On This Day December 18th

 


December 18th is the three-hundred-fifty second day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 13 days remaining 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 Highlight


 Flake Appreciation Day

Flake Appreciation Day is celebrated in December as snow begins to fall in the Northern Hemisphere. Snowflakes are categorized into 35 shape groups based on their size and structure. They form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals, influenced by dust, temperature, and humidity. Although made of clear ice, they appear white due to diffuse reflection. Researchers study snowflakes using a chemical compound on a glass plate to capture their shapes as they melt.

Wilson Bentley, born in 1865 in Vermont, is notable for demonstrating that no two snowflakes are alike. He used photomicrography to document 5,000 snowflakes and contributed significantly to snowflake studies until his passing in 1931, earning the nickname ‘The Snowflake Man.’


Holidays And Observance 

Arabic Language Day 

Bake Cookies Day 

Flake Appreciation 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 

National Wear a Plunger on Your Head Day

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