Join a journey through time/history this December 22, tracing the Don't Ask, Don't Tell repeal, the GOELRO plan, and Göbekli Tepe to reveal humanity’s long arc.
History Team
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This Day Through Time: December 22 Across the Ages
Today we descend through time from the present into chapters of December 22 that shaped the world we know. From a modern policy milestone to ancient lifeways, these moments show how yesterday becomes today.
In a solemn moment inside the Capitol and across the country, the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010 was signed, allowing openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual service members to serve in the U.S. military for the first time since 1993. The gesture carried weight beyond policy; it reframed citizenship within the armed forces and pushed LGBT rights into the mainstream political conversation. Why it matters: it showed that equality under the law could advance not just in courts, but in the daily service lives of people who raise their hands and take the oath.
We step forward, and then back, to a century past. In 1920 the GOELRO plan earned approval from the Congress of Soviets and launched the USSR’s first nationwide effort to recover, industrialize, and electrify the nation. This blueprint did not merely put power lines in the countryside; it seeded a centralized apparatus that would organize a vast economy, steer urban growth, and redefine how a state could knit together science, labor, and governance. Why it matters: electrification and planning became a backbone of Soviet development, shaping growth, labor markets, and political power for decades to come.
In 856, the machine of time stalls on a different, grimmer note. The eastern Alborz mountains of Persia were struck by a tremendous earthquake with an estimated magnitude near 7.9, and chronicles recount the vast destruction and the toll of lives, up to hundreds of thousands. Why it matters: natural disasters of this scale test a society’s architecture, memory, and resilience, prompting early debates about building with the earth itself in mind and how communities remember catastrophe in their stories and forms of governance.
A millennium ago, around the year 1000, the world was a patchwork of powerful kingdoms, bustling caravan routes, and long shadows of empires. In this era, the world saw rapid regional dynamism: China under a growing Song dynasty building sophisticated cities and a bustling economy; European realms reorganizing into feudal and then more centralized structures; and long-distance trade weaving together deserts and seas. Innovations in administration, agriculture, and scholarship were taking root in many places, laying the groundwork for later urbanization, technology, and cross-cultural exchange. Why it matters: this millennium set the stage for the later revolutions of science, trade, and governance, revealing how wealth and knowledge travel across borders just as surely as people do.
The horizon brightens into a sun-warmed dawn of domestication and village life. Across rivers and plains, people learned to plant seeds, tend flocks, and settle in places where the seasons became predictable enough to plan ahead. Some communities pushed beyond tents and skins to sun-dried huts and stone walls, hinting at permanence and social life that goes beyond daily foraging. Early monumental sites emerged, pointing toward new kinds of community and ritual. Among the earliest exemplars of this turning point are Göbekli Tepe in Anatolia and Jericho in the Jordan Valley, where architecture and art began to express collective memory as much as daily need. Why it matters: the shift to farming and permanent settlements reorganized human relationships with land, animals, and each other, laying the social and technological foundations for civilization.
Even farther back, the world was a theater of adaptation and invention. Homo sapiens roamed Africa in small bands while their cousins, the Neanderthals, lingered across Europe and western Asia. Stone and bone tools—scrapers, bladelets, Mousterian cores—dot daily tasks, and ochre stains or rare cave markings hint at expression, belief, and maybe nascent language. Shelters were simple and shared around fire as survival depended on cooperation, keen observation, and quick, flexible minds. Why it matters: this era marks the deep origins of human cognition, cooperation, and culture, the roots of which branch into language, art, and the complex societies we study and cherish today.