December 23 in History

"A Visit from St. Nicholas" is a poem, first published anonymously under the title "Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas", in 1823. Authorship has been attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, who claimed authorship in 1837; but it has also been suggested that Henry Livingston Jr. wrote it.

Hansel and Gretel is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a Märchenoper. The libretto was written by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tale of the same name. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the "Abendsegen" from act 2.

The Federal Reserve Act was passed by the 63rd United States Congress and signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on December 23, 1913. The law created the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States.

The Battle of Sarikamish was an engagement between the Russian and Ottoman Empires during World War I. It took place from 22 December 1914, to 17 January 1915, as part of the Caucasus campaign.

The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It became law when it received royal assent on 23 December 1919. The act enabled women to join the professions and professional bodies, to sit on juries and be awarded degrees. It was a government compromise, a replacement for a more radical private members' bill, the Women's Emancipation Bill.

The Spanish Civil War was fought from 1936 to 1939 between the Republicans and the Nationalist rebels. Republicans were loyal to the left-leaning Popular Front government of the Second Spanish Republic and included socialists, anarchists, communists, and separatists, supported by the Soviet Union. The opposing Nationalists were an alliance of fascist Falangists, monarchists, conservatives, and traditionalists, supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy and initially led by a military junta, until General Francisco Franco was appointed supreme leader on 1 October 1936 for what he called the Spanish State. Due to the international political climate at the time, the war was variously viewed as class struggle, religious struggle, or struggle between republican democracy and dictatorship, revolution and counterrevolution, or fascism and communism. The Nationalists won the war in early 1939, and ruled Spain until Franco's death in November 1975.

A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify or switch electrical signals and power. It is one of the basic building blocks of modern electronics. It is composed of semiconductor material, usually with at least three terminals for connection to an electronic circuit. A voltage or current applied to one pair of the transistor's terminals controls the current through another pair of terminals. Because the controlled (output) power can be higher than the controlling (input) power, a transistor can amplify a signal. Some transistors are packaged individually, but many more in miniature form are found embedded in integrated circuits. Because transistors are the key active components in practically all modern electronics, many people consider them one of the 20th century's greatest inventions.

The Korean War was an armed conflict fought on the Korean Peninsula between North Korea and South Korea and their allies. North Korea was supported by China and the Soviet Union, while South Korea was supported by the United Nations led by the United States under the auspices of the United Nations Command (UNC). The conflict was one of the first major proxy wars of the Cold War and one of its deadliest conflicts on noncombatants, especially civilians. It is estimated that 1.5 to 3 million Korean civilians were killed during the war. The Korean War was the first time the United Nations Security Council authorized the use of force under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.

The Unknown Soldier is a Finnish war film directed by Edvin Laine that premiered in December 1955. It is based on The Unknown Soldier, a novel by Väinö Linna. The story is about the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union as told from the viewpoint of ordinary Finnish soldiers.

USS Pueblo (AGER-2) is a Banner-class technical research ship, placed into service during World War II, then converted to a spy ship in 1967 by the United States Navy. She gathered intelligence and oceanographic information, monitoring electronic and radio signals from North Korea. On 23 January 1968, the ship was attacked and captured by a North Korean vessel, in what became known as the "Pueblo incident".

The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), also known as the DR Congo, Congo-Kinshasa, or simply the Congo or less often Zaire, is a country in Central Africa. By land area, it is the second-largest country in Africa and the 11th-largest in the world. With a population of around 124 million people, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the fourth-most populous country in Africa and the most populous Francophone country in the world. French is the official and most widely spoken language, though there are over 200 indigenous languages, of which Lingala is the most widely spoken. The capital, largest city, and economic center is Kinshasa. The DRC is bordered by the Republic of the Congo, the Cabinda exclave of Angola, and the South Atlantic Ocean to the west; the Central African Republic and South Sudan to the north; Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania to the east; and Zambia and Angola to the south. Centered on the Congo Basin, most of the country's terrain is covered by dense rainforests and is crossed by many rivers, while the east and southeast are mountainous.

The 1972 Nicaragua earthquake occurred at 12:29:44 a.m. local time on 23 December near Managua, the capital of Nicaragua. It had a moment magnitude of 6.3 and a maximum MSK intensity of IX (Destructive). The epicenter was 28 km (17 mi) northeast of the city centre with a depth of about 10 km (6.2 mi). The earthquake caused widespread casualties among Managua's residents: 4,000–11,000 were killed, 20,000 were injured and over 300,000 were left homeless.

Alitalia Flight 4128 was a scheduled flight from Leonardo da Vinci Airport, in Rome, Italy, to Palermo International Airport in Palermo, Italy, with 129 on board. On 23 December 1978, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-32 crashed into the Tyrrhenian Sea about 3 km (1.9 mi) north of Palermo while on approach.

Aeroflot Flight 3519 was a scheduled flight, operated by a Tupolev Tu-154 that crashed on December 23, 1984, due to an engine failure. 110 occupants were killed; one passenger survived the accident.

The history of Slovenia chronicles the period of the Slovenian territory from the 5th century BC to the present. In the Early Bronze Age, Proto-Illyrian tribes settled an area stretching from present-day Albania to the city of Trieste. The Slovenian territory was part of the Roman Empire, and it was devastated by the Migration Period's incursions during late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. The main route from the Pannonian plain to Italy ran through present-day Slovenia. Alpine Slavs, ancestors of modern-day Slovenians, settled the area in the late 6th Century AD. The Holy Roman Empire controlled the land for nearly 1,000 years. Between the mid-14th century through 1918 most of Slovenia was under Habsburg rule. In 1918, most Slovene territory became part of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and in 1929 the Drava Banovina was created within the Kingdom of Yugoslavia with its capital in Ljubljana, corresponding to Slovenian-majority territories within the state. The Socialist Republic of Slovenia was created in 1945 as part of federal Yugoslavia. Slovenia gained its independence from Yugoslavia in June 1991, and today it is a member of the European Union and NATO.

PetroChina Company Limited is a Chinese oil and gas company and is the listed arm of state-owned China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), headquartered in Dongcheng District, Beijing. The company is currently Asia's largest oil and gas producer. Traded in Hong Kong and New York, the mainland enterprise announced its plans to issue stock in Shanghai in November 2007, and subsequently entered the constituent of SSE 50 Index. In the 2020 Forbes Global 2000, PetroChina was ranked as the 32nd-largest public company in the world.

The Kingdom of Nepal was a Hindu kingdom in South Asia, formed in 1768 by the expansion of the Gorkha Kingdom, and disestablished and replaced by the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal in 2008. The king of Nepal served as its head of state, and it was also known as the Gorkha Empire, or sometimes Asal Hindustan. The kingdom was founded by King Prithvi Narayan Shah, a Gorkha monarch of the Shah dynasty who claimed to be of Thakuri origin from chaubisi.

A series of armed attacks occurred between 23 and 25 December 2023 in Plateau State in central Nigeria. They affected at least 17 rural communities in the Nigerian local government areas of Bokkos and Barkin Ladi, resulting in at least 200 deaths and injuries to more than 500 people as well as significant property damage. Although no group claimed responsibility for the attacks, they are believed to have been committed by Fulani militias.