On this day: December 23

1783: George Washington resigns his commission as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army to Congress, which was meeting at the Maryland State House in Annapolis. This action was of great significance in establishing civilian, rather than military rule, leading to a republic, rather than a dictatorship.

1805: Joseph Smith Jr., the founder and leader of the Latter Day Saint movement, is born in Sharon, Vermont. Smith published the Book of Mormon, said to be translated from a buried book of golden plates revealed to him by the angel Moroni, at the age of 24 and by the time of his death 14 years later, he had attracted thousands of followers, established cities and temples, and founded a religion and a religious culture that continue today.

1823: "A Visit from St. Nicholas," better known as "Twas the Night Before Christmas," is published anonymously for the first time in the Troy (New York) Sentinel. The poem, which is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-19th century to today, would later be attributed to poet Clement Clarke Moore, who eventually acknowledged authorship.

1913: The Federal Reserve Act is signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson, creating the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States.

1941: After more than two weeks of fighting, the isolated U.S. garrison on Wake Island in the Pacific Ocean surrenders to the Japanese during World War II. Japanese bombers had begun attacking the island at the same time as the attack on Pearl Harbor, more than 2,000 miles to the east. While most of the captured military personnel and civilians were sent to POW camps in Asia, 98 remained enslaved on the island until they were executed Oct. 5, 1943, following an American air raid. The island remained under Japanese control until Sept. 4, 1945.

1947: The transistor is first demonstrated at Bell Laboratories. The transistor revolutionized the field of electronics, paving the way for smaller and cheaper radios, calculators, computers and other devices.

1951: A National Football League championship game is televised nationally for the first time, with the Los Angeles Rams beating the Cleveland Browns 24-17. The DuMont Network had paid $95,000 for the rights to the game.

1954: The first successful kidney transplant between living patients is performed at Brigham Hospital in Boston by J. Hartwell Harrison, Joseph Murray, John P. Merrill and others. Ronald Herrick donated a kidney to his dying identical twin brother Richard Herrick, who died eight years after the procedure. Murray would receive the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1990 for this and other work.

1968: The 82 sailors from the USS Pueblo are released after 11 months of internment in North Korea. The Navy intelligence research ship had been seized by North Korea on Jan. 23, 1968, claiming the ship had violated their territorial waters while spying. Two U.S. sailors were killed in the incident and the remaining crew members were taken hostage. The Pueblo is still held by North Korea today, moored as a museum ship in Pyongyang, and officially remains a commissioned vessel of the U.S. Navy.

1970: The North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City is topped out at 1,368 feet, making it the tallest building in the world, surpassing the Empire State Building after a 40-year reign. It only briefly held the title, with Chicago's Sears Tower, finished in May 1973, reaching 1,450 feet at its rooftop.

1972: The Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders 13-7 in a NFL playoff game on a last-second play that became dubbed the "Immaculate Reception." Pittsburgh fullback Franco Harris caught a deflected pass intended for running back John Fuqua and ran it in for the winning touchdown. The week after the victory, the Steelers lost the AFC championship game to the Miami Dolphins 21-17, who won Super Bowl VII in their landmark undefeated season.

1972: The 16 remaining survivors of the crashed Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 are rescued after being stranded for 73 days in the Andes mountains. The chartered flight, which was carrying 45 people, including a rugby team and their friends and family, crashed on Oct. 13, 1972. More than a quarter of the plane's passengers died in the crash and several others perished quickly due to cold and injuries. Those who survived the ordeal turned to cannibalism, feeding on the dead passengers who had been preserved in the snow. Their story was told in the 1974 book "Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors," which was made into the 1993 movie "Alive." Pictured is a memorial at the crash site.

1973: Italian-American bodybuilder Charles Atlas, best known for the mail-order bodybuilding course he co-created in 1929, dies of heart failure at age 80 in Long Beach, New York.

1973: Jim Croce's song "Time in a Bottle" goes to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart three months after his death in a plane crash at age 30. The song was Croce's second and final No. 1 hit, following "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" earlier in the year.

1982: Actor, director and producer Jack Webb, most famous for his role as Sergeant Joe Friday in the radio and television series "Dragnet," dies of a heart attack at age 62 in West Hollywood, California.

1986: The Rutan Voyager becomes the first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert, the same location it had departed from on its westerly trip Dec. 14. With U.S. Air Force Lt. Dick Rutan and aviatrix Jeana Yeager in the cockpit, the lightweight experimental aircraft, built primarily from fiberglass, carbon fiber and Kevlar, completed the trip of 26,366 statute miles in nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds.

1997: Director Woody Allen, 62, weds Soon-Yi Previn, the 27-year-old adopted daughter of his former lover, actress Mia Farrow. Though Allen and Farrow never married and he was not Previn's stepfather, their relationship had been fodder for the tabloids since it went public after Allen and Farrow broke up in 1992.

2000: Danish-American comedian, conductor and pianist Victor Borge, beloved for his live and televised musical comedy performances, dies peacefully in his sleep at age 91 in Greenwich, Connecticut.