Today is Tuesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2014. There are eight days left in the year.

Today is Tuesday, Dec. 23, the 357th day of 2014. There are eight days left in the year.

ASSOCIATED PRESS

On this date in:

1788: Maryland passes an act to cede an area “not exceeding ten miles square” for the seat of the national government; about two-thirds of the area becomes the District of Columbia.

1823: The poem “Account of a Visit from St. Nicholas” is published anonymously in the Troy (N.Y.) Sentinel; the verse, more popularly known as “’Twas the Night Before Christmas,” is later attributed to Clement C. Moore.

1893: The Engelbert Humperdinck opera “Haensel und Gretel” is first performed, in Weimar, Germany.

1913: The Federal Reserve System is created as President Woodrow Wilson signs the Federal Reserve Act.

1928: The National Broadcasting Company sets up a permanent, coast-to-coast network.

1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt restores the civil rights of about 1,500 people who’d been jailed for opposing the (First) World War.

1941: During World War II, American forces on Wake Island surrender to the Japanese.

1948: Former Japanese premier Hideki Tojo and six other Japanese war leaders are executed in Tokyo.

1953: The Soviet Union announces the execution of Lavrentiy Beria, former head of the secret police, for treason.

1954: The first successful human kidney transplant takes place at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston as a surgical team led by Dr. Joseph Murray removes a kidney from 23-year-old Ronald Herrick and implants it in Herrick’s twin brother, Richard, who was dying of chronic nephritis. (Because the donor and recipient were identical twins, tissue rejection was not an issue. Richard Herrick lived until 1962; Ronald Herrick died in 2010.)

1972: In football’s “Immaculate Reception,” Franco Harris of the Pittsburgh Steelers catches a pass thrown by Terry Bradshaw and scores a touchdown after the ball was deflected during a collision between Jack Tatum of the Oakland Raiders and the Steelers’ John Fuqua; the Steelers won, 13-7.

1986: The experimental airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, complete the first non-stop, non-refueled round-the-world flight as it returns safely to Edwards Air Force Base in California.

2004: Democrat Christine Gregoire wins the Washington governor’s race over Republican Dino Rossi by 130 votes out of 2.9 million ballots cast, according to final recount results announced from Seattle’s King County.

VINDICATOR FILES

1989: Mahoning Valley Romanian-Americans say the fall of the Nicolae Ceausescu government is the answer to 41 years of prayers.

Forty fifth-grade students at Holy Family School in Poland collect $140, most of it in pennies, to help a disadvantaged family they have adopted.

Coach Bob Patton’s Liberty High School’s Leopards post their 47th consecutive regular season victory, beating Champion, 84-36, to set a new record for a basketball winning streak in Trumbull County. The old record had been held by Warren Western Reserve.

1974: Daniel Pregi, co-owner of Pregi’s Ice Cream and Milk Depot, at 435 Albert St., is in guarded condition in St. Elizabeth Hospital with a gunshot wound received during a robbery at the store.

The Youngstown Area Chamber of Commerce urges the city to consider private contracting of the refuse collection system and City Hall custodial services.

The Ohio Board of Regents asks Ohio University to make plans to reduce its enrollment from 20,000 to 12,000.

1964: U.S. District Judge Mell Underwood grants a writ of habeas corpus freeing Youngstown Racketeer Joy Naples pending a retrial.

Thomas “Yonnie” Licavoli, who once headed a Toledo gang credited with 16 murders, is making a new bid for parole after serving 30 years behind bars, asking Gov. James A. Rhodes to commute his first-degree murder conviction to second degree.

1939: Bertram Parker, president of the Youngstown Foundry & Machine Co., is re-elected president of the Youngstown Chamber of Commerce.

A shortage of water in the Mahoning River is affecting domestic and industrial use in Warren and for industrial purposes in Niles.

Dr. Robert G. Mossman, family physician to Mayor-elect William B. Spagnola, will be Youngstown health commissioner in the Spagnola administration.