1. On December 19, 1819, Alabama was officially admitted as the 22nd state in the United States. The new state was formed as part of the larger expansion of the country that occurred during the early 19th century.

2. In 1862, during the Civil War, Confederate General Braxton Bragg launched his "Christmas Raid" against Union forces in Tennessee. The campaign began on December 19 with a surprise attack on the Union army at Lavergne, Tennessee.

3. On December 19, 1932, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the state's controversial eugenics law, which authorized the sterilization of certain individuals deemed "unfit" to reproduce. The decision was later overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1942.

4. In 1963, Birmingham, Alabama was the site of a series of civil rights demonstrations and protests that came to be known as the "Birmingham Campaign." On December 19 of that year, Martin Luther King Jr. led a boycott of downtown merchants in Birmingham in protest against segregation and discrimination.

5. On December 19, 2001, Alabama executed Lynda Lyon Block, a woman convicted of the murder of a police officer in 1993. Block was the first woman executed in the state since 1957, and one of only a handful of women executed in the United States in the modern era.