Invented by Thomas Edison in 1880, the electric Christmas light has most of the world in a festive chokehold and it's a sure sign that the festive season has begun when those strings of tiny, coloured lights begin appearing all over the place.
Replacing candles balanced precariously on Christmas tree branches, electric lights not only reduced the number of festive house fires but also started a new trend in Christmas décor that has since blown up to the scale it is today. Light shows and walks are now a regular fixture in yule-tide calendars, you'll find neighbours competing to have the best display, and you can buy a Christmas light in every possible shape and size to fit your theme and taste.
Around this date, the President will ceremoniously switch on the national Christmas tree lights at the White House. Here in Blighty, there are thousands of events across the country dedicated to the switching on of Christmas lights, often with a guest celeb doing the honours.
You may think it's too early to put your lights up, you might already have them up, or maybe today will be the motivation you need to retrieve them all out of storage, untangle them, and start the decorating process. Either way, we're kicking off the season with a Christmas Margarita. If you've children, this could be the first night in the run-up to Christmas that you place an elf at the scene of an act of mischief. If so, perhaps fix yourself an Elf on the Shelf.
The day Rosa Parks rode the bus
How does a woman become famous for riding a bus? When her name is Rosa Parks. On 1st December 1955, Parks, an African-American activist, was sitting in the "coloured" section of a bus in segregated Montgomery, Alabama.
White people boarded, so the driver moved the "coloured" sign down the bus, forcing folk with darker skin to stand. When he insisted that Rosa give up her seat to people of the shade Alabama law preferred, Rosa refused, was arrested, and became the mother of the civil rights movement.
An everyday hero and an extraordinary woman, Rosa died aged 91, penniless and facing eviction. Remember her today with a Rosarita Margarita.
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