On the set of their film Days of Thunder, Cruise met his second wife, actress Nicole Kidman. On December 24, 1990, the pair married. Isabella Jane and Connor Antony are their two adoptive children.

On December 22, 1998, Zinedine Zidane received the 1998 Ballon d'Or, which is given annually to the finest football player in Europe as determined by a jury of sports writers from UEFA member nations.

Matthew Arnold, born on December 24, 1822, was an English poet and cultural critic who worked as a school inspector. He was the son of Rugby School's famed headmaster, Thomas Arnold, and the brother of literary scholar Tom Arnold and author and colonial administrator William Delafield Arnold. Matthew Arnold has been described as a wise writer, someone who chastises and advises the reader on current societal concerns. He was also a school inspector for 35 years, and he advocated the notion of state-regulated secondary education.

Mohammed Rafi was an Indian cinema playback vocalist who was born on December 24, 1924. He is regarded as one of the best and most influential Indian subcontinent vocalists. Rafi's variety and range of voice were outstanding; his songs ranged from quick peppy numbers to patriotic songs, melancholy numbers to extremely romantic songs, qawwalis to ghazals, and bhajans to classical songs. He was noted for his ability to adapt his voice to the actor's attitude and style while lip-syncing the song on screen in the film.

Visva Bharati University, one of India's most prestigious universities, is marking its 100th anniversary of its founding. Rabindranath Tagore, a Nobel laureate who did not complete his official schooling, created it in 1921. The Visva Bharti University was legally created in 1921, however it was founded in 1863, when Tagore was only two years old. An Act of Parliament designated one of the country's oldest Central universities as a national institution in 1951.

Anil Kapoor (born December 24, 1956) is an Indian film producer and actor who has acted in over a hundred Hindi-language films as well as international films and television programmes. His acting career spans 40 years, and he has been a producer since 2005. Throughout his career, he has received various prizes, including two National Film Awards and six Filmfare Awards.

James Thomas Fallon (born September 19, 1974) is a comedian, television host, and actor from the United States. He is most known for his work on Saturday Night Live and as the presenter of the late-night talk show The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and, before that, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. On December 22, 2007, Fallon married film producer Nancy Juvonen, co-owner of production business Flower Films. They first met on the set of Saturday Night Live before becoming friends on the set of Fever Pitch.

Vasco da Gama is primarily remembered for becoming the first person to sail from Europe to India by circumnavigating Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Da Gama landed and traded at locations around the coast of southern Africa over the course of two trips, commencing in 1497 and 1502, before arriving in India on May 20, 1498. Vasco da Gama promptly used his high viceregent powers to impose a new order in Portuguese India, appointing all new officials in place of the old ones. However, Gama developed malaria soon after arriving and died on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival, in the city of Cochin.

Samuel Barclay Beckett (13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was a novelist, dramatist, short storey writer, theatre director, poet, and literary translator from Ireland. He lived in Paris for the majority of his adult life and wrote in both French and English. Beckett died on December 22 and was interred at Paris's cimetière du Montparnasse, where they share a plain granite monument that follows Beckett's order that it be "any colour, as long as it's grey."

On December 23, 1912, a bomb was hurled at Viceroy Lord Hardinge as his procession left Chandni Chowk. In the attempt, the Viceroy was injured, but his Mahavat was slain. The government is stepping up its efforts to put an end to illegal activity. Ras Bihari Bose went underground and successfully escaped to Japan, where he died a few years before the end of World War II. He was a member of the Ghadar Conspiracy before fleeing to Japan. Basant Kumar Biswas, Amir Chand, and Avadh Behari were convicted and executed in the Delhi Conspiracy Case.

The 2018 Sunda strait tsunami struck on 22 December 2018 at about 21:38 local time, when major portions of Anak Krakatoa's southwestern flank crashed onto its caldera. The landslide triggered a strong tsunami wave that hit many coastal areas in Banten and Lampung, including the popular tourist site of Anyer. The lack of warnings about the tsunami's coming, which coincided with the Christmas and New Year holiday season in the country, and the area's nighttime setting all contributed to the high death toll. The tsunami killed 426 people, making it the worst volcanic tsunami in Indonesian history since the 1883 Sunda Strait tsunami, which originated on the same island.

Between 28 July 1979 to 14 January 1980, Chaudhary Charan Singh was India's 5th Prime Minister. Historians and ordinary people alike regard to him as the "champion of India's peasants." Charan Singh was born on December 23, 1902, in the hamlet of Noorpur, District Hapur (formerly District Meerut), Uttar Pradesh, to a rural peasant Jat family and Teotia clan.

Neeraj Chopra VSM (born December 24, 1997) is a track and field athlete from India who competes in the javelin throw. World Athletics has him rated second in the world as of August 2021. Chopra, a Junior Commissioned Officer (JCO) in the Indian Army, is the first Indian track and field athlete to win an Olympic gold medal. He is also the first Indian track and field athlete to win in the IAAF World U20 Championships, where he established a world under-20 record throw of 86.48 m in 2016, becoming the first Indian athlete to do so. In 2021, he won the first ever Olympic Gold Medal for India in Track and Field...

Kunal Nayyar is an Indian actor of English origin. He played Raj Koothrappali on The Big Bang Theory (2007–2019) and Vijay on the Nickelodeon animated series Sanjay and Craig (2013–2016). Nayyar has also appeared in Ice Age: Continental Drift (2012), The Scribbler (2014), Dr. Cabbie (2014), Consumed (2015), Trolls (2016), and Sweetness in the Belly (2017). (2019). Nayyar married Neha Kapur, a model, actor, and Femina Miss India 2006, in December 2011.

For years, historians have been fascinated by Vincent van Gogh's ear, prompting them to devise a variety of ideas as to why the 19th century Dutch artist sliced off a portion of his own auditory organ. According to the most commonly recognised version, van Gogh hacked off his ear lobe in a fit of madness following a confrontation with fellow artist Paul Gauguin, and then presented it to a prostitute called Rachel as a sign of devotion.

Howard Robard Hughes Jr., born December 24, 1905, was a commercial entrepreneur, investor, record-setting aviator, engineer, film director, and philanthropist who was considered as one of the world's most influential and financially successful people during his lifetime. He rose to prominence first as a film producer, then as a key figure in the aviation sector. Later in life, he became recognised for his unusual conduct and reclusive lifestyle, which were exacerbated by his developing obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.

Madonna Louise Ciccone, born August 16, 1958, is a singer-songwriter and actor from the United States. She is widely regarded as one of the most important individuals in popular culture and is sometimes referred to as the "Queen of Pop." On December 22, one of the most anticipated weddings of all time occurred when Madonna married film director Guy Ritchie in a traditional Scottish ceremony.

Pamulaparthi Venkata Narasimha Rao (June 28, 1921 – December 23, 2004) was an Indian lawyer and politician who served as India's ninth Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996. His election as Prime Minister was politically noteworthy since he was just the second person from a non-Hindi-speaking region to hold the position, and the first from South India. Rao had a heart attack on December 9, 2004, and was sent to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, where he died 14 days later at the age of 83.

Srinivasa Ramanujan was a mathematical prodigy who lived in India. He made significant contributions to number theory and worked on elliptic functions, continuing fractions, and infinite series. Ramanujan was born in Erode, a tiny hamlet around 400 kilometres southwest of Madras. In 1902, Ramanujan was shown how to solve cubic equations, and he went on to develop his own method for solving quartic equations. He attempted to solve the quintic the next year, oblivious to the fact that radicals could not solve it.