History for December 26

History for December 26 - On-This-Day.com
Charles Babbage 1792- Mathematician and inventor, he is regarded as the pioneer of modern computers. Goerge Dewey 1837, Henry Miller (Valentine) 1891 Writer (Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), Tropic of Capricorn (1939), His Sexus (1949)) 


Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) 1893- Chinese statesman, Richard Widmark 1914 - Actor, Steve Allen 1921 - Comedian, actor, composer. First host of "The Tonight Show." Films: The Benny Goodman Story (1955), The Comic (1969), Casino (1995). Scores: A Man Called Dagger (1968) and the CBS musical Alice in Wonderland (1985). 


1865 - The coffee percolator was patented by James H. Mason. 


1943 - The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was sunk in the North Sea, during the Battle of North Cape. 


1974 - Comedian Jack Benny died at age 80. 


1982 - The Man of the Year in "TIME" magazine was a computer. It was the first time a non-human received the honors. 


1990 - Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov to retain the chess championship. 


1991 - The Soviet Union's parliament formally voted the country out of existence. 


1996 - Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, CO. 


2004 - Under the Indian Ocean, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent 500-mph waves across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The tsunami killed at least 283,000 people in a dozen countries, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sumatra, Thailand and India.