Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 23
This is a list of selected December 23 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Clement Clarke Moore -
1912 book cover of A Visit from St. Nicholas -
Several transistors, with a centimeter tape, for scale -
Voyager -
Vincent van Gogh -
Coelacanth (preserved specimen)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| 1947 – The transistor, invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. | unreferenced section, indiscriminate list |
| 1972 – The Nicaraguan capital of Managua was struck by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, killing more than 10,000 people. | refimprove |
Eligible
- 962 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops stormed the city of Aleppo.
- 1793 – French Revolution: The Royalist counterrevolutionary army was decisively defeated in the Battle of Savenay, although fighting continued in the War in the Vendée for years afterward.
- 1823 – A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, was first published anonymously. Authorship was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.
- 1913 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act, establishing a central banking system of the United States, the Federal Reserve.
- 1916 – First World War: Allied forces gained a strategic victory in the Battle of Magdhaba, located in the Sinai Peninsula.
- 1938 – A South African fisher discovered the first living specimen of a coelacanth, long believed to be extinct.
- 1954 – Drs. Joseph Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison performed the first successful kidney transplant.
- 1986 – Piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, the Rutan Voyager became the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, landing in California's Edwards Air Force Base after a nine-day trip.
- 2008 – The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, and announced that it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential election.
December 23: Tenth of Tevet (Judaism, 2012); The Emperor's Birthday in Japan; Festivus
- 1888 – During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh stalked his friend French painter Paul Gauguin with a razor, and then afterwards cut off the lower part of his own left ear and gave it to a prostitute.
- 1957 – Ian Craig of Australia became the youngest Test cricket captain in history.
- 1958 – The Tokyo Tower (pictured), the tallest self-supporting steel structure in the world at 332.5 metres (1,091 ft), opened.
- 1972 – In one of the most famous plays in the history of American football, Pittsburgh Steelers running back Franco Harris made the Immaculate Reception of a pass by quarterback Terry Bradshaw near the end of a playoff game.
- 1990 – About eighty-eight percent of the population in Slovenia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.