December 23: What Happened on This Day in History (Elementary Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1823 - A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, is published anonymously.
2. 1893 - The opera Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck is first performed
3. 1954 - First successful kidney transplant is performed by J. Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray.
4. 1970 - The North Tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan, New York, New York is topped out at 1,368 feet (417 m), making it the tallest building in the world.
5. 1986 - Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California becoming the first aircraft to fly non-stop around the world without aerial or ground refueling.
6. Famous Birthdays: Richard Arkwright (English businessman and inventor, invented the Water frame ), Wilhelm Bauer (German engineer), Henry B. Guppy (English botanist), Niels Kaj Jerne (English-Danish immunologist, Nobel Prize laureate), Mikhail Leonidovich Gromov (Russian-French mathematician)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: December 22

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: December 24

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.