On This Day - 25th December

1642 - Sir Isaac Newton born
1821 - Clara Barton born
1893 - Robert Ripley born
1899 - Humphrey Bogart born
1907 - Cab Calloway born
1918 - Anwar Sadat born
1924 - Rod Serling born
1925 - Carlos Castaneda born
1932 - King George V makes the first ever Christmas day royal broadcast
1945 - Gary Sandy born
1946 - Jimmy Buffett born
1948 - Barbara Mandrell born
1949 - Sissy Spacek and Ron Foos born
1952 - British and Commonwealth listeners hear the Queen's first Christmas broadcast since her accession to the throne.
1954 - Annie Lennox born
1958 - Rickey Henderson born
1971 - Dido born
1974 - The Australian city of Darwin is wrecked by a powerful cyclone (Tracey) that leaves thousands of people homeless.
1977 - Charlie Chaplin, the comic genius of silent films, dies at his home in Switzerland at the age of 88.
1989 - Deposed Romanian president Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife Elena are shot after being found guilty of crimes against the state.
1991 - Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union for almost seven years, steps down from office.
2003 - Scientists fail to make contact with British-built Mars probe Beagle 2, which should have landed on the Red Planet earlier today.

On This Day - 24th December

1809 - Kit Carson born
1880 - Johnny Gruelle born
1905 - Howard Hughes born
1922 - Ava Gardner born
1929 - Mary Higgins Clark born
1962 - More than 1,000 men taken prisoner at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba return to the United States in time for Christmas.
1968 - The Apollo 8 spacecraft and its crew of three astronauts (Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders) become the first manned space mission to orbit the Moon.
1971 - Ricky Martin born
1974 - Former UK minister John Stonehouse has been found in Australia after apparently faking his own death.
1979 - The first European-built rocket, Ariane 1, successfully blasts off into space.
1988 - Three North Sea oil fields are shut down after a giant floating storage vessel, the Medora, broke free of its moorings in gale-force winds.
1997 - The son of an unnamed Cabinet minister (later identified as Jack Straw) is arrested on suspicion of selling drugs.

On This Day - 23rd December

1862 - Connie Mack born
1867 - Madame C.J. Walker born
1873 - Author William Makepeace Thackeray dies
1918 - Jose Greco born
1943 - Harry Shearer (Spinal Tap, The Simpsons) born
1948 - Susan Lucci born
1956 - The United Nations Emergency Force takes over in Egypt after British and French forces withdraw from Port Said and Port Fuad ending the Suez Crisis.
1964 - Dr Richard Beeching who instigated major and controversial changes to the rail network will quit, says the government. Also Eddie Vedder born
1971 - Corey Haim born
1972 - Ten thousand people are feared dead after a two-hour earthquake rips through the Nicaraguan capital, Managua.
1986 - The Soviet Union's most prominent dissident, Andrei Sakharov, has returned to Moscow after almost seven years of internal exile.
1992 - The BBC investigates a leak which led to the Queen's Christmas speech being published in a national newspaper.

On This Day - 22nd December

1912 - Lady Bird Johnson born
1917 - Gene Rayburn born
1922 - Barbara Billingsley born
1943 - Beatrix Potter dies
1945 - Diane Sawyer born
1948 - Steve Garvey born
1949 - Robin and Maurice Gibb born
1972 - The Chilean Air Force finds 14 survivors two months after their plane crashed in the Andes.
1974 - Terrorists bomb the home of the Conservative leader and former Prime Minister Edward Heath.
1989 - Berlin's most famous landmark, the Brandenburg Gate, opens for the first time in nearly 30 years.
1997 - An independent inquiry into the BSE "disaster" and the devastation it wreaked on British farming is announced.
2000 - The American superstar marries British film maker Guy Ritchie at an exclusive ceremony in a Scottish castle hours after their son is christened.
2003 - Guerrillas in Colombia release the Briton Mark Henderson and four Israelis who were kidnapped in September.

On This Day - 21st December

1844 - The worlds first cooperative society if formed in Rochdale
1879 - Joseph Stalin born
1922 - Paul Winchell born
1926 - Joe Paterno born
1935 - Phil Donahue born
1937 - Jane Fonda born
1940 - Frank Zappa born
1948 - Samuel L. Jackson born
1954 - Chris Evert born
1955 - Jane Kaczmarek born
1957 - Ray Romano born
1958 - General Charles de Gaulle is elected President of France with an overwhelming majority.
1959 - Florence Griffith Joyner born
1962 - President Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan agree the UK will buy nuclear missiles from the US to form a multilateral Nato nuclear force.
1965 - Andy Dick born
1966 - Kiefer Sutherland born
1969 - Jack Noseworthy born
1977 - The TUC General Council narrowly votes to reject firemen's demands for a public campaign against a 10% limit on wage increases.
1988 - A Pan Am jumbo jet with 259 passengers crashes on to the town of Lockerbie near the Scottish borders after a bomb explodes onboard. All passengers onboard are killed as well as an additional 11 on the ground.
2001 - Police storm a cargo ship in the English Channel after an intelligence tip-off.

On This Day - 20th December

1830 - Belguim gains independence
1835 - The Republic of Texas is proclaimed
1868 - Harvey Firestone born
1898 - Irene Dunne born
1915 - The Allies evacuate Galipoli
1922 - George Roy Hill born
1924 - Hitler is released from prison
1945 - Peter Criss born
1946 - Uri Geller born
1955 - The United Nations General Assembly elects Yugoslavia to the hotly-contested temporary seat on the Security Council.
1957 - Billy Bragg born
1973 - The Spanish Prime Minister, Admiral Luis Carrero Blanco, is killed in a car bomb attack in Madrid.
1979 - It is announced that more than five million council house tenants in Britain are to be given the right to buy their home.
1981 - Mousehole lifeboat lost at see with crew
1989 - President George Bush orders the invasion of Panama but US troops fail to capture dictator Manuel Noriega.
1995 - The Queen has urged the Prince and Princess of Wales to seek "an early divorce".

On This Day - 19th December

1902 - Ralph Richardson born
1920 - David Susskind born
1933 - Cicely Tyson born
1934 - Al Kaline born
1944 - Tim Reid, Alvin Lee born and Louis Leakey born
1946 - Robert Urich born
1956 - At least six people die and several others are injured in road accidents in thick fog.
1963 - Jennifer Beals born
1965 - Jessica Steen born
1971 - Amy Locane and 1971 Tyson Beckford born
1972 - Ugandan leader General Idi Amin gives British workers an ultimatum to accept reduced pay or be expelled. Also Alyssa Milano born
1979 - Kristanna Loken born
1984 - It is announced that the British colony of Hong Kong is to be returned to China in 1997 after an historic agreement is signed.
1997 - Conservative party leader William Hague marries his fiancée Ffion Jenkins at ceremony in Westminster.
2003 - Libya makes a surprise announcement that it will destroy its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction.