The Walt Disney World Resort is the world’s most visited entertainment resort located in Lake Buena Vista, Florida.  The resort includes four theme parks, two water parks, and 23 on-site themed resort hotels, a campground, two spas/physical fitness centers, five golf courses, and other recreational venues and entertainment. The resort, then containing only the Magic Kingdom theme park, opened on October 1, 1971 and has only grown since then. Some of these additions include Epcot, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and Disney’s Animal Kingdom.

On this day, December 31st, in 1988, Mario Lemieux became the first and only player to score 5 NHL goals in 5 different ways. In the game against the New Jersey Devils, Lemieux amassed a total of 8 points.  Scoring from all five scoring situations was an unthinkable feat and fans watched in amazement as Lemiex scored in an even-strength, power-play, shorthanded, penalty shot, and empty net scenario.

Lemieux retired in 1997 and was named to the Hall of Fame that year.  He would return to play for the Penguins from 2000-2006.  Lemieux is currently the partial owner and chairman of the board for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

On this day December 31^st, in 1857, Queen Victoria chooses Ottawa as the new capital of Canada. Ottawa is in the state of Ontario. Ontario’s largest city is Toronto, a place famous for its nightlife, towers, and a generally relaxed demeanor.

Ottawa is the second largest city. 2011 census stated that Ottawa’s population was 880,000, while its metropolitan area boasts over 1.3 million people. This city has been deemed one of the cleanest cities in the world. It has many canals, and part of the city is built around Ottawa sits on top of a dormant fault line which has been known to cause numerous earthquakes.

On this day, December 31, in 1995, the last strip of Calvin and Hobbes was published after ten years because Watterson felt that he had achieved all he could in the medium.  Throughout the years, Watterson combated pressures from publishers to merchandise his work.  However, he always refused—stating that it would cheapen his comic and devalue the characters and their personalities.  Watterson himself will not sign autographs and there have been many unsuccessful attempts to find him in his home.

Watterson left a legacy of changing the format of the Sunday comic strip.  Before him, the strips were all a series of symmetrical rectangles for the artists to fill, but Bill Watterson gained an exception to these constraints and drew the panels of his comics exactly as he desired.

On this day, December 31st, in 1999, businesses across the world prepared for the Y2K disaster, where computer systems around the world were rumored to stop working at midnight.

Computer systems usually abbreviated year dates to only two digits. At the turn of the century, many people worried that the computer systems wouldn’t know how to adjust. An estimated $300 billion was spent preparing for the Y2K crisis in the United States. An additional $13 billion was spent in 2000 and 2001 in order to fix problems with the computer systems. Worldwide, an estimated $308 billlion was invested in Y2K bug fixes.

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.”