In 1524, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama - who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India - died in Cochin, India.
In 1920, Enrico Caruso gave his last public performance, singing the role of Eleazar in Jacques Halevy's "La Juive" at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In 1968, the "Apollo Eight" astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis as part of a Christmas Eve television broadcast to Earth.
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Journalist I.F. Stone (1907)
Actress Ava Gardner (1922)
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"If Christmas didn't already exist man would have had to invent it. There has to be at least one day in the year to remind us we're here for something else besides our general cussedness."
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Eric Sevareid, American journalist and commentator.