On this day, December 31, in 2009, a Blue moon occurred at the same time as a lunar eclipse.

Somehow, instead of considering the convergence of two such rare events to be another sign of the world’s impending doom, many astrologers went on record saying they considered the event a release of cosmic energy that will move metaphorical obstacles out of people’s lives. Had they lived a century before, in 1883, they might have gotten to see an actual blue colored moon: the volcano Krakatoa erupted, spewing plumes of ash into the atmosphere and filtering out the red color wavelengths. The ash stayed in the air for years, maybe even during the rise of a Betrayer Moon.

On this day, December 31, in 1946, President Truman called a News Conference on the Termination of Hostilities of World War II – still not a formal end to the war, he emphasized, but the end of the period of hostilities (which informally ended before the end of 1945.)

Some die-hard German partisans continued to resist the Allied occupation for years after the war, their “Operation Werewolf” conducted from the hills and forests where they hid out. A hardy handful of individual Japanese soldiers held out even longer – way longer. Because many were holed up in the dense jungles of the islands, isolated from the mainland or headquarters during the American island hopping campaign, they did not always get notifications of surrender. One, Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda, refused to come out for nearly three decades after Japan surrendered, dismissing those news as enemy propaganda. It took a trip to the Philippines by his commanding officer for Onoda to come out – his rifle still in operating condition.

On this day, December 31, in 1951, six years after the beginning of the Marshall Plan, the U.S. Congress declared its end.

Greece and Turkey were the first recipients of Marshall Plan aid, to help their government combat the encroachment of communism – Britain had helped them the past, but pulled out to save funds for rebuilding at home. By the start of the 1950s and the outbreak of the Korean war, ironically most of the Marshall Plan funds went to help the receiving countries bolster their militaries. Any pretense of Plan’s use for anything other than countering Soviet influence was gone.

On this day, December 31, in 1890, the immigration facility at Ellis Island, the first American building a generation of arriving immigrants would see, opened.

The first- and second-class passengers had their inspections on board the ships before the docking – it was though those with the means to travel better were less likely to cause trouble once arrived. For the rest, Ellis Island inspectors would check them off against the passenger manifests and doctors would quickly examine them for any outward signs of disease (considering the rush of people, the doctors had on average just six seconds to make their determination.) Most were cleared; about 2% were sent back, usually for health reasons, and a handful were quarantined on the island’s hospital. Life at the island went on – between 1900 and 1954 some 350 births were recorded on Ellis Island.

On this day, December 31, in 1879, several months after discovering the perfect incandescent light bulb, burning longer and with less power than conventional models, Thomas Edison unveiled them to the public.

Edison settled on using filaments – thin strips of material, which would glow when electricity is passed through them in an airless bulb – to make his light bulb. The only question was what would be the best filament material, and here Edison had no idea. His discovery came from the brute force method: he and his assistants made them out of thousands and thousands of different materials, testing each one. Was he ever frustrated by the scores of failures along the way to his invention? “The electric light … required the most elaborate experiments,” he wrote. “I was never myself discouraged, or inclined to be hopeless of success. I cannot say the same for all my associates.” He added later, “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

On this day, December 30, in 1972, after close to two weeks of continuous bombing, the North Vietnamese agreed to take another look at the peace proposals. Nixon ordered a pause in the bombing.

The final peace agreement different little from the October draft that the parties disagreed over, and for that the bombings have been controversial. Disagreements remain whether it was really to bring North Vietnam back to negotiations or to prove to the South Vietnamese the United States would not abandon them. Whatever the motivation, this was to be the last major U.S. operation in the war.

On this day, December 30, in 1953, with the standard now finalized, the first color televisions began appearing on the market.

RCA and Westinghouse competed who could get the first color sets out on the market – even though there were very little color broadcasts at the time still. The famous CT-100 set was the first one from RCA, offering a dazzling array of colors on its 11-inch screen, but at a price ($1,000 – roughly equal to $8,000 today) that was half of that for a new low-end car. The same day RCA debuted their color TV they began regular color programming. The first even color broadcast in NTSC – although hardly anyone saw it in color – was the Tournament of Roses parade in Pasadena, California, on the first day of 1954.

On this day, December 30, in 1940, the Arroyo Seco Parkway opened – several narrow lanes going to and from Pasadena. It was the first highway completed in the Western United States, and the oldest one currently in service.

Offramps were placed at 90-degree angles to the roads – which was less of a problem when top speeds were limited to 45 miles per house and buses and trucks were not allowed on the road, and when it carried 27,000 vehicles a day, compared with today’s 122,000. Little has changed construction-wise from its first days – no banked ramps, no acceleration / deceleration lanes. Driving State Route 110 is like going back through time.

On this day, December 30, in 1924 Edwin Hubble announced his findings: the nebulae turned out to be a separate galaxy altogether.

Hubble also discovered Cepheid variable stars, which brighten and dim on a regular basis, and using which a bright Harvard scholar Henrietta Leavitt figured calculated distances. It turned out the Cepheid stars were much further away than previously thought, beyond the bounds of the Milky Way. Hubble’s advances led to finding many more galaxies and the calculations they were moving away from ours – that the universe was still expanding.

On this day, December 30, in 1922, out of the ashes of the Russian Revolution of 1917, a new nation arose, the Soviet Union (USSR), comprising of not only Russia but also Belorussia, Ukraine, and the Transcaucasian Federation (what later became Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.)

In principle the government was democratic, with an executive branch, the Central Executive Committee, beholden to to a lawmaking body, Council of People’s Commissars. Members of government would be elected in local soviets – councils – that would meet in national congresses. What it actually became after Stalin’s alterations were completely was rule by fiat, with closely-knit group in the government deciding on every major step.