December 24th,1968 The astronauts of Apollo VIII become the first human beings to orbit the moon. They read passages from the Old Testament Book of Genesis during a TV broadcast on Christmas Eve.

“And God said: “let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness.” 1865 In Pulaski, Tennessee, several Confederate Army veterans form a private social club called the Ku Klux Klan. The whites supremacist group targets blacks and other groups with violence during post-Civil War Reconstruction and into the civil rights era.

1906 Canadian physicist Reginald Fessenden becomes the first person to transmit the human voice-- his own, as well as music over radio. The audience for his broadcast from Brant Rock, Massachusetts would have been radioing telegraph operator aboard ships in the Atlantic Ocean.

And 1871 The world premiere of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida in Cairo, Egypt to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal.

Today in History, December 24th, Sandy Kozel, the Associated Press.