(FOX NEWS) – Greg Gumbel, who broadcast the NFL
on CBS and served as the network’s studio host for
March Madness, has died after a bout with cancer.     

On Christmas morning, Apollo 8 left its lunar orbit and began
its journey back to Earth, landing safely in the Pacific Ocean
on on this day in 1968 after an historic six-day journey.

On December 21, Apollo 8 was launched by a three-stage
Saturn 5 rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, astronauts
Frank Borman, James Lovell, Jr., and William Anders were
aboard.     
   

On Christmas Eve, the astronauts entered into orbit around
the moon, the first manned spacecraft ever to do so.      

TriMet buses, Max light rail and the Portland Streetcar
will be offering free services after 8 p.m. on New Year’s
Eve.    
   

On December 26, 1972, former 33rd President of the United
States Harry S. Truman died in Independence, Missouri.

Then-President Richard Nixon called Truman a man of
“forthrightness and integrity” who had a deep respect
for the office he held and for the people he served, and
who “supported and wisely counseled each of his
successors.” Truman was in office from April 12, 1945
to January 20, 1953.

On December 5, 1972, Truman was admitted to Kansas City’s
Research Hospital and Medical Center with pneumonia.

He developed multiple organ failure, fell into a coma, and
died at 7:50 a.m. on December 26, at the age of 88.

Truman in September 1917.

Harry and Bess Truman on their wedding
day, June 28, 1919.

President Harry Truman holds up a copy of the Chicago
Daily Tribune declaring his "defeat" to Thomas Dewey
in the presidential election, St Louis, Missouri, in Nov.
1948. 

Truman was so widely expected to lose the 1948 election that
the Chicago Tribune had printed papers with this erroneous
headline when few returns were in.

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August
6 and 9, 1945 respectively, were authorized by President
Truman at the end of World War II.

On December 26, 1973, The Exorcist, a horror film starring
the actress Linda Blair as a girl possessed by an evil spirit,
made its debut in theaters; it went on to earn a reputation
as one of the scariest movies in history.

The post-holiday release served to help The Exorcist sell
tickets, as most moviegoers had time off.

It was the highest-grossing Christmas week release after
1997’s Titanic, and is still in second place.

William David Friedkin 
(August 29, 1935 – August 7, 2023)