Today in History
Updated 5:38 pm, Friday, December 21, 2012
1524: Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama - who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India - died in Cochin, India.
1814: The War of 1812 officially ended as the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent.
1851: Fire devastated the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroying about 35,000 volumes.
1951: Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," the first opera written specifically for television, was first broadcast by NBC-TV.
1955: The Continental Air Defense Command Operations Center in Colorado Springs, Colo., fielded a series of phone calls from children wanting to know the whereabouts of Santa Claus after an ad in a local newspaper mistakenly gave the Center's number; thus began a tradition continued by the North American Aerospace Defense Command of tracking Santa's location the night before Christmas.
1968: The Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.
2000: A group of escaped convicts robbed a sporting goods store in Irving, Texas; the robbery was interrupted by a police officer, Aubrey Hawkins, who was killed by the fugitive gang.
2002: Laci Peterson was reported missing from her Modesto, Calif., home, by her husband, Scott, who was later convicted of murdering her and their unborn son.