HISTORY AT A GLANCE
TODAY is Saturday, December 23, the 357th day of 2017. There are 8 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1916 – World War I: Battle of Magdhaba – Allied forces defeat
Turkish forces in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. 1938 – Discovery of the first modern coelacanth in South
Africa. 1941 – World War II: After 15 days of fighting, the Imperial
Japanese Army occupies Wake Island. 1947 – The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell
Laboratories. 1948 – Seven Japanese convicted of war crimes by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East are executed at Sugamo Prison in Tokyo, Japan. 1954 – First successful kidney transplant is performed by J.
Hartwell Harrison and Joseph Murray. 1958 – Dedication of Tokyo Tower, the world’s highest selfsupporting iron tower. 1968 – The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after
eleven months of internment in North Korea. 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. 1970 – The Democratic Republic of the Congo officially
becomes a single-party state. 1972 – A 6.5 magnitude earthquake strikes the Nicaraguan
capital of Managua killing more than 10,000. 1972 – The 16 survivors of the Andes flight disaster are
rescued after 73 days, having survived by cannibalism. 1979 – Soviet war in Afghanistan: Soviet Union forces occupy
Kabul, the Afghan capital. 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. 1990 – History of Slovenia: In a referendum, 88.5% of Slovenia’s overall electorate vote for independence from Yugoslavia. 2002 – An MQ-1 Predator is shot down by an Iraqi MiG-25. 2003 – PetroChina Chuandongbei natural gas field explosion, Guoqiao, Kai County, Chongqing, China, killing at least 234. 2007 – An agreement is made for the Kingdom of Nepal to be abolished and the country to become a federal republic with the Prime Minister becoming head of state. 2010 – A monsoonal trough crosses the northeastern coast of Australia from the Coral Sea, bringing mass flooding across Queensland.