1271 Kublai Khan officially created the Yuan Dynasty on December 18, 1271 and proclaimed the capital to be Dadu (Chinese literally. "Great Capital"), at modern-day Beijing. This marked the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China. He ruled well, promoting economic growth with the rebuilding of the Grand Canal and repairing public buildings. His empire had roads with comfortable inns and stables for resting travelers.
1707 Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, where his father was rector. He was born several weeks before his time and appeared more dead than alive but was carefully wrapped in warm wool. Charles' father Samuel was a poet and he passed on his poetic gifts to his son. Charles Wesley wrote over 6000 hymns, more than any other male. (Fanny Crosby wrote 8000). It is said Methodism was born in song and Charles was the chief songwriter.
1737 Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona on December 18, 1737, aged 93. It is estimated that he made 1,116 instruments between 1666 and his death, of which 960 were violins; about 650 of these still exist. Many of these are in museums and private collections, and many are used by the world's leading string players.
1778 The English clown Joseph Grimaldi was born in Clare Market, London, into a family of dancers and comic performers on December 18, 1778. Joseph Grimaldi was the Regency era's most successful entertainer. He was seen by one in eight people in early nineteenth century London. He created for his Joey the Clown character the whiteface make-up design still used in pantomime and by many other clowns today.
1787 On December 18, 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the United States Constitution. Two years later, on November 20, 1789, the state became the first in the newly formed Union to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1799 George Washington's body was interred at Mount Vernon on December 18, 1799. Mount Vernon was George Washington's favorite residence, which he inherited after his half brother Lawrence's death in July 1752. Mount Vernon was a self-sufficient plantation and had a large number of resident workers. By the time of Washington's death, more than 300 slaves resided there. Besides the field hands, there were blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, brickmakers, and spinners.
1829 French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck died lonely, blind and in poverty in Paris on December 18, 1829. In his 1809 publication Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck expounded a comprehensive evolutionary synthesis, an early, perhaps the first, theory of evolution. Although Lamarck's theories on evolution were discarded, he succeeded in establishing procedures of inquiry for the study of invertebrates that were useful long after his death.
1834 Robert Peel represented as MP the family seat at Tamworth, Staffordshire. On December 18, 1834, after become Prime Minister, he issued the Tamworth Manifesto, which pledged that the Tories would support modest reform. The political manifesto is widely credited by historians as having laid down the principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based.
1879 On December 18, 1879, Emmeline Pankhurst married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister and politician 22 years her senior known for supporting women's right to vote; He drafted the first women's suffrage bill and was a supporter of every conceivable reform. They had five children over the next ten years, but lost two sons. Richard died suddenly from stomach ulcers on July 5, 1898.
1879 Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili on December 18, 1879 at Gory near Tbilisi in Georgia. He later adopted the name "Stalin" meaning "Man of Steel" which Lenin had given him. Ioseb's father, Besarion "Beso" Jughashvili, was a drunkard Georgian shoemaker who beat his son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father."
1888 Belfast-based veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop came up with the pneumatic tire to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. Dunlop's development of the rubber tire arrived at a crucial time in the development of road transport. The first advertisement for a ‘Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre’ appeared in the Irish Cyclist on December 18, 1888.
1892 In 1892 the St Petersburg Opera commissioned Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to compose the music to accompany an adaption of their ballet adaption of the 1816 German story, E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The Nutcracker ballet was premièred at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892. Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute "Nutcracker Suite" that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was.
1898 French aristocrat and race car driver. Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official land speed record on December 18, 1898. He averaged 63.15 km/h (39.24 mph) over 1 km (0.62 mi) in Achères, Yvelines, France using a Jeantaud electric car.
1915 After the death of his first wife, President Woodrow Wilson's doctor, Cary Grayson, introduced him to a girl named Edith Galt, whose husband had also passed away. After two months they fell in love. Wilson married Edith on December 18, 1915, at her home in Washington, D.C. The groom's pastor, Reverend Dr. James H. Taylor of Central Presbyterian Church, and the bride's, Reverend Dr. Herbert Scott Smith of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., performed the wedding jointly.
1916 The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle of World War I. It started on February 21 1916 and ended on December 18, 1916 when the French defeated German forces around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. With a duration of 303 days it also was the longest battle in human history.
1941 John Logie Baird gave a demonstration of color television in London in 1928, but it took several decades before the first successful system was adopted for broadcasting. He demonstrated on December 18, 1941 ‘stereoscopic television’, which were effectively the first 3-D color television sets.
1946 The movie director Steven Spielberg was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 18, 1946. When he was 12, Steven used his toy train to make a home movie of a train wreck. Spielberg was only 28 when he made his big breakthrough with the blockbuster Jaws in 1975. The unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $9 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing director in history.
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| Kublai Khan |
1707 Charles Wesley was born on December 18, 1707 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, where his father was rector. He was born several weeks before his time and appeared more dead than alive but was carefully wrapped in warm wool. Charles' father Samuel was a poet and he passed on his poetic gifts to his son. Charles Wesley wrote over 6000 hymns, more than any other male. (Fanny Crosby wrote 8000). It is said Methodism was born in song and Charles was the chief songwriter.
1737 Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona on December 18, 1737, aged 93. It is estimated that he made 1,116 instruments between 1666 and his death, of which 960 were violins; about 650 of these still exist. Many of these are in museums and private collections, and many are used by the world's leading string players.
1778 The English clown Joseph Grimaldi was born in Clare Market, London, into a family of dancers and comic performers on December 18, 1778. Joseph Grimaldi was the Regency era's most successful entertainer. He was seen by one in eight people in early nineteenth century London. He created for his Joey the Clown character the whiteface make-up design still used in pantomime and by many other clowns today.
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| Grimaldi wearing white face |
1787 On December 18, 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the United States Constitution. Two years later, on November 20, 1789, the state became the first in the newly formed Union to ratify the Bill of Rights.
1799 George Washington's body was interred at Mount Vernon on December 18, 1799. Mount Vernon was George Washington's favorite residence, which he inherited after his half brother Lawrence's death in July 1752. Mount Vernon was a self-sufficient plantation and had a large number of resident workers. By the time of Washington's death, more than 300 slaves resided there. Besides the field hands, there were blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, brickmakers, and spinners.
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| Mount Vernon seen from the Potomac River. By baldeaglebluff |
1829 French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck died lonely, blind and in poverty in Paris on December 18, 1829. In his 1809 publication Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck expounded a comprehensive evolutionary synthesis, an early, perhaps the first, theory of evolution. Although Lamarck's theories on evolution were discarded, he succeeded in establishing procedures of inquiry for the study of invertebrates that were useful long after his death.
1834 Robert Peel represented as MP the family seat at Tamworth, Staffordshire. On December 18, 1834, after become Prime Minister, he issued the Tamworth Manifesto, which pledged that the Tories would support modest reform. The political manifesto is widely credited by historians as having laid down the principles upon which the modern British Conservative Party is based.
1879 On December 18, 1879, Emmeline Pankhurst married Richard Pankhurst, a barrister and politician 22 years her senior known for supporting women's right to vote; He drafted the first women's suffrage bill and was a supporter of every conceivable reform. They had five children over the next ten years, but lost two sons. Richard died suddenly from stomach ulcers on July 5, 1898.
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| Emmeline and Richard Pankhurst |
1879 Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Jughashvili on December 18, 1879 at Gory near Tbilisi in Georgia. He later adopted the name "Stalin" meaning "Man of Steel" which Lenin had given him. Ioseb's father, Besarion "Beso" Jughashvili, was a drunkard Georgian shoemaker who beat his son. One of Stalin's friends from childhood wrote, "Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father."
1888 Belfast-based veterinary surgeon John Boyd Dunlop came up with the pneumatic tire to stop his son getting headaches from riding his bumpy tricycle. Dunlop's development of the rubber tire arrived at a crucial time in the development of road transport. The first advertisement for a ‘Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre’ appeared in the Irish Cyclist on December 18, 1888.
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| Dunlop on a bicycle c1915 |
1892 In 1892 the St Petersburg Opera commissioned Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to compose the music to accompany an adaption of their ballet adaption of the 1816 German story, E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. The Nutcracker ballet was premièred at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892. Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute "Nutcracker Suite" that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was.
1898 French aristocrat and race car driver. Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official land speed record on December 18, 1898. He averaged 63.15 km/h (39.24 mph) over 1 km (0.62 mi) in Achères, Yvelines, France using a Jeantaud electric car.
1915 After the death of his first wife, President Woodrow Wilson's doctor, Cary Grayson, introduced him to a girl named Edith Galt, whose husband had also passed away. After two months they fell in love. Wilson married Edith on December 18, 1915, at her home in Washington, D.C. The groom's pastor, Reverend Dr. James H. Taylor of Central Presbyterian Church, and the bride's, Reverend Dr. Herbert Scott Smith of St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Washington, D.C., performed the wedding jointly.
1916 The Battle of Verdun was the longest battle of World War I. It started on February 21 1916 and ended on December 18, 1916 when the French defeated German forces around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France. With a duration of 303 days it also was the longest battle in human history.
1941 John Logie Baird gave a demonstration of color television in London in 1928, but it took several decades before the first successful system was adopted for broadcasting. He demonstrated on December 18, 1941 ‘stereoscopic television’, which were effectively the first 3-D color television sets.
1946 The movie director Steven Spielberg was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 18, 1946. When he was 12, Steven used his toy train to make a home movie of a train wreck. Spielberg was only 28 when he made his big breakthrough with the blockbuster Jaws in 1975. The unadjusted gross of all Spielberg-directed films exceeds $9 billion worldwide, making him the highest-grossing director in history.
1963 The actor Brad Pitt was born on December 18, 1963 in Shawnee, Oklahoma, to Jane Etta (née Hillhouse), a school counselor, and William Alvin Pitt, who ran a trucking company. Pitt told GQ that his childhood was similar to that of Huckleberry Finn in Mark Twain's novel Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: "We had a lot of caves, fantastic caverns," he said. "And we grew up First Baptist, which is the cleaner, stricter, by-the-book Christianity."
1966 Dr Seuss' book How the Grinch Stole Christmas was made into an animated television special and shown for the first time on CBS on December 18, 1966. The narrator was the well-known Horror movie star Boris Karloff. Dr. Seuss wrote all the lyrics to the songs featured in the TV version. The Grinch is green because Chuck Jones (the director of the TV special) rented a car that he thought was a very ugly shade of green. The Grinch is black and white in the original book.
1972 Six years after Joe Biden married his first wife Neilia Hunter, she died in a car crash on December 18, 1972 with their infant daughter, Naomi. Their two sons, Beau and Hunter, were severely injured but survived. Biden married his second wife Jill Jacobs, four and a half years later.
1999 Environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill lived in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California redwood tree between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999. Hill originally ascended 180 feet (55 m) up the tree, affectionately known as Luna, to stave off Pacific Lumber Company loggers who were clear-cutting. She lived on two 6-by-6-foot (1.8 by 1.8 m) platforms for 738 days until a resolution was reached with the logging company.
2008 Majel Barrett was the voice of most onboard computer interfaces throughout the Star Trek series. Barrett died on December 18, 2008, aged 76, as a result of leukemia. She recorded an entire library of phonetic sounds before her passing which allowed her voice to be used as the computer for future generations.
2010 Classical Arabic originated in the sixth century, but earlier versions of the language existed. December 18th was designated by the United Nations in 2010 as Arabic Language Day, as that was the day in 1973 when the General Assembly approved Arabic as an official U.N. Language.
2011 The last USA, British and multi-national troops left Iraq on December 18, 2011 with the Iraq War having ended. After the U.S., British and multi-national troops left Iraq, tensions between religious groups (Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well as attacks on Christians) lead to huge instability and the Iraqi insurgency intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country.
2015 Deep coal mining ceased in the United Kingdom with the closure of Kellingley Colliery on December 18, 2015. The decline of the coal industry in the UK was driven by a combination of factors, including economic considerations, changing energy policies, and a shift toward cleaner and more sustainable energy sources. While surface mining and other forms of energy production continued, deep coal mining, with its long history in the country, came to an end in 2015.
2019 Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives on December 18, 2019, making him the third president in American history to be impeached. The first was Andrew Johnson in 1868 and the second Bill Clinton in 1998. The Senate acquitted him of both charges seven weeks later.
2011 The last USA, British and multi-national troops left Iraq on December 18, 2011 with the Iraq War having ended. After the U.S., British and multi-national troops left Iraq, tensions between religious groups (Shia and Sunni Muslims, as well as attacks on Christians) lead to huge instability and the Iraqi insurgency intensified as fighters from the Syrian Civil War spilled into the country.
2015 Deep coal mining ceased in the United Kingdom with the closure of Kellingley Colliery on December 18, 2015. The decline of the coal industry in the UK was driven by a combination of factors, including economic considerations, changing energy policies, and a shift toward cleaner and more sustainable energy sources. While surface mining and other forms of energy production continued, deep coal mining, with its long history in the country, came to an end in 2015.
2019 The world record for the most brussels sprouts eaten in one minute is 33. The record was set by Irish trucker Wayne Sherlock on December 18, 2019 at The Crown Inn pub in Finglehsam, in Kent, England. He ate them one at a time using a toothpick.
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