Local

Dec. 29, 1989: Albert Lea native Jonathon Green had been teaching elementary school in Panama for 17 years prior to the United States’ invasion of that country on Dec. 20, 1989. Green was home in Albert Lea for Christmas break and was uncertain if he would be allowed to return. Green was also vice president of the Fellowship of the Concerned, a group which provided financial help to Panamanians.

Dec. 24, 1989: The Albert Lea Tribune reported that Sgt. Steve Johnson, an Albert Lea native, was wounded in Operation Panama. Johnson, a ranger with the U.S. Army 17th Infantry and special forces, was injured in the legs with shrapnel from a hand grenade. The invasion into Panama was codenamed Operation Just Cause; its purpose was to depose general Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking and racketeering.

Dec. 28, 1979: The Evening Tribune reported that Richard Moore was leaving his post as chairman of the Albert Lea Advisory Planning Commission, a position he had held for 21 years.

Moore received a letter of thanks and a key to the city from Mayor O.H. Hagen.

National

2018: An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died while in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection; he was the second immigrant child to die in December while in the agency’s care. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump took Christmas Eve calls from children anxious to find out where Santa was on his gift-giving journey; Trump asked one 7-year-old girl if she still believed in Santa and added, “Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?” An hours-long coordinated attack on a public welfare building in the Afghan capital of Kabul left at least 40 people dead, as gunmen held out for eight hours against security forces.

2014: Sony Pictures broadly released “The Interview” online — an unprecedented counterstroke against the hackers who’d spoiled the Christmas opening of the comedy depicting the assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. A Jordanian pilot, Lt. Mu’ath al-Kaseasbeh, was captured by the Islamic State group after his warplane crashed in Syria; he was later killed. TCU’s Gary Patterson was named The Associated Press college football coach of the year. Western Kentucky held on to defeat Central Michigan 49-48 in a wild inaugural Bahamas Bowl.

2009: The Senate passed health care legislation, 60-39, in the chamber’s first Christmas Eve vote since 1895. Sean Goldman, a 9-year-old boy at the center of a five-year custody battle on two continents, was finally turned over to his American father, David Goldman, in Brazil. A woman jumped barriers in St. Peter’s Basilica and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI as he was walking down the main aisle to begin Christmas Eve Mass; the pope was unhurt.

1994: Militants hijacked an Air France Airbus A-300 at the Algiers airport; three passengers were slain during the siege before all four hijackers were killed by French commandos in Marseille two days later.

1993: The Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, who blended Christian and psychiatric principles into a message of “positive thinking,” died in Pawling, New York, at age 95.

1992: President Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and five others in the Iran-Contra scandal.

1990: Tom Cruise married his “Days of Thunder” co-star, Nicole Kidman, during a private ceremony at a Colorado ski resort (the marriage ended in 2001).

1984: Actor Peter Lawford, 61, died in Los Angeles.

1980: Americans remembered the U.S. hostages in Iran by burning candles or shining lights for 417 seconds — one second for each day of captivity.

Dec. 24, 1968: the Apollo 8 astronauts, orbiting the moon, read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve telecast.

1943: President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe as part of Operation Overlord.

1914: During World War I, impromptu Christmas truces began to take hold along parts of the Western Front between British and German soldiers.

1913: 73 people, most of them children, died in a crush of panic after a false cry of “Fire!” during a Christmas party for striking miners and their families at the Italian Hall in Calumet, Michigan.

1865: Several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, that was the original version of the Ku Klux Klan.

1814: The United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the War of 1812 following ratification by both the British Parliament and the U.S. Senate.

1809: Legendary American frontiersman Christopher “Kit” Carson was born in Madison County, Kentucky.