January 1: Tom Hyer was born on this date in 1819; he would win the bare-knuckle boxing championship of America in 1841, triumphing in 101 rounds.

December 31: On this date in 1862, the the pioneering ironclad ship, USS Monitor, sank in a storm off Cape Hatteras despite the heroic efforts of Acting Master Louis Napoleon Stodder.

December 30: William Hallock Park, who established the first municipal bacteriological diagnostics laboratory in the United States, was born on this date in 1863; he died in 1939.

December 29: Louis Michel Eilshemius, eccentric artist, died on this date in 1941.

December 28: William B. Sampson, who successfully argued for the priest-penitent privilege, died on this date in 1836.

December 27: Hamilton Fish Kean, who represented the State of New Jersey in the United States Senate 1929-1935, died on this date in 1941.

December 26: On this date in 1941, Winston Churchill, grandson of Leonard and Clara Hall Jerome, became the first British prime minister to address a joint session of Congress.

December 25: Leonard Bernstein, on this date in 1989, conducted Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Berlin to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall.

December 24: On this date last year, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, who earned Academy Award nominations for his scores to “Far From the Madding Crowd” (1967), “Nicholas and Alexandra” (1971), and “Murder on the Orient Express” (1974), died.