Without any instruction or command, the shooting stopped and German and British soldiers met in no man's land. Photographs were taken and gifts exchanged. It was a Christmas truce.
It has also been speculated that the fire was the work of British soldiers acting without orders, intending to punish and intimidate any remaining Patriots in the city - with unintended consequences, however.
Two Americans and a British soldier have been killed in a rocket attack on a military base near the Iraqi capital Baghdad, with many injured at Camp Taji. Mark Lobel has this report.
And of course, she was too weak to get out. So the British soldiers picked up my grandmother's sister whose name is Shanti. They picked Shanti up and Shanti held on to her sister.
A historical research project of the University of London that involved 27,000 volunteers has reviewed that British soldiers serving in the First World War spent far less time at the front than is often assumed.
The first day of the Battle of the Somme saw around 20,000 British soldiers killed by German machine guns but that's still 8,000 less men than died on the snowy field of Towton in 1461.
They came to remember a battle that began with the deaths of almost 20,000 British soldiers and which left more than a million dead or wounded on both sides by its end.
The power of the British Empire meant that it became played in every corner of the world, as sailors and soldiers would teach and then play local teams in every port they visited.