This Day in History - Dec. 26

1799 - Former President George Washington is eulogized by Col. Henry Lee as "first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen."
1908 - Jack Johnson becomes the first Black boxer to win the world heavyweight championship as he defeated Canadian Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia.
1917 - During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson issues a proclamation authorizing the government to take over operation of the nation’s railroads.
1944 - During World War II's Battle of the Bulge, the embattled U.S. 101st Airborne Division in Bastogne, Belgium, is relieved by units of the 4th Armored Division.
1944 - Tennessee Williams’ play "The Glass Menagerie" is first performed at the Civic Theatre in Chicago.
1947 - Heavy snow blankets the Northeast, burying New York City under 26.4 inches of snow in 16 hours; the severe weather is blamed for some 80 deaths.
1972 - Harry S. Truman, the 33rd president of the United States, dies in Kansas City, Mo., at age 88.
1975 - The Soviet Union inaugurates the world’s first supersonic transport service with a flight of its Tupolev-144 airliner from Moscow to Alma-Ata.
1980 - Iranian television footage is broadcast in the United States, showing a dozen of the American hostages sending messages to their families.
1985 - Ford Motor Company begins selling its Taurus and Sable sedans and station wagons.
1996 - Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colo. (The slaying remains unsolved.)
2003 - An earthquake strikes the historic Iranian city of Bam, killing at least 26,000 people.
2004 - More than 230,000 people, mostly in southern Asia, are killed by a 100-foot-high tsunami triggered by a 9.1-magnitude earthquake beneath the Indian Ocean.
2006 - Former President Gerald R. Ford dies in Rancho Mirage, Calif., at age 93.
2017 - The snowfall total from a storm that began on Christmas Day reaches 53 inches in Erie, Pa. – the biggest-ever two-day total in the state’s history.
2017 - The cities of New York, San Francisco and Philadelphia sue the Defense Department, charging that the military failed to properly use the national background check system for guns; the lawsuit says the failure to report criminal records of service members had allowed a former member of the Air Force to kill more than two dozen people at a Texas church in November.