The TIME Magazine Vault

Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour; 7th December 1941

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War on the Horizon

With the distance of history, it can be hard to appreciate the extent of the surprise that was the attack on Pearl Harbor of Dec. 7, 1941. "Days may pass before the full facts become known, but in the scanty news that came through from Hawaii in the first 36 hours of the war was every indication that the Navy had been taken completely by surprise in the early part of a lazy Sunday morning," TIME reported that week. "Although the Japanese attackers had certainly been approaching for several days, the Navy apparently had no news of either airplane carriers sneaking up or of submarines fanning out around Hawaii. Not till the first bombs began to fall was an alarm given. And when the blow fell the air force at Pearl Harbor was apparently not ready to offer effective opposition to the attackers."

War on the Horizon

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Dec. 22, 1980

Saying Farewell to John Lennon

Michael Ochs Archives

Sorting department at city hall post office during Christmas

New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images

Santa Claus and the Post Office

Late December is prime time for post offices around the nation and the world, but in 1932 one particular post office was singled out by TIME: the post office in Santa Claus, Ind., population 100. "Santa Claus consists of one rough street, a few frame houses and a general store in the back room of which is a post office," the magazine explained. "The hamlet's time of fame is Christmas, when to it comes all the childish mail addressed to Santa Claus. Also several thousand persons ship its postmaster their Christmas cards and merchandise with the request that he remail them under the Santa Claus postmark. All this is a lot of bother and expense to the deficit-developing Post Office Department in Washington."

Santa Claus and the Post Office

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Dec. 11, 1989

When the Cold War Ended

Dirck Halstead—The LIFE Images Collection/Getty

New York Daily News Archive / Getty Images

Dec. 16, 1960: ‘Death in the Air’

On a snowy day over New York City, TWA Flight 266, on its way to New York from Ohio, collided with United Airlines Flight 826, which had been bound for Chicago. The former crashed on Staten Island and the latter in a residential neighborhood in Brooklyn. The death toll would reach 139 but what exactly had happened would remain a mystery. "Within moments, the snow-covered field was soaked with crimson," TIME noted of the scene in Staten Island, "and soon, as in Brooklyn, the tortuous, dirgelike procession of stretcher-borne victims began."