CNN Interactive - Almanac - December 23, 1998

Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma is scheduled to begin two days of talks with Turkmenistan President Saparmurat Niyazov in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Discussions will likely focus on gas supplies.
A court appearance is scheduled in Madison, Nebraska, for a 71-year-old man charged with killing his doctor at a state mental hospital.
Japan celebrates Emperor Akihito's 65th birthday.

On Thursday, December 24, Pope John Paul II is scheduled to observe Christmas Eve Midnight Mass at Vatican City.
On Friday, December 25, Cuba will observe a national holiday. It was re-established by the Cuban Communist Party 29 years after it was abolished by President Fidel Castro.
On Saturday, December 26, Kwanzaa, the African-American holiday, begins.
On Sunday, December 27, the tentative liftoff of a joint U.S.and Australian around-the-world balloon flight is scheduled.

NEWSLINK:		NOTABLE:
Christmas shines in Rome. For a tour, click here.		Author Robert Bly is 72. Dancer Jose Greco is 80. Actor James Gregory is 87. Actor Corey Haim is 26. Ravens QB Jim Harbaugh is 35. Actress Susan Lucci is 49. Actor Gerald O'Loughlin is 77. Actress Ruth Roman is 75.

In 1732, Richard Arkwright, the British inventor and industrialist, was born. Inventor of the spinning frame, he also introduced steam into his Nottingham factories.
In 1810, Karl Richard Lepsius, the German Egyptologist, was born. Regarded as founder of modern archaeology, his "Egyptian Chronologies" laid the foundation for a scientific treatment of early Egyptian history. He was the first to measure the Valley of the Tombs of Kings in Egypt.
In 1933, Marinus van der Lubbe was found guilty and sentenced to death in Germany for setting fire to the Reichstag earlier in the year.
In 1948, Hideki Tojo was hanged as a war criminal; a Japanese soldier who became prime minister, he was in power when Pearl Harbor was bombed.
In 1950, Pope Pius XII announced that St. Peter's tomb had been found under the Vatican.
In 1953, in the Soviet Union, Lavrenty Beria, former security police chief who played a role in Stalin's political purges, was executed for plotting to succeed him as Soviet leader.
In 1972, Andrei Tupolev, the Soviet aircraft designer, died. Before World War II, he designed bombers and the huge ANT-20 "Maxim Gorky." After the war, he designed jet airliners for the Soviet National Airline and created the world's first supersonic airliner, the TU-144.
In 1972, a massive earthquake struck Managua, Nicaragua, resulting in the deaths of some 7,000 people.
In 1990, the people of Slovenia voted overwhelmingly in a plebiscite for the northwestern Yugoslav republic to become an independent state.