FDR signs bill making Thanksgiving an official national holiday

General Washington crosses the Delaware

The United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium, ending the War of 1812

With the signing of the Federal Reserve Act by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, the Federal Reserve System came into being.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill arrives in Washington, D.C. for a series of meetings with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on a unified Anglo-American war strategy and a future peace

Radium is discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie

Following Abraham Lincoln's election as U.S. president, South Carolina became the first U.S. state to secede from the Union

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens is published

The Mayflower arrives from England in what is now Plymouth Harbor

The first Airplane is flown

The Boston Tea Party - a group of Massachusetts colonists disguised as Mohawk Indians board three British tea ships and dump 342 chests of tea into the harbor

The Bill of Rights is ratified

Norwegian Roald Amundsen becomes the first explorer to reach the South Pole, beating his British rival, Robert Falcon Scott

The Battle of Fredericksburg occurred

The First Radio transmission is sent across the Atlantic Ocean

General George Washington begins marching 12,000 soldiers of his Continental Army from Whitemarsh to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for the winter

The First Nobel Prizes were Awarded

The animated special “A Charlie Brown Christmas” aired on American television for the first time.

President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sign the first treaty between the two superpowers to reduce their massive nuclear arsenals

Japanese bombers launched a surprise aerial attack on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, precipitating the entry of the United States into World War II.