MAKE MINE A WATER

America is falling out of love with diet soda. The sales of low- and zero-calorie soda have fallen 6.8 percent in the past year, compared with a 2.2 percent drop in the sales of regular soda. Experts say consumers are worried about possible health risks from artificial sweeteners.

The Wall Street Journal

SNAPSHOT

SMILE

About 4,000 photos are taken every second in the U.S., four times as many as a decade ago.

The Wall Street Journal

WORD-CROSS BIRTHDAY

Dec. 21 was an auspicious day for the puzzling world: It's the crossword's centennial. Or is it?

What is commonly recognized as the first crossword puzzle was the creation of Arthur Wynne for the "Fun" page of the New York World newspaper. The grid was a hollow diamond shape, not quite like the conventional American crossword that we know and love with its symmetrical black squares. The standard rules for grid construction would be worked out by Mr. Wynne's assistant, Margaret Petherbridge, who would go on to fame as a crossword editor under her married name, Margaret Farrar. (click below to read more)

TODAY IN HISTORY

December 27

1512		The laws of Burgos give New World natives legal protection against abuse and authorize Negro slavery.
1831		HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin on board, departs from Plymouth. It will eventually visit the Galapagos Islands where Darwin will form his theories on evolution.
1862		Union General William Rosecrans' army begins moving slowly toward Murfreesboro, Tennessee, from Nashville.
1913		Charles Moyer, president of the Miners Union, is shot in the back and dragged through the streets of Chicago.
1915		In Ohio, iron and steel workers go on strike for an eight-hour day and higher wages.
1932		Radio City Music Hall opens.
1933		Josef Stalin calls tensions with Japan a grave danger.
1939		A series of vicious earthquakes take 11,000 lives in Turkey.
1941		Japanese bombers attack Manila, despite its claim as an open city.
1944		General George S. Patton's Third Army, spearheaded by the 4th Armored Division, relieves the surrounded city of Bastogne in Belgium.
1945		The International Monetary Fund and the Bank for Reconstruction and Development are created.
1947		The new Italian constitution is promulgated in Rome.
1950		The United States and Spain resume relations for the first time since the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
1956		Segregation on buses in Tallahassee, Florida, is outlawed.
1968		The United States agrees to sell F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
1979		President Hafizullah Amin of Afghanistan is ousted and murdered in a coup backed by the Soviet Union, beginning a war that will last more than 10 years.
1983		President Reagan takes all responsibility for the lack of security in Beirut that allowed a terrorist on a suicide mission to kill 241 Marines.
1984		Four Polish officers are tried for the slaying of Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko.
1985		Palestinian guerrillas kill 18 people at airports in Rome and Vienna.
1996		Taliban forces retake strategic Bagram Airfield during Afghan civil war.
2001		China receives permanent normal trade relations with the US.
2004		Radiation reaches Earth from the brightest extrasolar event ever witnessed, an explosion of magnetar SGR 1806-20.
2007		Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto assassinated.
2007		After Mwai Kibaki is declared the winner of Kenya's presidential elections, rioting begins in Mombasa, precipitating an economic, humanitarian and political crisis.

AND I QUOTE

"Do what you can with what you've got wherever you are."

Theodore Roosevelt

PIX OF THE DAY

AROUND THE GLOBE

STRANGE INVENTIONS

EVERY LITTLE BIT HELPS

When Connor Johnson learned that Congress was cutting funding for NASA, he decided to take action. The wannabe astronaut, 6, first wanted to donate the contents of his piggy bank—all $10.41 of it—to the space agency. But his family convinced the boy to post a petition to increase NASA funding on the White House website, where it has so far received 11,000 signatures. The would-be space traveler said he feared for the agency’s future. “NASA is the only space company I’ve known for a very long time,” he said.

PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

A couple from Burlington, Iowa, has moved into a new home after living in a tent for seven months to save up for a down payment. Roy and Katie Appleget ditched their $1,000-a-month rental property in March to live in a local campground for $180 a month. After half a year of frugality, they had saved up $10,000—enough to make a down payment on a three-bedroom house. Roy, a corrections officer, said they were getting re-accustomed to home comforts. “[We can] stay warm, take a shower for free without pumping coins in a machine,” he said. “It’s pretty great.”

TIME