December 25 birthdays & history

Famous people born on December 25

• 1642Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician
• 1971Justin Trudeau, Canadian educator and politician, 23rd Prime Minister of Canada
• 1899Humphrey Bogart, American actor
• 1717Pope Pius VI, Head of the Catholic Church from 1775 to 1799
• 1927Ram Narayan, Indian sarangi player
• 1906Ernst Ruska, German physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1954Annie Lennox, Scottish singer-songwriter and pianist
• 1876Adolf Otto Reinhold Windaus, German chemist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate
• 1925Carlos Castaneda, Peruvian-American anthropologist and author
• 1911Louise Bourgeois, French-American sculptor and painter

What happened on December 25

• 1046Henry III was crowned Holy Roman Emperor by Pope Clement II.
• 1724Johann Sebastian Bach led the first performance of Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, based on the Christmas hymn written by Martin Luther in 1524.
• 1725J. S. Bach led the first performance of the Christmas cantata Unser Mund sei voll Lachens, BWV 110, making laughter audible in singing.
• 1758Based on predictions by Edmond Halley in 1705, Johann Georg Palitzsch observed a comet that was later named Halley's Comet .
• 1809American physician Ephraim McDowell performed the world's first removal of an ovarian tumor.
• 1814Rev. Samuel Marsden holds the first Christian service on land in New Zealand at Rangihoua Bay.
• 1815The Handel and Haydn Society, oldest continually performing arts organization in the United States, gives its first performance.
• 1870Wagner's Siegfried Idyll is first performed.
• 1913Disfellowshipped Adventist lay preacher Felix Manalo begins the new religious movement known as the Iglesia ni Cristo with the baptism of its first members.
• 1927The Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng, a revolutionary socialist political party that sought Vietnamese independence from French colonial rule, was formed in Hanoi.
• 1990British computer programmer Tim Berners-Lee introduced WorldWideWeb, the world's first web browser and WYSIWYG HTML editor.
• 2000Russian president Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill officially adopting a new national anthem, with music by Alexander Vasilyevich Alexandrov originally composed for the anthem of the Soviet Union.

Also observed on December 25

• Christmas Day, Christian festival commemorating the birth of Jesus. (Internationally observed)
• Tulsi Pujan Diwas (India)
• Constitution Day (Taiwan)
• Good Governance Day (India)
• Quaid-e-Azam's Day (Pakistan)
• Takanakuy (Chumbivilcas Province, Peru)