Today in History, December 24th
On December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, ending the War of 1812. Plus the Library of Congress fire and the first national Christmas tree.
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December 24 is best known as the day in 1814 when American and British diplomats signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. The date also saw a fire gut the Library of Congress in 1851 and Calvin Coolidge light the first national Christmas tree in 1923.
The big story: The Treaty of Ghent Ends the War of 1812 (1814)
By late 1814, the United States and Britain were both tired of a war that had burned Washington, D.C., and gone nowhere in Canada. Negotiators had been haggling for months in the Belgian city of Ghent, with John Quincy Adams and Albert Gallatin among the American team. On Christmas Eve, 1814, they signed a deal. Its terms were almost comically modest. Each side gave back what it had taken, and borders went back to where they stood before the fighting, a principle known as status quo ante bellum. Some boundary disputes with Canada were handed to commissions to sort out later, and both countries promised to work against the international slave trade. The treaty said nothing about the impressment of American sailors, one of the reasons the U.S. had gone to war in the first place. News crossed the Atlantic slowly, so fighting went on for weeks after the signing, including the famous American victory at New Orleans.
More events on December 24
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1801 | Richard Trevithick took seven friends for a test ride in his “Puffing Devil,” an early steam-powered road vehicle, in Cornwall, England. |
| 1851 | A fire at the Library of Congress destroyed about two-thirds of its roughly 55,000 books, including most of Thomas Jefferson’s personal library. |
| 1923 | President Calvin Coolidge lit the first national Christmas tree at the White House, strung with electric lights. |
| 1948 | A family moved into the world’s first fully solar-heated house, in Dover, Massachusetts. |
| 1952 | The McCarran-Walter Act took effect, overhauling U.S. immigration law. |
| 1964 | Viet Cong agents bombed the Brinks Hotel in Saigon, which housed U.S. officers, killing two Americans. |
| 1971 | Lightning brought down LANSA Flight 508 over the Peruvian Amazon. Teenager Juliane Koepcke survived the fall and spent 11 days walking out of the rainforest. |
| 1979 | The Soviet Union began its invasion of Afghanistan, starting a war that lasted nearly a decade. |
| 2008 | British playwright Harold Pinter, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature, died in London. |
Born on December 24
- 1905: Howard Hughes, aviator, film producer and industrialist.
- 1922: Ava Gardner, film star of The Killers and Mogambo.
- 1973: Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight novels.
Sources
- Treaty of Ghent, Britannica
- What Happened on December 24, Britannica
- December 24: This Day in History, History.com
- Harold Pinter, Britannica
- Howard Hughes, Britannica
- Ava Gardner, Britannica
- Stephenie Meyer, Britannica
