Today is Monday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2019. There are eight days left in the year.
Birthdays: Actor Ronnie Schell is 88. Former emperor Akihito of Japan is 86. Football Hall of Famer Paul Hornung is 84. Actor Frederic Forrest is 83. Actor-comedian Harry Shearer is 76. US Army General Wesley K. Clark (retired) is 75. Actress Susan Lucci is 73. Singer-guitarist Adrian Belew is 70. Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) is 55. Jazz musician Irvin Mayfield is 42.
In 1783, George Washington resigned as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retired to his home at Mount Vernon, Va.
In 1913, the Federal Reserve System was created as President Wilson signed the Federal Reserve Act.
In 1941, during World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrendered to the Japanese.
In 1948, former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders were executed in Tokyo.
In 1954, the first successful human kidney transplant took place at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a surgical team led by Joseph Murray removed a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick and implanted it in Herrick’s twin brother, Richard.
In 1968, 82 crew members of the US intelligence ship Pueblo were released by North Korea, 11 months after they had been captured.
In 1972, a 6.2-magnitude earthquake struck Nicaragua; the disaster claimed some 5,000 lives.
In 1986, the experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the first non-stop, non-refueled round-the-world flight as it returned safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California.
In 1995, a fire in Dabwali, India, killed 446 people, more than half of them children, during a year-end party near the children’s school.
In 1997, a federal jury in Denver convicted Terry Nichols of involuntary manslaughter and conspiracy for his role in the Oklahoma City bombing, declining to find him guilty of murder. (Nichols was sentenced to life in prison. )
In 2001, Time magazine named New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani its Person of the Year for his steadfast response to the 9/11 terrorist attack.
Last year, amid criticism and fallout from the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, President Trump pushed the Pentagon chief out the door two months earlier than planned; in a series of tweets, Trump appeared to question why he had put Mattis in his Cabinet in the first place.