On This day December 18th

 OTD 

December 18th is the 352nd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 13 days remain until the end of the year.


 Events

1271 – Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China.

1622 – Portuguese forces score a military victory over the Kingdom of Kongo at the Battle of Mbumbi in present-day Angola.

1777 – The United States celebrates its first Thanksgiving, marking the recent victory by the American rebels over British General John Burgoyne at Saratoga in October.

1865 – US Secretary of State William Seward proclaims the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery throughout the United States.

1892 – Premiere performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1917 – The resolution containing the language of the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition is passed by the United States Congress.

1932 – The Chicago Bears defeat the Portsmouth Spartans in the first NFL playoff game to win the NFL Championship.

1944 – The Supreme Court of the United States issued its decision in Korematsu v. United States supporting Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 9066, which cleared the way for the incarceration of nearly all 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, born and raised in the United States.

2018 – List of bolides: A meteor exploded over the Bering Sea with a force over ten times greater than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945.


Birthdays

1620 – Heinrich Roth, German missionary and scholar (d. 1668)

1800 – James Watney, English brewer and businessman (d. 1884)

1856 – J. J. Thomson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1940)

1878 – Joseph Stalin, Georgian-Russian marshal, and politician, 4th Premier of the Soviet Union (d. 1953)

1886 – Ty Cobb, American baseball player and manager (d. 1961)

1912 – Benjamin O. Davis, Jr., American general and pilot (d. 2002)

943 – Keith Richards, English musician

1946 – Steven Spielberg, an American director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded DreamWorks

1956 – Ron White, American comedian

1970 – DMX, American rapper and actor (d. 2021)

2001 – Billie Eilish, American singer


 Holiday Spotlight

Flake Appreciation Day

  Snowflakes are a subject of thought and appreciation on Flake Appreciation Day. The event is celebrated around December when snow begins to fall in many parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Snowflakes can be classified into one of 35 different shape groups based on size and shape. When water vapor in the clouds condenses into ice crystals, snowflakes spontaneously appear in nature. Dust, temperature, humidity, and currents impact snowflakes’ shapes.

 There are different numbers of water molecules in snowflakes, which cause them to form a crystal pattern. Because of diffuse reflection, snowflakes appear white even though they are made of clear ice. Snowflakes are usually studied by putting a chemical compound on a glass plate and allowing a flake to land on the plate. The chemical compound covers the snowflake and hardens. The snowflake leaves its shape behind after it melts.

 Wilson Bentley greatly influenced the history of snowflakes. He was born in 1865 in Jericho, Vermont. His work is significant as he helped discover that no two snowflakes are exactly alike. He used a type of photography that uses microscopes called photomicrography to take pictures of 5,000 snowflakes. Bentley published articles and books about his findings and donated some photographs to the Smithsonian Institution. He was the world’s leading snowflake expert and was referred to as ‘The Snowflake Man’ until he died in 1931.


Other Include

Arabic Language Day 

Bake Cookies Day 

Give a Wine Club Day

International Answer the Telephone Like Buddy the Elf Day 

International Migrants day 

National Ham Salad Day 

National Roast Suckling Pig Day 

National Twin Day

Republic Day of Niger


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