The Great Geek Manual

1831
At age 22, Charles Darwin embarks from Plymouth harbor aboard the British Naval ship HMS Beagle on what will become a groundbreaking voyage of scientific discovery. The Captain, Robert FitzRoy will sail to the southern coast of South America to conduct an official government survey. Just out of university, Darwin took an unpaid position as the ship’s naturalist. He plans to be at sea for two years, but the voyage will last five years, making stops in Brazil, the Galapogos Islands, and New Zealand. From the observations he will make during the voyage, Darwin will develop his theory of evolution through natural selection, which he will publish twenty-eight years after the Beagle leaves Plymouth.

1932
The world’s largest cinema Radio City Music Hall, which boasts 6,200 seats, is opened by NBC in New York. Over a hundred thousand people wait outside the cinema, waiting for admission.

1940
Universal Pictures releases the science fiction comedy The Invisible Woman, directed by A. Edward Sutherland and starring Virginia Bruce, John Barrymore, and John Howard, to US theaters. In it, an attractive model with an ulterior motive volunteers as guinea pig to test an invisibility machine. IMDB listing

1968
The Apollo 8 returns to Earth after becoming first crewed mission to reach the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr., and William Anders made ten orbits of the Moon on Christmas Eve before their return.
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Well, that everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world–no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds… Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.

- “I Woke Up And One Of Us Was Crying,” The Sandman by Neil Gaiman, 1992.

It’s Boxing Day across the Commonwealth of Nations and the first day of Kwanzaa.

1865
The first US patent for a coffee percolator (US No. 51,741) is issued to James H. Mason of Franklin, Massachusetts.

1878
Electric lighting is installed in a store for the first time in America, at the Grand Depot department store of Philadelphia, owned by John Wanamaker. Eight dynamos provide the electrical power to run twenty-eight arc lamps.

1898
Marie Curie announce the isolation of the element Radium after experimenting with pitchblende, a common uranium ore. She had observed that the ore was more radioactive than refined uranium, and concluded that there was another even more radioactive element mixed in with the ore. During the years between 1899 and 1902, Marie Curie dissolved, filtered and repeatedly crystallized nearly three tons of pitchblende with the goal of refining a sample of the element. The result was about 0.1 gram of Radium, which was enough for a spectroscopic examination to determine the exact atomic weight of Radium. She will be awarded a second Nobel Prize in part for the discovery, along with the discovery of Polonium, in 1911.

1906
The world’s first full-length feature film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, is presented at the Melbourne Town Hall in Australia, where it had been filmed at a cost of £450. The subject of the movie is Ned Kelly, a bushranger, or bandit, who lived from 1855 to 1880. The film’s approximate reel length is 1219.2 metres (4,000 feet), and it precedes the world’s next feature film, D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation by nine years. IMDB listing Running time: 1 hr 10 mins
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Christmas is forever, not for just one day,
for loving, sharing, giving, are not to put away
like bells and lights and tinsel, in some box upon a shelf.
The good you do for others is good you do yourself.

- “Let Every Day Be Christmas” by Norman W. Brooks.

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no child-like faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

- “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus” by Francis Pharcellus Church in the New York Sun, September 20, 1897.

352
The first confirmed celebration of Christmas takes place.

1818
The first performance of “Silent Night” takes place in the Church of St. Nikolaus in Oberndorf, Austria.

1939
The character and story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is created by Robert L. May for Montgomery Ward stores.

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is read on the radio for the first time, on CBS radio.

1959
Sony launches their first transistor-based television set, model TV-301, in Japan.
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‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring — not even a mouse:
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there.

- “A Visit from St. Nicholas” by Clement C. Moore, December 23, 1823.

According to Russian folklore, people born on this day of the year are believed to become Werewolves.

1818
The classic Christmas carol, “Silent Night” is composed by Franz Joseph Gruber and Josef Mohr and performed for the first time the very next day.

1877
Thomas Alva Edison applies for a patent for Phonographs which use tin foil cylinders to write and playback music. (US Patent No. 200,521)

1893
Henry Ford completes the construction of his first usable gas motor, and he and his wife test the small one-cylinder engine in their kitchen. At the time, Ford was chief steam engineer at the main Detroit Edison Company plant with responsibility for maintaining electric service in the city. Because he was on call with no regular hours, he could experiment to his heart’s content. His wages barely paid his living expenses, but his wife was very supportive. A later two cylinder version of the engine powers Ford’s first complete automobile when it takes its inaugural drive on June 4, 1896.
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