Today is Thursday, December 24, the 358th day of 2009. There are seven days left in the year. This is Christmas Eve.

On this date

In 1524, Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama — who had discovered a sea route around Africa to India — died in Cochin, India.

In 1814, the War of 1812 officially ended as the United States and Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent in Belgium.In 1865, several veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan.

In 1914, a German plane, in the first air raid on Britain, dropped a single bomb on Dover.

In 1941, the British Eighth Army recaptured Benghazi, Libya, from the Germans.

In 1942, the German research station at Peenemunde successfully tested the V1 Flying Bomb. An assassin killed Admiral Francois Darlan, a senior figure in France's collaborationist Vichy government.

Thought for Today

"Christmas is the day that holds all time together." — Alexander Smith, Scottish poet and essayist (1830-1867).