TODAY IN HISTORY

 

Vincent van Gogh chops off his ear

On December 23, 1888, Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh, suffering from severe depression, cuts off the lower part of his left ear with a razor while staying in Arles, France.  He later documented the event in a painting titled Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear. Today, Van Gogh is regarded as an artistic genius and his masterpieces sell for record-breaking prices; however, during his lifetime, he was a poster boy for tortured starving artists and sold only one painting.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on March 30, 1853, in the Netherlands. He had a difficult, nervous personality and worked unsuccessfully at an art gallery and then as a preacher among poor miners in Belgium. In 1880, he decided to become an artist. His work from this period–the most famous of which is The Potato Eaters (1885)–is dark and somber and reflective of the experiences he had among peasants and impoverished miners.

In 1886, Van Gogh moved to Paris where his younger brother Theo, with whom he was close, lived. Theo, an art dealer, supported his brother financially and introduced him to a number of artists, including Paul Gauguin, Camille Pisarro and Georges Seurat. Influenced by these and other painters, Van Gogh’s own artistic style lightened up and he began using more color.

In 1888, Van Gogh rented a house in Arles in the south of France, where he hoped to found an artists’ colony and be less of a burden to his brother. In Arles, Van Gogh painted vivid scenes from the countryside as well as still-lifes, including his famous sunflower series. Gauguin came to stay with him in Arles and the two men worked together for almost two months. However, tensions developed and on December 23, in a fit of dementia, Van Gogh threatened his friend with a knife before turning it on himself and mutilating his ear lobe. 

Afterward, he allegedly wrapped up the ear and gave it to a prostitute at a nearby brothel. Following that incident, Van Gogh was hospitalized in Arles and then checked himself into a mental institution in Saint-Remy for a year. During his stay in Saint-Remy, he fluctuated between periods of madness and intense creativity, in which he produced some of his best and most well-known works, including Starry Night and Irises.

In May 1890, Van Gogh moved to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, where he continued to be plagued by despair and loneliness. On July 27, 1890, he allegedly shot himself and died two days later at age 37.

INVENTIONS & SCIENCE

1983

The journal "Science" publishes first report on nuclear winter

Residents of Earth receive a chilling early Christmas present on December 23, 1983, when a group of scientists including Carl Sagan releases a paper titled “Nuclear Winter: Global Consequences of Multiple Nuclear Explosions.” 

WOMEN’S HISTORY

1867

Madam C.J. Walker is born

Future entrepreneur, philanthropist and self-made millionaire Madam C.J. Walker is born Sarah Breedlove on December 23, 1867 in Delta, Louisiana.  Walker's parents, sharecroppers who had been enslaved, died when she was seven. 

SPORTS

1982

Chaminade shocks No. 1 Virginia in one of greatest upsets in sports history

On December 23, 1982, Chaminade, an NAIA school with only 900 students, beats top-ranked Virginia and 7-foot-4 center Ralph Sampson, 77-72, in Honolulu in one of the greatest upsets in sports history. "Not too many people get to beat the No. 1 team in the nation," Chaminade coach Merv Lopes tells reporters afterward. "What we did was amazing."  Virginia cruised through its first eight games, beating a Georgetown team that featured Patrick Ewing and a Houston team led by Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler. Although Virginia's game against Chaminade took place in the Silverswords' home state of Hawaii, no one expected them to beat the Cavaliers.

SPORTS

1972

Pittsburgh Steelers' Franco Harris scores on "Immaculate Reception," iconic NFL play

On December 23, 1972, the Pittsburgh Steelers beat the Oakland Raiders, 13-7, on rookie running back Franco Harris' "Immaculate Reception" touchdown in the waning seconds of a playoff game—one of the greatest plays in NFL history.  

EXPLORATION

1986

Voyager completes global flight

After nine days and four minutes in the sky, the experimental aircraft Voyager lands at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing the first nonstop flight around the globe on one load of fuel. Piloted by Americans Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, Voyager was made mostly of plastic and stiffened paper and carried more than three times its weight in fuel when it took off from Edwards Air Force Base on December 14. By the time it returned, after flying 25,012 miles around the planet, it had just five gallons of fuel left in its remaining operational fuel tank.

CRIME

2009

“Balloon Boy” parents sentenced in Colorado

On December 23, 2009, Richard Heene, who carried out a hoax in which he told authorities his 6-year-old son Falcon had floated off in a runaway, saucer-shaped helium balloon, is sentenced to 90 days in jail in Fort Collins, Colorado.

WORLD WAR II

1948

Japanese war criminals hanged in Tokyo

In Tokyo, Japan, Hideki Tojo, former Japanese premier and chief of the Kwantung Army, is executed along with six other top Japanese leaders for their war crimes during World War II. Seven of the defendants were also found guilty of committing crimes against humanity, especially in regard to their systematic genocide of the Chinese people. On November 12, death sentences were imposed on Tojo and the six other principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war. Sixteen others were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the remaining two of the original 25 defendants were sentenced to lesser terms in prison.

COLONIAL AMERICA

1620

Construction of Plymouth settlement begins

One week after the Mayflower is anchored at Plymouth harbor in present-day Massachusetts, construction of the first permanent European settlement in New England begins. On September 16, the Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, bound for the New World with 102 passengers. 

WORLD WAR II

1944

The execution of Eddie Slovik is authorized

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower endorses the finding of a court-martial in the case of Eddie Slovik, who was tried for desertion, and authorizes his execution, the first such sentence against a U.S. Army soldier since the Civil War, and the only man so punished during World War II. 

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1959

Chuck Berry is arrested on Mann Act charges in St. Louis, Missouri

On December 23, 1959, Chuck Berry is arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, on charges relating to his transportation of a 14-year-old girl across state lines for allegedly “immoral purposes.” “Never saw a man so changed,” is how the great Carl Perkins described the experience of touring England in 1964 alongside Chuck Berry. “He had been an easygoing guy before, the kinda guy who’d jam in dressing rooms, sit and swap licks and jokes. [But] in England he was cold, real distant and bitter.” The “before” to which Perkins referred was the four-year period from 1956 to 1959, when Berry established his reputation as one of rock and roll’s founding fathers, not only turning out such classic hits as “Maybellene” and “Johnny B. Goode,” but also establishing the very template that nearly every rock and roll guitarist after him would follow. What had changed Chuck Berry, in Perkins’ opinion, was partly the long, hard grind of years and years of one-night-only live performances, but, as Perkins also said, “I figure it was mostly jail.” Between 1960 and 1963, the man who helped invent rock and roll spent 20 months in federal prison following his conviction on charges of violating the Mann Act.

ART, LITERATURE, AND FILM HISTORY

1993

“Philadelphia,” the first major Hollywood movie about AIDS, opens in theaters

On December 23, 1993, Philadelphia, starring the actor Tom Hanks in the first major Hollywood movie to focus on the subject of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), opens in theaters. In the film, Hanks played Andrew Beckett, a gay attorney who is unjustly fired from his job because he suffers from AIDS. Denzel Washington co-starred as Joe Miller, a homophobic personal-injury lawyer who takes on Beckett’s case and comes to terms with his own misconceptions about gay people and the disease.

CRIME

1984

Subway shooter Bernhard Goetz goes on the lam

Bernhard Goetz, who shot four young Black men on a subway car the previous day, flees New York City and heads for New Hampshire after becoming the central figure in a media firestorm. On the afternoon of December 22, Troy Canty, Barry Allen, Darrell Cabey and James Ramseur reportedly approached Goetz as he was riding the subway and demanded $5. Goetz pulled out a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver and shot each of the boys in response. He then shot Cabey a second time, severing his spinal cord. After refusing to give up his gun, he walked to the end of train, jumped onto the tracks, and disappeared.

COLD WAR

1968

Crew of USS Pueblo released by North Korea

The crew and captain of the U.S. intelligence gathering ship Pueblo are released after 11 months imprisonment by the government of North Korea. The ship, and its 83-man crew, was seized by North Korean warships on January 23 and charged with intruding into North Korean waters. 

INVENTIONS & SCIENCE

1982

Chemical contamination prompts evacuation of Missouri town

On December 23, 1982, the Missouri Department of Health and the federal Centers for Disease Control (CDC) inform residents of Times Beach, Missouri that their town was contaminated when the chemical dioxin was sprayed on its unpaved roads, and that the town will have to be evacuated and demolished. By February, the federal and state governments had spent $36 million to buy every house in town except one (its owners, lifelong residents of Times Beach, refused to sell). In 1985, the city was officially disincorporated.

AMERICAN REVOLUTION

1783

George Washington resigns as commander in chief

On December 23, 1783, following the signing of the Treaty of Paris, General George Washington resigns as commander in chief of the Continental Army and retires to his home at Mount Vernon, Virginia.