Today Is...First Electric Christmas Tree Lights

Putting lights on Christmas trees became popular in the 17th century and at that time, the lights placed on trees were small candles that were attached to branches using wax or pins.
Obviously naked flames and dry, wooden trees was not the best idea but in 1882 an associate of Thomas Edison, Edward Johnson, hand-wired 80 blue, white and red lights and wrapped them around an Evergreen tree and created the first electric Christmas tree lights.
The idea of replacing the Christmas tree’s traditional candles with electric lights didn’t catch on right away as there was still a general distrust of using electricity for indoor lighting and they were very expensive so it wasn't until the early 1900's that shops began selling them and using them in their own seasonal window displays.
While electric lights are massively safer than sticking a candle on the tree, the Fire Service say they are still called out to hundreds of fires in December due to families leaving their Christmas lights on continually and overloading the electric plug sockets and in a message which will really annoy traditionalists, they say that an artificial tree is safer than a real one if it does catch fire.
The Guinness World Record for the 'Most lights on a Christmas Tree' is 612,000 and is held by Universal Studios Japan, in Osaka which must have been be a nightmare to untangle.