Week of December 25th

Take a look back at this week in History

Episode Transcript

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And now I'll look back at thisweek in history on iHeartRadio. This week
in eighteen seventy nine and the firstpublic demonstration of his incandescent light bulb,
American inventor Thomas Edison lights up astreet in Menlo Park, New Jersey.
The Pennsylvania Railroad Company ran special trainsto Menlo Park on the day of the
demonstration in response to public enthusiasm overthe event. Although the first incandescent lamp

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had been produced forty years earlier,no inventor had been able to come up
with a practical design until Edison embracedthe challenge in the late eighteen seventies.
Jumping ahead this week in nineteen fortyone, White Christmas, written by the
formidable composer and lyricist Irving Berlin,receives its world premiere on Bing Crosby's weekly
NBC radio program, The Craft MusicHall. It went on to become one

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of the most commercially successful singles ofall time. This week in nineteen sixty
one, President John F. Kennedyissued a statement extending sincere wishes and those
of the American people to Soviet PremierNikita Krushchev and the people of the Soviet
Union for a peaceful and prosperous newYear. Although Kennedy and krish Jeff both
pledged cooperation as nineteen sixty one cameto a close, the two went on

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to play a dangerous game of chickenover Soviet missile sites in Cuba in October
of nineteen sixty two, leading theworld to the very brink of nuclear war
during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Andthis week in nineteen ninety nine, the
United States hands over control of thePanama Canal to Panama. Crowds of Panamanian
celebrated the transfer of the fifty milecanal, which links the Atlantic and Pacific

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Oceans and officially opened on August fifteen, nineteen fourteen. Since then, almost
one million ships have passed through thecanal. And that's what happened. Thanks
for listening to This Week in Historyon iHeartRadio.