If a player ever takes more than two steps while they have the ball, they’ll be called for traveling. While the Victorian elite (and non-elite) might have enjoyed some outdoor skating on Christmas day, downhill skiing had yet to become a popular outdoor activity. While it’s true that American inventor Ralph Morris based his idea for electric Christmas lights on a telephone switchboard in 1908, it was actually an associate of Thomas Edison’s who was responsible for the first Christmas tree to be lit up using electricity. For instance, many of us will decorate a tree or send out Christmas cards because it’s something we enjoy doing, but do you know when and where the tradition first started? When Mexican president, Benito Juarez, stopped paying funds to imperial France in 1861, fights broke out between the two countries. The Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, a Chinese secret organization, led an uprising in Northern China to speak out against the spread of Western and Japanese imperialism.

Visit Mai’s Kitchen and order an off-menu Hmong-style papaya salad, a fusion of the sweet, crunchy Thai style and the more savory Lao style, with an umami boost from its secret ingredient: shrimp paste. It could take as little as half an hour, though a few hours is more likely. You can also take vitamin D supplements. When presented with a spatial configuration of food sources, the amoeboid Physarum polycephalum adapts its morphology to create an efficient path between the food sources which can also be viewed as an approximate solution to TSP. The book “Elf on the Shelf: A Christmas Tradition” was written by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell in 2005, leading to hundreds of thousands of Elf on the Shelf stuffed figurines finding their way into American bookshelves, kitchen drawers, nightstands, bathtubs and any other place you can perch an Elf! Is it true that the official Nation’s Christmas Tree of America can be found at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City?

During the 16th century, German Protestant Martin Luther first began decorating trees after feeling inspired by the way the night sky looked shimmering through the branches of a fir tree. Teddy Roosevelt was the first and only president to ban, not erect, Christmas trees in the White House for environmental reasons. Where did their first successful flight take place? You’ll need to put on your critical thinking Santa hat to answer these questions correctly because you’re about to take a trip back in time, back to when historical Christmas traditions were merely new ideas. In those days, Christians were persecuted and even martyred for their faith, which led them to put an emphasis on Easter, when Jesus himself was martyred on the cross, but overcame death and was resurrected. His fascist belief and strong ties to the Nazi party led to a strong German presence in Italy throughout World War II.

Under Stalin’s rule, the Soviet Union (on the land we know today as Russia) led its first attacks against Nazi Germany during World War II. The very first tanks were used by the British at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in 1916, during the First World War. The first decorated Christmas tree in North America is said to have been introduced in the province of Quebec by the Baroness von Riedesel in 1781. Her and her husband, General Friedrich Adolf Riedesel, displayed a fir tree that had been decorated with fruit and candles for their military guests during the Christmas season. In 1882, Edward Johnson used electricity to light up the very first Christmas tree for the very first time! Charles Dickens definitely lived in an era when decorating the Christmas tree was the norm, but he was hardly the first person to do it. Christmas is a time when traditions of the past are celebrated widely and with gusto – even if we aren’t 100% sure how they started in the first place. Other traditions from the past are so mundane you might have a hard time believing they’re still around, even though you practice them every December.