* On Dec. 23, 1982, Chaminade University of Honolulu, a school with only 900 students, beat the top-ranked University of Virginia by a mere five points in one of the most stunning upsets in American basketball history. As ESPN’s Chris Berman remarked, “We can’t tell you what happened, but the No. 1 team in college basketball has lost to -- we don’t even know who they are.”
* On Dec. 24, 1851, a fire at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., destroyed approximately two-thirds of its 55,000 volumes, including most of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library.
* On Dec. 25, 1962, the film adaptation of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prizewinning novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” opened in Los Angeles. It was nominated for eight Oscars and won three, and the American Film Institute rated lead character Atticus Finch as the greatest movie hero of the 20th century.
* On Dec. 26, 1820, Moses Austin, a merchant turned mine owner, met with Spanish authorities in San Antonio to ask permission for 300 Anglo-American families to settle in Texas, in the hope of recovering from bankruptcy via the establishment of a new colony. His request was approved, but he died before he could carry it out, so the task was completed by his son, with more than 20,000 arrivals eventually succeeding in making Texas an independent state.
* On Dec. 27, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered his secretary of war to seize properties belonging to the Montgomery Ward company after it refused to comply with a labor agreement, announcing that the government would “not tolerate any interference with war production in this critical hour.”
* On Dec. 28, 1908, the worst earthquake in recorded European history struck the Straits of Messina in southern Italy, leveling the cities of Messina and Reggio di Calabria and ultimately causing the deaths of an estimated 100,000 people.
* On Dec. 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by four of King Henry II’s knights, apparently on his orders. Four years later, Henry was forced to do penance at Becket’s tomb, and his efforts to end the separation between church and state came to an end.
(c) 2024 King Features Synd., Inc.
