The winter solstice occurred two hours ago in the U.S. eastern time zone, at 11:28 a.m. Mental Floss has 10 facts you may not have known about the solstice, including:
5. THE DAY MARKS THE DISCOVERY OF NEW AND STRANGE WORLDS.
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6. THE WORD SOLSTICE TRANSLATES ROUGHLY TO "SUN STANDS STILL."
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8. ANCIENT ROMANS CELEBRATED REVERSALS AT THE MIDWINTER FESTIVAL OF SATURNALIA.
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And,
10. SOME THOUGHT THE WORLD WOULD END ON THE 2012 WINTER SOLSTICE.
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Mental Floss has specifics on all of the 10 facts at the link above.
We'll throw one more in: the winter solstice is the shortest daylight period in the Northern Hemisphere, but it's never the day of the latest sunrise or earliest sunset (due to the Earth's elliptical orbit and it's 23.5 degree tilt)!
