See what makes December 18 special at Famous Daily.
History, birthdays, holiday, and a quote!
What happened on December 18
- December 18, 1118 "Aragon's Alfonso the Battler takes Saragossa December 18 from the Almoravid king Ali ibn-Yusuf, whose father defeated Castile's Alfonso VI in 1086
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- December 18, 1271 "Kublai Khan renames his empire ""Yuan"" ( yun), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China."
- December 18, 1620 "The Mayflower lands in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts delivering 102 Pilgrims."
- December 18, 1642 Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand.
- December 18, 1661 "The ""S.S.Elizabeth"" of Burntisland lost off the English coast with the Scottish records aboard, being returned from London to which they had been taken by Oliver Cromwell."
- December 18, 1737 "Antonio Stradivari, world-famous violin maker, dies in Cremona, Italy."
- December 18, 1745 "Skirmish at Clifton where retreating Jacobite forces under Lord George Murray, defeated General Bland's Hanoverian troops. The last battle to be fought on English soil."
- December 18, 1774 "Jews expelled from Prague, Bohemia and Moravia by Empress Maria Theresa"
- December 18, 1777 "First national Thanksgiving Day, commemorating Burgoyne's surrender"
- December 18, 1777 "The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, celebrating the recent victory by the Americans over General John Burgoyne in the Battle of Saratoga in October"
- December 18, 1787 New Jersey becomes 3rd state to ratify constitution
- December 18, 1787 New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
- December 18, 1793 "Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French royalists to Lord Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck."
- December 18, 1796 "First US newspaper to appear on Sunday, Baltimore Monitor"
- December 18, 1799 George Washington's body interred at Mount Vernon
- December 18, 1813 British take Fort Niagara in the War of 1812
- December 18, 1839 "First celestial photograph (of the moon) made in US, John Draper, New York NY"
- December 18, 1846 Copper first discovered in Western Australia.
- December 18, 1849 William Bond obtains first photograph of Moon through a telescope
- December 18, 1859 "South Carolina declared an ""independent commonwealth"""
- December 18, 1862 The first orthopedic hospital is organized in New York City (The Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled).
- December 18, 1872 "Opals first discovered in Australia, at Listowel Downs, Queensland."
- December 18, 1878 "John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires is executed in Pennsylvania."
- December 18, 1888 Richard Wetherill and his brother in-law discover the ancient Indian ruins of Mesa Verde.
- December 18, 1890 Frederick Lugard occupies Uganda for British East Africa Company.
- December 18, 1892 "The first performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia."
- December 18, 1894 South Australian women given the vote.
- December 18, 1898 "At a site near Paris, France, Count Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the world's first official automobile land speed record of 39 miles per hour."
- December 18, 1898 "Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat sets the new land speed record going 39.245 mph, in a Jeantaud electric car. This is the first recognized land speed record."
- December 18, 1900 "The Upper Ferntree Gully to Gembrook Narrow-gauge (2 ft 6 in or 762 mm) Railway (now the Puffing Billy Railway) in Victoria, Australia is opened for traffic."
- December 18, 1912 "The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is supposedly found today in the Piltdown Gravel Pit, by Charles Dawson."
- December 18, 1915 "President Wilson, widowed the year before, marries Edith Bolling Galt"
- December 18, 1915 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.
- December 18, 1916 "The Battle of Verdun (France), one of the bloodiest WWI engagements, ends after 10 months and massive losses to both sides."
- December 18, 1923 International zone of Tangier set up in Morocco
- December 18, 1935 The $1 silver certificate is issued.
- December 18, 1935 The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Ceylon.
- December 18, 1936 Giant panda imported into US
- December 18, 1939 "Thousands watched from the shore as the German Pocket Battleship, Graf Spee is scuttled by her crew."
- December 18, 1940 Munitions Minister C.D.Howe and 152 other survivors of the torpedoed lines SS Western Prince arive in Britian
- December 18, 1941 "Japan invades Hong Kong after British governor of Hong Kong, Mark Aitchison Young refuses to surrender to Japanese forces."
- December 18, 1944 "Destroyers ""Hull,"" ""Spence"" and ""Monaghan"" sink in typhoon (Phillippines)"
- December 18, 1944 "World War II: 77 B-29 Superfortress and 200 other aircraft of U.S. Fourteenth Air Force bomb Hankow, China, a Japanese supply base."
- December 18, 1945 Uruguay joins the United Nations
- December 18, 1956 Japan admitted to UN
- December 18, 1957 "Shippingport Atomic Power Station, first nuke plant to generate electricity"
- December 18, 1957 "The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, goes online."
- December 18, 1958 First voice from space: recorded Christmas message by Eisenhower
- December 18, 1958 Niger gains autonomy within French Community (National Day)
- December 18, 1958 "Project SCORE, the world's first experimental communications satellite, was launched"
- December 18, 1958 Test project of Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equip
- December 18, 1961 "India annexes Portuguese colonies of Goa, Damao and Diu"
- December 18, 1961 Indonesia invades Netherlands New Guinea.
- December 18, 1963 "Muskegon, MI gets 3' of snow"
- December 18, 1965 Borman and Lovell Splash down in Atlantic ends 2 week Gemini VII mission
- December 18, 1966 Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.
- December 18, 1969 Britain abolishes death penalty
- December 18, 1969 "Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghan's motion to make permanent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which had temporarily suspended capital punishment in England, Wales and Scotland for murder (but not for all crimes) for a period of five years, is carried by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords."
- December 18, 1971 People United To Save Humanity (PUSH) forms by Jesse Jackson in Chic
- December 18, 1972 US began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam
- December 18, 1973 "Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union."
- December 18, 1973 Soyuz 13 launched into Earth orbit for 8 days
- December 18, 1974 San Francisco Visitors Center at City Hall opens
- December 18, 1979 Stanley Barrett first to exceed land sonic speed (739.666 MPH)
- December 18, 1980 Bruce Sprinsteen's concert at Madison Square Garden
- December 18, 1982 "A large Tacoa power plant starts burning in Venezuela, eventually killing 128."
- December 18, 1982 Flight readiness firing of Challenger's main engines; 20 seconds
- December 18, 1982 Number one hit on UK music charts - Renee & Renato - Save Your Love
- December 18, 1984 Christopher Guest (Saturday Night Live) and actress Jamie Lee Curtis are married in Los Angeles.
- December 18, 1985 "UN Security Council unanimously condemns ""acts of hostage-taking"""
- December 18, 1986 Kid Icarus is released in Japan on the NES game system.
- December 18, 1987 "Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's future pres, marries Asif Ali Zardari"
- December 18, 1987 "Federal Judge Morris E. Lasker sentenced Ivan Boesky,the once mighty arbitrageur to a three-year prison term"
- December 18, 1987 Ivan Boesky is sentenced to three years in prison for inside trading.
- December 18, 1987 Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language.
- December 18, 1989 """I Love Lucy"" Christmas episode, shown for first time in over 30 years"
- December 18, 1991 "DeForest Kelly, who portrayed Dr. ""Bones"" McCoy on Star Trek, gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame."
- December 18, 1991 General Motors announces the closing of 21 plants
- December 18, 1996 "The Oakland, California school board passes a resolution officially declaring ""Ebonics"" a language or dialect."
- December 18, 1997 HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.
- December 18, 1999 "NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT."
- December 18, 2001 "Rapper NaS releases critically acclaimed album, Stillmatic, to 5 star reviews and 300 thousand copy first week sales. (UK only)"
- December 18, 2002 "2003 California recall: Then Governor of California Gray Davis announces that the state would face a record budget deficit of $35 billion, roughly double the figure reported during his reelection campaign one month earlier."
- December 18, 2005 So Paulo FC (Brazil) becomes third time World Champion against Liverpool (England) in the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan.
- December 18, 2006 "Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigns, Robert Gates is sworn in as the new Secretary of Defense."
- December 18, 2007 "Important Islamic date - Hajj (Annual Pilgrimage to Mecca) December 18 - December 21, 2007"
- December 18, 2009 "A large crater, dubbed the ""Fried Egg"" because of its shape, is discovered off the coast of The Azores in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting speculation that it may have been caused up to 17 million years ago by meteor impact."
- December 18, 2009 "A Paris court rules that Google is infringing copyright, sentencing it to pay 300,000 euros in damages and interest to French publisher Editions de la MartiniŠre, and 10,000 euros a day until it removes extracts of the books from its database."
- December 18, 2009 "After 27 years, Terry Wogan presents his last edition of Wake Up to Wogan on BBC Radio 2, receiving farewell messages from Gordon Brown and David Cameron."
- December 18, 2009 "Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani citizen who was involved in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, recants his confession, claiming that police tortured him into admitting his role in the attacks."
- December 18, 2009 General Motors announces that it will begin shutting down operations at the Swedish carmaker Saab automobile.
- December 18, 2009 "Important Islamic date - Islamic New Year: December 18, 2009 (1431 A.H.)"
- December 18, 2009 "In a reversal of a previous decision, Sir John Chilcot insists that former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will give the majority of his evidence to The Iraq Inquiry in public."
- December 18, 2009 Irish priest Father Se n Sheehy withdraws from work in his parish of Castlegregory over a controversy which followed his shaking the hand of a convicted sex offender in court days earlier. Bishop of Kerry William Murphy disassociates himself from Sheehy and his actions.
- December 18, 2009 "Lava flows and ash explosions continue to emerge from Philippine volcano Mount Mayon while scientists predict a major eruption in the coming weeks and 30,000 people remain in temporary shelter."
- December 18, 2009 "Russian television news channels air repeated coverage of a UFO, shaped like a pyramid and similar to an Imperial Cruiser from Star Wars."
- December 18, 2009 Snowfall across the east of England disrupts transport and power supplies.
- December 18, 2009 The Arbeit macht frei sign is stolen from Auschwitz concentration camp.
- December 18, 2009 "The BBC apologises for offence caused when it used the headline: ""Should homosexuals face execution?"""
- December 18, 2009 The Catalan Parliament votes to ban bull fighting in the Spanish region.
- December 18, 2009 "The Iraqi government demands the withdrawal of Iranian soldiers that it claims seized an oil well in Fakkah, in the Maysan Governorate in southern Iraq."
- December 18, 2009 The Islamic New Year (Muharram 1st) begins on the previous sunset.
- December 18, 2009 The Vatican dismisses Zambia's controversial Roman Catholic Church archbishop Emmanuel Milingo.
- December 18, 2009 Thirty world leaders present in Copenhagen for the United Nations Conference on Climate Change agree on a draft accord.
- December 18, 2009 "Twitter, a popular micro-blogging service, temporarily goes offline after a group calling itself the ""Iranian Cyber Army"" manages to change its DNS records."
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