Today in History 1968 Apollo 8, with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders on board, orbits the moon, and take a spectacular photograph of the Earth.

The On This Day In History archives at “Simple English Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia” contains over 200,000 events, birthdays and deaths from 6,000 years of history. Here is a roundup of a few of them:

December 23 is the 357th day of the year (358th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are eight days remaining until the end of the year.

December 24 is the 358th day of the year (359th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are seven days remaining until the end of the year.

EVENTS

563 - Second inauguration of the Hagia Sophia, then a cathedral.

640 - Pope John IV is elected.

759 - China: Tang Dynasty poet Du Fu leaves for Chengdu, where he is hosted by fellow poet Pei Di.

1294 - Pope Boniface VIII is elected, after the resignation of Pope Celestine V.

1717 - A North Sea Christmas flood kills 11,500 people.

1726 – Montevideo, the present-day capital city of Uruguay, is founded.

1777 – James Cook reaches the island of Kiritimati, in present-day Kiribati.

1811 - HMS Defence and HMS St. George sink in a storm off Denmark.

1814 - The Treaty of Ghent ends the War of 1812.

1818 – The famous Christmas carol Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (Silent Night, Holy Night), is performed for the first time in Austria.

1851 - The US Library of Congress burns.

1865 – The Ku Klux Klan is founded by Confederate veterans.

1871 - The Opera Aida is first performed in Cairo.

1906 - Reginald Fessenden transmits the first radio broadcast, consisting of a poetry reading, a violin solo, and a speech.

1912 - A mining explosion in Hokkaido, Japan, kills 245 miners.

1913 - In Calumet, Michigan, 73 Christmas party goers die in a stampede after "fire" was falsely yelled.

1914 – World War I: The Christmas Truce begins.

1924 – Albania becomes a Republic.

1929 - An assassination attempt is made on President of Argentina Hipolito Yrigoyen.

1939 - Pope Pius XII makes a Christmas appeal for peace, after the start of World War II.

1942 - World War II: French monarchist Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle assassinates Vichy admiral Francois Darlan in Algiers, French Algeria.

1943 - World War II: Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes Supreme Allied Commander.

1951 – Libya becomes independent, with Idris I as king.

1953 – Tangiwai Disaster: After a volcanic eruption (of Mt. Ruapehu) on New Zealand's North Island, a train plunges into the Whangeahu river following a bridge collapse caused by the eruption, killing 153 people.

1954 – Laos is officially declared independent.

1964 - Flooding kills thousands of people in Southern India and Sri Lanka.

1968 – Apollo 8, with Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders on board, orbits the moon, and take a spectacular photograph of the Earth.

1971 - A Lockheed L-188 Electra crashes in the Peruvian rainforest, killing 91 people. The only survivor is then-17-year-old German Juliane Koepcke, who lost both her parents in the crash.

1972 - Japan Airlines Flight 472, a Douglas DC-8, lands at Juhu Aerodrome, overshooting the runway, instead of landing at nearby Bombay Santa Cruz Airport.

1973 - The District of Columbia Home Rule Act passes, allowing Washington, DC residents to elect their government.

1974 – Cyclone Tracy devastates Darwin, Northern Territory, Australia, killing 71 people.

1979 – The first European-made rocket Ariane is launched from French Guiana.

1994 - Air France Flight 8969 is hijacked by terrorists on the ground; Over the course of three days, three passengers and four terrorists are killed.

1997 - The Sid El-Antri massacre in Algeria kills between 50 and 100 people.

2000 - The Texas Seven hold up a sports store in Irving, Texas.

2003 – Spanish police stop an attempt by ETA to detonate 50 kilogrammes of explosives at Madrid's Chamartin Station.

2005 – Chad declares that it is in a state of war with Sudan, though denies that it has declared war.

2008 – The Lord's Resistance Army, a Ugandan rebel group, begins a series of attacks on the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

2013 - Queen Elizabeth II issues an official pardon to the mathematician Alan Turing (who had died in 1954). Turing was convicted of homosexuality at a time when it was illegal in the UK.

2017 - Alberto Fujimori, former President of Peru, is pardoned for reasons relating to his ill health.

2017 - Guatemala announces that, like the United States, it plans to move its Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.