1908 American Jack Johnson defeats Canadian Tommy Burns by TKO in Sydney, Australia to become the first black man to win the heavyweight boxing championship. Johnson stands 6’ ½” and weighs in at 192 lbs. while 5’ 7” Burns tips the scale at 168 lbs.- 1910 Heavyweight champion Jack Johnson beats his mistress Etta Terry Duryea to the point of hospitalization. He suspects her of having an affair with his chauffeur. They will reconcile and marry in 1911 but Johnson’s abuse and infidelity, in addition to the hostile reaction to their interracial relationship, will lead Duryea to commit suicide in 1912.
- 1922 Russian Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin dictates his “Political Testament”. In it he discusses possible successors and harshly criticizes Joseph Stalin.
- 1927 Police officers of South Pittsburg, Tennessee, fight a gun battle with the Marion County, Sheriff and his deputies. 5 police officers die.
- 1932 King George V makes the first royal broadcast to the peoples of the British Empire. The 2 ½-minute speech is written by Rudyard Kipling.
“Through one of the marvels of modern science, I am enabled, this Christmas Day, to speak to all my peoples throughout the Empire. I take it as a good omen that Wireless should have reached its present perfection at a time when the Empire has been linked in closer union. For it offers us immense possibilities to make that union closer still.
It may be that our future may lay upon us more than one stern test. Our past will have taught us how to meet it unshaken. For the present, the work to which we are all equally bound is to arrive at a reasoned tranquillity within our borders; to regain prosperity without self-seeking, and to carry with us those whom the burden of past years has disheartened or overborne.
My life’s aim has been to serve as I might, towards those ends. Your loyalty, your confidence in me has been my abundant reward.
I speak now from my home and from my heart to you all. To men and women so cut off by the snows, the desert or the sea, that only voices out of the air can reach them; to those cut off from fuller life by blindness, sickness, or infirmity; and to those who are celebrating this day with their children and grandchildren. To all—to each—I wish a Happy Christmas. God Bless You!””
- 1942 Russians unleash a tank attack on the surrounded German Sixth Army at Stalingrad who are eating the last of their horsemeat.
- 1954 Johnny Ace, rock star, born John Marshall Alexander Jr., dies of an accidental self-inflicted gunshot.
- 1966 During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the All-China Red Worker Rebels General Corps closes down the Ministry of Labour in Beijing; in a move termed the “December 25 Great Action” 6,000 Qinghua University students arrive in Beijing to criticize Liu Shaoqi and sing patriotic songs.
- 1980 Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador is murdered in the midst of saying Mass.
- 1989 Nicolae Ceausescu and wife Elena are executed after their Communist regime collapses.
- 1991 Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev resigns; the USSR is to be replaced by a Commonwealth of Independent States. It is the last day of the Soviet Union.