History for December 26

History for December 26 - On-This-Day.com
Thomas Gray 1716, 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), Mao Zedong (Tse-tung) 1893- Chinese statesman, Steve Allen 1921 - Comedian, actor, composer. First host of "The Tonight Show."


1620 - The Pilgrim Fathers landed at New Plymouth, MA, to found Plymouth Colony, with John Carver as Governor.


1776 - The British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolutionary War.


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


1941 - Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.


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


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.