Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 23
December 23: Hanukkah ends at sunset (Judaism, 2006); The Emperor's Birthday in Japan; Festivus across the world.
- 1823 - A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, was first published. The poem was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore.
- 1888 - During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (pictured) infamously cut off the lower part of his own left ear and gave it to a prostitute.
- 1947 - The transistor, invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and William Shockley, was first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories.
- 1954 - The first successful human organ transplant: Drs. Joseph Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison transplanted a kidney to a patient from his twin brother.
- 1990 - The Republic of Slovenia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Recent days: December 22 – December 21 – December 20
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