December 24 in Military History

General George Washington finalized plans for his daring Christmas night crossing of the Delaware River, issuing orders that divided the Continental Army into three columns for a surprise attack on the Hessian garrison at Trenton.

The United States and Great Britain signed the Treaty of Ghent, ending the War of 1812 and restoring pre-war borders, though the bloodiest battle of the war at New Orleans would be fought two weeks later before news arrived.

American and British commissioners signed the Treaty of Ghent in the Belgian city of Ghent, ending the War of 1812. The treaty restored the prewar status quo with no territorial changes and no explicit resolution of the maritime issues that had caused the war. News of the signing traveled slowly enough that the Battle of New Orleans was fought on January 8, 1815, more than two weeks after peace had been agreed.

The first Union assault on Fort Fisher, North Carolina, began with a massive naval bombardment. The fort guarded the last major Confederate port at Wilmington, and its eventual fall would sever the final lifeline of the Confederacy.

Soldiers on both sides of the Western Front began an unofficial Christmas truce, with German troops placing candles on trees along their trenches and singing "Stille Nacht", the opening of the most remarkable episode of humanity amid the industrialized slaughter of World War I.

German and British soldiers along sections of the Western Front stopped shooting, climbed out of their trenches, and met in No Man's Land to exchange gifts, sing carols, and bury their dead. The informal truce spread to perhaps two-thirds of the British sector between Ypres and Armentieres. Staff officers on both sides issued orders suppressing any repetition in subsequent years, and no comparable spontaneous ceasefire occurred on this scale during the remaining four years of the war.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force for Operation Overlord, the planned invasion of Normandy that would open the Second Front in Europe.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced from Tunis that General Dwight D. Eisenhower would serve as Supreme Allied Commander for the cross-channel invasion of Europe, code-named Operation Overlord. The appointment settled months of Anglo-American negotiation and placed Eisenhower in charge of the largest amphibious operation ever attempted, with more than 2.8 million troops eventually assembled in Britain for the Normandy landings.

The crew of Apollo 8, all military test pilots, broadcast a Christmas Eve reading of Genesis from lunar orbit and captured the iconic "Earthrise" photograph, demonstrating American technological superiority during the Cold War space race.

Soviet Air Force Il-76, An-22, and An-12 transport aircraft began a 48-hour airlift of elements of the 103rd Guards Airborne Division into Kabul and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, the opening move of the Soviet Union's nine-year intervention in the Afghan civil war. The airlift delivered approximately 5,000 paratroopers and a KGB Alpha Group that would seize key installations in Kabul on December 27.