jenkins Worth.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor, best known for his operas, although his mature works are often referred to as music dramas. Unlike most composers, Wagner wrote both the libretti and the music for all of his stage works. He first achieved recognition with works in the Romantic tradition of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, but revolutionised the genre through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, which sought to unite poetic, musical, visual, and dramatic elements. In this approach, the drama unfolds as a continuously sung narrative, with the music evolving organically from the text rather than alternating between arias and recitatives. Wagner outlined these ideas in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852, most fully realising them in the first half of his four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.

The National Protection War, also known as the Anti-Monarchy War, or the Third Revolution, was a civil war that took place in China from December 1915 to July 1916. Following the overthrow of the Qing dynasty three years previously, the Republic of China was established in its place. The war was caused by President Yuan Shikai's proclamation of the Empire of China, with himself as the Hongxian Emperor.

The 1932 Changma earthquake occurred at 10:04:27 local time on 25 December. With an estimated magnitude of 7.6 on the surface-wave magnitude scale, and a maximum felt intensity of X (Extreme) on the Mercalli intensity scale, the quake destroyed 1,167 houses and caused 275 to 70,000 deaths and 320 injuries.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major roles, the latter enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the only nuclear weapons used in war. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the death of 60 to 75 million people. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides, including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

In nuclear physics, a nuclear chain reaction occurs when one single nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more subsequent nuclear reactions, thus leading to the possibility of a self-propagating series or "positive feedback loop" of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes. A nuclear chain reaction releases several million times more energy per reaction than any chemical reaction.

Harry T. Moore and his wife, Harriette V. S. Moore, were pioneer activists and leaders of the early Civil Rights Movement in the United States and became the first martyrs of the movement. On the night of Christmas, December 25, 1951, a bomb that had been planted under the bedroom floor of the Moores' home in Mims, Florida, exploded. They had celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary earlier that day. Harry died in the ambulance in transit from the attack, and Harriette died from her injuries nine days later, on January 3, 1952. Their deaths were the first assassination of any activist to occur during the Civil Rights Movement and the only time that a husband and wife were killed during the history of the movement.

Bayrak Radio and Television Corporation, is the official radio and television broadcasting corporation of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. It operates BRT1 and BRT2.

The Kilvenmani massacre was an incident in Kizhavenmani village, Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu state in India on 25 December 1968 in which a group of around 44 people, the families of striking Dalit village labourers, were murdered by a gang, allegedly led by their landlords. The chief accused was Gopalakrishnan Naidu.

EgyptAir Flight 864 was an international scheduled passenger flight from Rome Fiumicino Airport to Tokyo International Airport, via Cairo, Bombay, and Bangkok. On 25 December 1976, the Boeing 707 crashed into an industrial complex in Bangkok. All 52 people on board were killed, and 19 plus on the ground in the crash.

Iraqi Airways Flight 163 was a Boeing 737-270C, registered YI-AGJ, that was hijacked in 1986. On 25 December 1986, en route from Baghdad's Saddam International Airport to Amman, Jordan, Flight 163 was hijacked by four men. Iraqi Airways security personnel tried to stop the hijackers, but a hand grenade was detonated in the passenger cabin, forcing the crew to initiate an emergency descent. Another hand grenade exploded in the cockpit, causing the aircraft to crash near Arar, Saudi Arabia, where it broke in two and caught fire.

Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was a Soviet and Russian politician who was the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the country's dissolution in 1991. He served as General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1985, and additionally as head of state from 1988. Ideologically, he initially adhered to Marxism–Leninism, but moved towards social democracy by the early 1990s.

Cubana de Aviación Flight 310 was a scheduled international flight from José Martí International Airport, Havana, Cuba, to Arturo Michelena International Airport, Valencia, Venezuela, which crashed near Bejuma, Venezuela, on 25 December 1999. All 10 passengers and 12 crew on board were killed.

The Beagle 2 is an inoperative British Mars lander that was transported by the European Space Agency's 2003 Mars Express mission. It was intended to conduct an astrobiology mission that would have looked for evidence of past life on Mars.

The Siberian tiger or Amur tiger is a population of the tiger subspecies Panthera tigris tigris native to Northeast China, the Russian Far East, and possibly North Korea. It once ranged throughout the Korean Peninsula, but was eradicated in the area during the period of Japanese rule between 1910 and 1945, and currently inhabits mainly the Sikhote-Alin mountain region in the south-west of Primorsky Krai in the Russian Far East. In 2005, there were 331–393 adult and subadult Siberian tigers in this region, with a breeding adult population of about 250 individuals. The population had been stable for more than a decade because of intensive conservation efforts, but partial surveys conducted after 2005 indicate that the Russian tiger population was declining. An initial census held in 2015 indicated that the Siberian tiger population had increased to 480–540 individuals in the Russian Far East, including 100 cubs. This was followed up by a more detailed census which revealed there was a total population of 562 wild Siberian tigers in Russia. As of 2014, about 35 individuals were estimated to range in the international border area between Russia and China. As of 2022, about 756 Siberian tigers including 200 cubs were estimated to inhabit the Russian Far East.

Air Bagan Flight 011 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight of a Fokker 100 twinjet from Yangon to Heho, Myanmar. On 25 December 2012, the aircraft crash-landed short of the runway at Heho Airport in fog, coming to a stop in a paddy field and bursting into flames. One of the 71 people on board and a motorcyclist on the ground were killed and more than 10 people were injured.

Typhoon Phanfone, known locally as Ursula, was a strong and deadly tropical cyclone which traversed the Philippines on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 2019, the first typhoon to do so since Nock-ten in 2016.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. It is the largest telescope in space, and is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, distant, or faint for the Hubble Space Telescope. This enables investigations across many fields of astronomy and cosmology, such as observation of the first stars and the formation of the first galaxies, and detailed atmospheric characterization of potentially habitable exoplanets.