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Our next story comes to us for a man who's simply known as the History Guy.

His videos are watched by hundreds of thousands of people of all ages on YouTube.

The History Guy is also heard here at Our American Stories.

From its humble beginnings at an Austrian chapel in 1818, Silent Night has become one of the most popular Christmas hymns

in the world. Here's the history guy with the story of Silent Night.

Yosefus Francis Morris-Mor was born in the Prince Archbishop Brook of Salisbury, December 11th of

1792, the son of an embroiderer and a mercenary

soldier who abandoned the family before Yosef was born. Born into poverty, a vicar at Salisburg

Cathedral sought to his education and encouraged him in music, where he became a singer and a violinist.

In 1811, Yosef joined the seminary, and in 1815 he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest.

In 1816 he was serving as assistant priest in the small town of Mariaphar, south of Salisburg,

where he penned a short six stanza poem.

There is no record of him ever explaining what inspired that poem exactly, but it might have been the

beautiful still countryside around mountainous mariafar, and the fourth stanza might have been

referring to the difficult period of the Napoleonic Wars. In 1818, two years later, that poem was

set to music and played at midnight mass on Christmas in the Church of St. Nicholas, in the small town

of Oberndorf, north of Salzburg. Today that song is one of the world's most popular

songs. It has been translated into hundreds of languages. It is sung by millions of people. Just

one recording of that song is sold more than 30 million copies and is the third highest-selling

...