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[HistoryMan]

December 26: Pierre and Marie Curie announced the existence of a new element

Boxing Day; Wren's Day in Ireland.

1790 - Louis XVI of France gave his assent to the Civil Constitution of the Clergy during the French Revolution.
On December 26, 1790, Louis XVI finally granted his public assent to the Civil Constitution, allowing the process of administering the oaths to proceed in January and February 1791.
Pope Pius VI's February 23 rejection of Cardinal de Lomenie's position of withholding "mental assent" guaranteed that this would become a schism. The pope's subsequent condemnation of the revolutionary regime and repudiation of all clergy who had complied with the oath completed the schism.


1898 - Pierre and Marie Curie announced the existence of a new element, later to be named radium.



Radium (Latin radius, ray) was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898 in pitchblende/uraninite from North Bohemia. While studying pitchblende the Curies removed uranium from it and found that the remaining material was still radioactive. They then separated out a radioactive mixture mostly consisting of barium which gave a brilliant red flame color and spectral lines which had never been documented before. In 1902 radium was isolated into its pure metal by Curie and Andre Debierne through the electrolysis of a pure radium chloride solution by using a mercury cathode and distilling in an atmosphere of hydrogen gas.

1966 - The first Kwanzaa was celebrated by Maulana Karenga, a professor at CSU Long Beach
Kwanzaa is a week long African American holiday observance held between December 26 and January 1. Timed to serve as an alternative to the growing commercialism of Christmas, it was created in 1966 by Ron Karenga. Kwanzaa is not a religious holiday, but a cultural one, a syncretic festival, based on various elements of the first harvest celebrations widely celebrated in Africa, around the 10th month of the year. According to polls, approximately one in six African-Americans celebrate Kwanzaa.


1986 - The first long-running American television soap opera, Search for Tomorrow, broadcast its final episode after thirty-five years on the air.