Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/December 23

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Eligible

 * 583 – Yohl Ikʼnal acceded to the throne of the Maya city-state of Palenque.
 * 1783 – George Washington resigned as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army at the Maryland State House in Annapolis (painting shown).


 * 1815 – Jane Austen's novel Emma was first published.
 * 1919 – The Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act was enacted, lifting most of the existing common-law restrictions on women in the United Kingdom.
 * 1958 – Tokyo Tower, then the world's tallest freestanding tower, opened.
 * 1984 – An engine fire caused Aeroflot Flight 3519 to crash shortly after takeoff from Krasnoyarsk, USSR, killing all but one of the 111 people on board.
 * 1990 – About 88 percent of eligible voters in Slovenia voted to secede from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
 * 1997 – The Pioneer Helmet, one of only six Anglo-Saxon helmets to be discovered, was first placed on public display.
 * Born/died: | Francis Tresham |d|1605| Gharib Nawaz |b|1690| Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol |d|1779| Joseph Smith |b|1805| Edward Blyth |b|1810| Madam C. J. Walker |b|1867| Arthur Gilligan |b|1894| Anna J. Harrison |b|1912| Quentin Bryce |b|1942|  Joan Lindsay |d|1984|  P. V. Narasimha Rao |d|2004|

December 23: Night of the Radishes in Oaxaca City, Mexico; Festivus


 * 1776 – American Revolutionary War: American troops, overwhelmed by British reinforcements, retreated from the Battle of Iron Works Hill.
 * 1888 – During a bout of mental illness, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (pictured) severed part of his left ear and gave it to a woman in a brothel in Arles, France.
 * 1916 – First World War: Allied forces gained a strategic victory at the Battle of Magdhaba on the Sinai Peninsula.
 * 1957 – Leading the Australia national cricket team, Ian Craig became the youngest-ever Test cricket captain at the time.
 * 2008 – The Guinean military engineered a coup d'état, announcing that it planned to rule the country for two years prior to a new presidential election.