December 26 · This Day in America
They come out of the storm. After the all-night crossing and a frozen nine-mile march, Washington's two columns hit Trenton at about eight in the morning, before the Hessian garrison can form. Henry Knox's guns rake the streets. The fight lasts barely an hour. Nearly 900 Hessians surrender; their commander, Colonel Rall, falls mortally wounded. American losses are almost none. It is a small battle by the measure of armies, and the most important hour of the war. A cause that looked finished now has proof it can win. Enlistments are renewed. Recruits come. Foreign governments begin, quietly, to take the Americans seriously. The young republic that signs treaties and writes constitutions is, in part, the republic that this ragged dawn made possible.
Source: www.battlefields.org
Also on this day · 1932
In the depths of the Depression, the largest indoor theater in the world opens at Rockefeller Center — a sweeping Art Deco palace meant to lift a battered city's spirit. The first show ran nearly five hours. Within a year it would host the Christmas Spectacular and the high-kicking Rockettes, and a hard country found, in a gilded room on Sixth Avenue, somewhere bright to go.
Source: www.rockefellercenter.com