Selected Anniversaries / December 22-23

1. SelectedAnniversaries/December 22-23

2. TheAnnieversaries • 1808 – German composer Ludwig van Beethoven premiered his Fifth Symphony, one of the most popular and well-known compositions in all of European classical music, at theTheater an der Wien in Vienna. • 1885 – ItōHirobumi (pictured), a samurai from Chōshū, became the first Prime Minister of Japan. • 1984 – While riding a New York City Subway train, Bernhard Goetzshot four African American youths who attempted to rob him, sparking a nationwide debate on vigilantism, racism, and the legal limits of self-defense.

3. 1990 – The Parliament of Croatia adopted the country's current constitution. • 2001 – Richard Reid unsuccessfully attempted to detonate a bomb in his shoe on a transatlantic flight from Paris, France, to Miami, Florida.

4. December-23 • 962 – Byzantine–Arab Wars: Under the future Emperor NicephorusPhocas, Byzantine troops stormed the city of Aleppo. • 1823 – A Visit from St. Nicholas, also known as The Night Before Christmas, was first published anonymously. Authorship was later attributed to Clement Clarke Moore(pictured). • 1888– During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh stalked his friend French painter Paul Gauguin with a razor, and then afterwards cut off the lower part of his own left ear and gave it to a prostitute.

5. 1954 – Drs. Joseph Murray and J. Hartwell Harrison performed the first successful kidney transplant. • 1958 – The Tokyo Tower, the tallest self-supporting steel structure in the world at 332.5 metres (1,091 ft), opened. • 1990 – About eighty-eight percent of the population in Slovenia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.