In 1776, during a howling nor-easter Colonel Johann Rall and his Hessian mercenaries repelled a bold American attack on Trenton that left Commander George Washington and many of his troops from the decimated Continental Army dead or dying in the freezing Delaware River on this bitterest of Christmas Days.

One-way trip across the Delaware RiverSince the heady days of the summer, Washington had lost ninety percent of his command and had already admitted both to his diary and in confidence to his colleagues that "I think the game is pretty near up".

And yet his successors would carry the germ of an idea that Washington had conceived on the eve of Battle. That concept was a breakthrough in organisational planning for irregular forces, that "a people unused to restraint must be led, they will not be drove". In effect, Washington had blended the best ideas of the American revolution with the War of Independence. His advocacy of open councils in a proletariat army was his gift to the future, a Union of Socialist Republics in America that would have been unimaginable to Washington as a member of the landed gentry.

Sharing his dead comrade's "full persuasion of the Justice of our cause" Thomas Paine returned to Great Britain after the so-called "black times of '76". The War of Independence might have ended in defeat, at least for now, but the Revolution had not, and Paine would ensure that it spread across the fertile ground of his homeland, Great Britain itself.

In 1991, former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was executed in front of a Soviet Army firing squad in Red Square this morning, according to the USSR's Interior Ministry. Gorbachev had been arrested on August 18th of this year for crimes against the Soviet Union, including undermining the Soviet economy and giving military secrets to the West. Soviet President Gennady Yanayev used the occasion to reassure the Soviet people that the Communist Party (CPSU) remained firmly in control, and the damage caused by Gorbachev's Glasnost and Perestroika programs would be swiftly rectified.

"Gorbachev Executed in Red Square on Christmas Day", a story by Andrew Beane This ended a series of high-profile executions, starting on August 21st with the assassination of Boris Yeltsin, then the newly elected President of the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Yeltsin had been arrested on August 17th after his return from a trip to Kazakhstan, though he had yet to be charged with a specific crime. Yeltsin's assassin was an unidentified man that shot himself before he could be subdued.

Efforts to remove Gorbachev from power and restore the nation to its once-mighty status began in December of 1990, when members of Gorbachev's government quietly conspired to create the need for the declaration of a state of emergency in the USSR. The State Committee of the State of Emergency, headed by Yanayev and seven other former members of Gorbachev's administration, seized upon the instability caused by the slow break-up of the union and ordered the arrest of Gorbachev and other "western conspirators". At the height of the crisis, the Soviet Army invaded and recaptured the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).

American President George Bush condemned the execution, saying that Gorbachev had been the greatest hope for peace between the USSR and the West, and that the dead leader would live on "the hearts and minds of the people who so long had to strive for their God-given rights". Deng Xiaoping, leader of the Peoples' Republic of China, applauded the "halt of the USSR's capitulation to the West," and expressed hope that Moscow would follow China's example of "market socialism".

In 1863, President Hannibal Hamlin confirmed the Declaration of Emancipation that General John C. Fremont had proclaimed in Tennessee when he had occupied that State earlier in the year.

Crucifixion Day Part 6 by Raymond SpeerFrom the start of the war, which Fremont spent stationed in Missouri, that general had realized that the institution of slavery was the motivation of secession and the engine that worked the economy of the South. Accordingly, Fremont had abolished slavery In Missouri.

Hannibal Hamlin, a convinced Abolitionist from childhood and the possessoor of a dark complexion that gossips attributed to some Negro ancestors, had been told by his Attorney General that Fremont's liberation policy would alienate the border states and drive them all into the Confederacy.

"If our loss of the capitol city has not doomed us," Hamlin told his advisor, "I doubt that adding Missouri to the free states will substantially worsen our condition". The Attorney General, an appointee of the dead Lincoln, resigned and Fremont's move was approved.

In the summer of 1863, Fremont lead the Army of Missouri east and conquered Kentucky and Tennessee that season. In keeping with his program in Missouri, Fremont refused to let slavery continue in areas controlled by the Union, and Fremont's action roused discontent at Montauk Point, Long Island, New York, where the US Congress met by right in December 1863. A resolution that criticized Fremont was voted down in each House, and a counterdraft (praising the move) was passed through the support of President Hamlin.

The buildings at Montauk Point were raw and crude owing to their hurried construction. With no attendents from the Cotton South or Border States among the members of that Congress, a bill to relocate the capitol from Washington DC to Montauk was passed by both Houses, and money was appropriated for more buildings.

Thaddeus Stevens, the Speaker of the House, met with the President on a yacht offshore Nantucket Island when Hamlin signed the decree that approved Fremont's second emanicipation program. "Mr. Speaker, when Congress is as far sighted as General Fremont, it will pass laws that will tear the guts out of the Confederacy".

In 1999, Hideko Cardinal Tokugawa of Kyoto presided over a Christmas celebration of nearly one million Japanese Catholics.

Kirishitani by Eric LippsChristianity had been introduced into Japan in the sixteenth century. The shogun Oda Nobunaga (pictured), in particular, had embraced the new faith, both for the technologies its missionaries brought with them, which included firearms, and as a political tool against Buddhism. Although Nobunaga never converted to Christianity, he allowed Christians to proselytize and permitted the construction of the first Catholic church in Kyoto in 1576, on the site of the present Watanabe Cathedral.

After his death, some powerful Japanese came to view Christianity not as beneficial but as a threat to the state, and pressed for its restriction or even outright banning. Among them would be Toyotomi Hideyoshi, responsible for the Feb. 5, 1597 massacre of twenty-seven Christians at Nagasaki and a vocal proponent of laws restricting not only Christianity but all contact with the West. Support for such "seclusion laws" remained limited, however, and although some restrictions were imposed beginning in 1614, the Nobunaga Shogunate would lift them four decades later under Oda's great-grandson Toyo Nobunaga. By the end of the Nobunaga shogunate in the late nineteenth century, there would be twenty million Christians in the island nation. At the close of the twentieth, the number would have risen to forty million.

In 1914, British and German troops begin an unofficial truce in the war in France.Christmas Truce

They warily cross the no-man's land they had been fighting over, exchange drink, food and small gifts; they even play football together. When they are ordered to begin fighting by their superiors, they refuse; their rebellion spreads across the lines until a great pacifist movement topples the governments of all the European powers fighting in the war, and replaces them with governments committed to peace.

Pictured, a cross, left near Ypres in Belgium in 1999, to commemorate the site of the Christmas Truce in 1914. The text reads 1914 - The Khaki Chum's Christmas Truce. 1999. 85 Years. Lest We Forget. Watch the Youtube Clip

In 1918, Muhammad Anwar El Sadat was born in Mit Abu al-Kumt. A man of peace and integrity, his life was cut short by an insidious force that sought to destroy the great nation of Egypt. Most tragic of all, this aspiring young officer was shot dead in a hail of gunfire from a group of soldiers who believed they were simply doing their duty.The Cold-Blooded Murder of Anwar Sadat

"As a young man, Sadat's experience convinced him the British hold over Egypt was unjust. A man named Zahran, who came from a small village like his, was hanged for taking part in a protest in which a British officer had been killed. His courage as he made his way through the streets to his death impressed the young Sadat enormously. Surging forward with the crowd, Sadat was shot dead by the escourt of British soldiers". ~ Cold Blooded Killings by Charlotte Greig

In 1977, legendary silent-film star Charlie Chaplin died at his home in Hollywood. He was 88.

Death of ChaplinIn 1952, following a visit to his native country, the British-born actor had been barred from re-entering the U.S. due to his left-wing political associations. Popular outcry forced the U.S. government to relent, and Chaplin returned to Hollywood on December 6 of that year. Like other actors whose politics resulted in their blacklisting, he would eventually return to films; he would make a brief appearance as a mute servant in the movie version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way To the Forum alongside the former blacklistee Zero Mostel. In his last years, however, he would become increasingly reclusive, avoiding contact even with family members.