Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.—the opening paragraph of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol in Prose, Being a Ghost-Story of Christmas, a novel by Charles Dickens, was published on this date in 1843 by Chapman & Hall. It has never gone out of print. (A photograph of a reprint of the first edition is seen at top.)
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“And he puzzled and puzzled ’till his puzzler was sore.”

Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas! was broadcast for the first time on this date in 1966. It was on CBS.

Boris Karloff, June Foray, and Thurl Ravenscroft provided the voices for the Chuck Jones-animated film, but due to an error, only Karloff’s name appears in the credits. Ravenscroft, who was also the voice of Tony the Tiger and many other characters, sings “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.”

Dr. Seuss is said to have tried to remedy the acting credits oversight single-handedly with many letters to newspapers.

Karloff won a Grammy in the Spoken Word category for the soundtrack to the film; remarkably, it was the only performing award Karloff ever received in his long acting career.

“This sound wasn’t sad. This sound sounded glad!” A clip (after the jump):
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At 10:35 a.m. on this date in 1903, for about 12 seconds, Orville Wright took the first sustained motorized aircraft flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina.

The Wright Brothers flew a total of four times that morning and afternoon. Orville and Wilbur took turns flying and they stopped for the day with a crash of the flyer from an altitude of about ten feet. That last flight covered 852 feet in 59 seconds.

Almost as important as the flights themselves was the fact that the brothers had five witnesses present. One of them, John T. Daniels, took the famous photo at the top of this article. Orville is the pilot in the photo, and Wilbur is running alongside.
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