Events
218 BC -
Second Punic War:
Battle of the Trebia -
Hannibal's
Carthaginian forces defeat those of the
Roman Republic.1271 -
Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the
Yuan Dynasty of
China.1642 -
Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in
New Zealand1793 - Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French royalists to
Lord Hood; renamed
HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.
1865 - The
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified by Georgia, fulfilling the two-thirds requirement for ratification, and banning
slavery in the
United States.
1892 - The first performance of
Tchaikovsky's ballet
The Nutcracker is held at the
Mariinsky Theatre in
St. Petersburg.
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 opened for traffic.
1926 - The first performance of
Leoš Janáček's opera
The Makropulos Affair is held in
Brno,
Czechoslovakia.
1932 - The
Chicago Bears defeated the Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 in the first ever
NFL Championship Game. Due to a
blizzard, the game was moved from
Wrigley Field to the
Chicago Stadium, the field measuring 60 yards long.
1935 - The
Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in
Sri Lanka.
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.
1961 -
Indonesia invades
Netherlands New Guinea.
1966 -
Saturn's moon
Epimetheus is discovered by
Richard L. Walker.
1969 -
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom:
Home Secretary James Callaghan's motion to remove the limit on the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act, which suspended
Capital punishment in
England,
Wales and
Scotland for all crimes, except
treason,
piracy with violence, and certain crimes under the jurisdiction of the armed forces for a period of five years, is carried by both the
House of Commons and the
House of Lords.
1973 -
Soviet Soyuz Programme:
Soyuz 13, crewed by
cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and
Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from
Baikonur in the
Soviet Union.
1987 -
Larry Wall releases the first version of the
Perl programming language.
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.
2002 -
2003 California recall:
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.
2006 - Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld resigns,
Robert Gates is sworn in as the new Secretary of Defense.
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18. Dezember
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