December 23 in History

Harmony Jets Flight 185 crashed near Ankara, killing all eight people aboard including Libyan Army chief Mohammed al-Haddad. The loss of Libya's top military commander during an already fragile political situation deepened uncertainty over the country's security future and control of its armed forces.

Huneric spent years hunting Catholics across North Africa — burning churches, exiling bishops, confiscating estates. Then he died. His nephew Gunthamund took the throne and simply... stopped. The prisons opened. The bishops came home. No grand decree, no explanation. Just silence where there had been screams. For twelve years Catholics worshipped openly again, rebuilt what was burned, ordained new priests in daylight. The persecutions would return after Gunthamund — they always did — but for one Vandal king's reign, the choice was peace. Nobody recorded why.

The dome fell in 558 — not from one quake, but aftershocks that kept coming, until 20,000 square feet of Justinian's ceiling crashed down mid-service. No one died. The emperor was 76 and broke, his plague-ravaged treasury empty, but he couldn't leave the greatest church in Christendom headless. So he brought in Isidore the Younger, nephew of the original architect, who built the new dome six meters higher to spread the weight. Justinian died three years after the reopening. The dome he bankrupted himself to replace has stood 1,462 years.

Nicephorus Phocas didn't just take Aleppo — he stripped it. His troops hauled away the city's gates, melted down its bronze doors, and carted off so much treasure that chroniclers called it "the sack without equal." Three hundred thousand Muslims lived there. Most fled before the walls fell. Phocas let them go. He wanted the city empty, not martyred. Within two years, he'd be emperor. Within four, he'd push the Byzantines deeper into Syria than they'd been in three centuries. But Aleppo remembered. When Saladin retook it two hundred years later, he rebuilt those gates first.

Nicephorus Phocas didn't just want Aleppo — he wanted what the Muslims had taken 328 years earlier. His troops tore through the city's defenses and went straight for the cathedral-turned-mosque. There it was: John the Baptist's tunic, stained and moth-eaten, kept as a trophy since 636. Phocas wrapped it himself and sent it to Constantinople. The Byzantines called it a miracle. The Arabs called it Tuesday — another border city lost, another relic gone. But Phocas wasn't done. Three years later, he'd be emperor, and Aleppo would be just the warm-up.

Ghazan shatters a Mamluk force at Wadi al-Khaznadar, driving the enemy to retreat from Syria and securing Ilkhanate control over the region. This decisive victory ends Mamluk resistance in the north, allowing Ghazan to consolidate his rule before he later converts to Islam and shifts Mongol policy toward peace with Egypt.

Mapuche warriors led by Pelantaru ambush and kill Governor Martín García Óñez de Loyola at Curalaba, instantly shattering Spanish control over southern Chile. This decisive blow forces a permanent retreat of colonial forces northward, ending decades of expansion and securing Mapuche autonomy for centuries.

King James II slipped out of England and crossed to France after his army deserted to William of Orange, effectively ending his reign without a pitched battle. His flight allowed Parliament to declare the throne vacant and offer the crown to William and Mary, establishing the constitutional principle that monarchs ruled by parliamentary consent, not divine right.

Catherine II established the Moscow State Academy of Choreography on December 23, 1773, creating Russia's second dedicated ballet school following the Vaganova Academy. This institution immediately began training generations of dancers who would define classical technique and secure Russia's global dominance in ballet for centuries to come.

Republican forces annihilated the last major royalist army at Savenay, ending the Vendee uprising's military threat to the French Revolution. Thousands of prisoners were executed in the aftermath, and the subsequent "infernal columns" campaign through the countryside killed tens of thousands of civilians in what some historians classify as the first modern genocide.