December 24 · This Day in America
On Christmas Eve, 1968, three Americans become the first humans to leave Earth's gravity and circle another world. Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders are 240,000 miles from home when, rounding the far side of the Moon, they watch the Earth rise blue and small and alone over a dead gray horizon — and Anders grabs a camera. The photograph, "Earthrise," will change how the species sees itself. That night, on the most-watched broadcast in history to that point, they take turns reading the opening of Genesis to a planet of strangers, and Borman signs off: "Good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth." 1968 had been a terrible year. It ended with humanity looking back at itself from the Moon.
Source: www.nasa.gov
Also on this day · 1814
On Christmas Eve, 1814, American envoys — John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Albert Gallatin — sign a peace treaty with Britain in the city of Ghent. The terms restore the prewar boundaries; nobody really won. But the young republic had survived a second war with the world's greatest empire, and a new confidence took hold. News traveled slowly: the war's most famous battle, at New Orleans, would be fought weeks after the peace was already signed.
Source: www.archives.gov
“And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, a Merry Christmas, and God bless all of you — all of you on the good Earth.”Frank Borman, Apollo 8, 1968