What happened on 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
• 1271 Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" ( yun), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China.
• 1620 The Mayflower lands in present-day Plymouth, Massachusetts delivering 102 Pilgrims.
• 1642 Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand.
• 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.
• 1737 Antonio Stradivari, world-famous violin maker, dies in Cremona, Italy.
• 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.
• 1774 Jews expelled from Prague, Bohemia and Moravia by Empress Maria Theresa
• 1777 First national Thanksgiving Day, commemorating Burgoyne's surrender
• 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
• 1787 New Jersey becomes 3rd state to ratify constitution
• 1787 New Jersey becomes the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
• 1793 Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French royalists to Lord Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.
• 1796 First US newspaper to appear on Sunday, Baltimore Monitor
• 1799 George Washington's body interred at Mount Vernon
• 1813 British take Fort Niagara in the War of 1812
• 1839 First celestial photograph (of the moon) made in US, John Draper, New York NY
• 1846 Copper first discovered in Western Australia.
• 1849 William Bond obtains first photograph of Moon through a telescope
• 1859 South Carolina declared an "independent commonwealth"
• 1862 The first orthopedic hospital is organized in New York City (The Hospital for the Ruptured and Crippled).
• 1872 Opals first discovered in Australia, at Listowel Downs, Queensland.
• 1878 John Kehoe, the last of the Molly Maguires is executed in Pennsylvania.
• 1888 Richard Wetherill and his brother in-law discover the ancient Indian ruins of Mesa Verde.
• 1890 Frederick Lugard occupies Uganda for British East Africa Company.
• 1892 The first performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.
• 1894 South Australian women given the vote.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• 1996 This was the year "The Book Clip - Guaranteed to keep your Book Open" first appeared on the Internet. See Pictures HERE www.bookclip.com
• 1912 The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is supposedly found today in the Piltdown Gravel Pit, by Charles Dawson.
• 1915 President Wilson, widowed the year before, marries Edith Bolling Galt
• 1915 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson marries Edith Bolling Galt Wilson.
• 1916 The Battle of Verdun (France), one of the bloodiest WWI engagements, ends after 10 months and massive losses to both sides.
• 1923 International zone of Tangier set up in Morocco
• 1935 The $1 silver certificate is issued.
• 1935 The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Ceylon.
• 1936 Giant panda imported into US
• 1939 Thousands watched from the shore as the German Pocket Battleship, Graf Spee is scuttled by her crew.
• 1940 Munitions Minister C.D.Howe and 152 other survivors of the torpedoed lines SS Western Prince arive in Britian
• 1941 Japan invades Hong Kong after British governor of Hong Kong, Mark Aitchison Young refuses to surrender to Japanese forces.
• 1944 Destroyers "Hull," "Spence" and "Monaghan" sink in typhoon (Phillippines)
• 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.
• 1945 Uruguay joins the United Nations
• 1956 Japan admitted to UN
• 1957 Shippingport Atomic Power Station, first nuke plant to generate electricity
• 1957 The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, goes online.
• 1958 First voice from space: recorded Christmas message by Eisenhower
• 1958 Niger gains autonomy within French Community (National Day)
• 1958 Project SCORE, the world's first experimental communications satellite, was launched
• 1958 Test project of Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equip
• 1961 India annexes Portuguese colonies of Goa, Damao and Diu
• 1961 Indonesia invades Netherlands New Guinea.
• 1963 Muskegon, MI gets 3' of snow
• 1965 Borman and Lovell Splash down in Atlantic ends 2 week Gemini VII mission
• 1966 Saturn's moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.
• 1969 Britain abolishes death penalty
• 1971 People United To Save Humanity (PUSH) forms by Jesse Jackson in Chic
• 1972 US began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam
• 1973 Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union.
• 1973 Soyuz 13 launched into Earth orbit for 8 days
• 1974 San Francisco Visitors Center at City Hall opens
• 1979 Stanley Barrett first to exceed land sonic speed (739.666 MPH)
• 1980 Bruce Sprinsteen's concert at Madison Square Garden
• 1982 A large Tacoa power plant starts burning in Venezuela, eventually killing 128.
• 1982 Flight readiness firing of Challenger's main engines; 20 seconds
• 1984 Christopher Guest (Saturday Night Live) and actress Jamie Lee Curtis are married in Los Angeles.
• 1985 UN Security Council unanimously condemns "acts of hostage-taking"
• 1986 Kid Icarus is released in Japan on the NES game system.
• 1987 Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's future pres, marries Asif Ali Zardari
• 1987 Federal Judge Morris E. Lasker sentenced Ivan Boesky,the once mighty arbitrageur to a three-year prison term
• 1987 Ivan Boesky is sentenced to three years in prison for inside trading.
• 1987 Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language.
• 1989 "I Love Lucy" Christmas episode, shown for first time in over 30 years
• 1991 DeForest Kelly, who portrayed Dr. "Bones" McCoy on Star Trek, gets a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
• 1991 General Motors announces the closing of 21 plants
• 1996 The Oakland, California school board passes a resolution officially declaring "Ebonics" a language or dialect.
• 1997 HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.
  1999 NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.
• 2001 Rapper NaS releases critically acclaimed album, Stillmatic, to 5 star reviews and 300 thousand copy first week sales. (UK only)
• 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.
• 2005 So Paulo FC (Brazil) becomes third time World Champion against Liverpool (England) in the FIFA Club World Cup in Japan.
• 2006 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigns, Robert Gates is sworn in as the new Secretary of Defense.
• 2007 Important Islamic date - Hajj (Annual Pilgrimage to Mecca) December 18 - December 21, 2007
• 2009 Important Islamic date - Islamic New Year: December 18, 2009 (1431 A.H.)