December 23 – Some important events on this day
962 👉🏼 Byzantine-Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor Nicephorus Phocas, Byzantine troops storm the city of Aleppo, recovering the tattered tunic of John the Baptist
1482 👉🏼 The Peace of Atrecht (now Arras) concluded between Louis XI of France and Maximilian of Austria, ending the War of the Burgundian Succession
1688 👉🏼 King James II, the last Roman Catholic British monarch flees to France from William of Orange
1690 👉🏼 English astronomer John Flamsteed observes Uranus without realizing it’s undiscovered
1783 👉🏼 US General George Washington resigns his military commission as Commander-in-Chief of the Army to Congress
1876 👉🏼 Turkey’s 1st constitution proclaimed
1888 👉🏼 Vincent van Gogh cuts off his left ear with a razor, after argument with fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and sends to a prostitute for safe keeping
1893 👉🏼 Opera “Hansel und Gretel” by Engelbert Humperdinck and his sister Adelheid Wette premieres in Weimar, conducted by Richard Strauss
1912 👉🏼 Indian revolutionary underground in Bengal and Punjab, headed by Rash Behari Bose attempt to assassinate Viceroy of India Lord Hardinge, by throwing homemade bomb into Viceroys’s Howdah (elephant carriage) during ceremonial procession in Delhi. Although wounded, the Viceroy survives. Investigations lead to the Delhi conspiracy trial.
1920 👉🏼 Government of Ireland Act / Home Rule Act passed partitioning Ireland
1938 👉🏼 Margaret Hamilton’s costume catches fire while filming “The Wizard of Oz”
1954 👉🏼 The first human kidney transplant is performed by Dr. Joseph E. Murray at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts
1996 👉🏼 Four women ordained priests in Jamaica, 1st in 330-year Anglican history
2002 👉🏼 A MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25, making it the first time in history that an aircraft and an unmanned drone had engaged in combat