December 23

1688 – During the ‘Glorious Revolution’, King James II of England flees from England to Paris, after being deposed in favor of his nephew, William of Orange and his daughter Mary.

1783 – After the end the War of Independence, and his victory/farewell dinner in New York, General George Washington resigns as Commander in Chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis.

1913 – The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System.

1936 – Colombia becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.

1941 – After 15 days of fighting, the U.S. garrison on Wake Island is finally forced to surrender to the Japanese Army

1947 – The properties of the transistor are first demonstrated by its inventors at Bell Laboratories.

1948 – Convicted of war crimes during World War 2 by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East; Akira Mutō, Hideki Tojo, Seishirō Itagaki, Heitarō Kimura, Iwane Matsui, Kenji Doihara and Kōki Hirota are executed by hanging at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Japan.

1954 – The first successful kidney transplant is performed by J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray between the identical twins, Ronald and Richard Herrick, at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

1968 – The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after 11 months of captivity in North Korea.

1970 – The North Tower (Tower 1) of the World Trade Center in Manhattan is topped out at 1,368 feet, making it the tallest building in the world at the time.

1979 – Invading Soviet Union forces occupy the Afghanistan capital, Kabul.

1986 – Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, piloting Voyager, land at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first to fly an aircraft non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.

2002 – A U.S. MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25 in the first combat engagement between a drone and conventional aircraft.

2013 – Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov, inventor of the Soviet AK-47 rifle, dies, age 94, in hospital at the Udmurtian medical facility in Izhevsk, Russia