18 DECEMBER

218 BC Second Punic War: Battle of the Trebia - Hannibal's Carthaginian army heavily defeat Roman forces on Italian soil

1271 Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China

1559 Queen Elizabeth I of England sent aid to the Scottish Lords to drive the French from Scotland.

1603 First fleet of the Dutch East India Compnay under Admiral Steven van der Haghen departs for the East-Indies

1707 The birth at Epworth, Lincolnshire, of Charles Wesley, English hymn writer of more than 6,000 hymns. He was an evangelist like his brother John, who was the founder of Methodism. Their father was an Anglican cleric and they lived here . This window in Epworth Methodist Church features the two brothers. Charles ministered for part of his life in The New Room Chapel in Bristol, which is the oldest Methodist Chapel in the world (originally built in 1739) and the cradle of the early Methodist movement.

1779 The birth, in London, of Joseph Grimaldi, English creator of the original white faced clown. He was introduced to the stage at Drury Lane at the age of three and began to appear at the Sadler's Wells theatre. As Music Hall became popular, he introduced the pantomime dame to the theatre and was responsible for the tradition of audience participation.

1787 New Jersey becomes 3rd state to ratify US constitution

1792 Radical political writer Thomas Paine was tried for treason, in his absence, for publishing 'The Rights of Man' in which he supported the French Revolution and called for the abolition of the British Monarchy.

1852 George Hamilton-Gordon becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom after the downfall of the Conservative government of Edward Smith-Stanley

1892 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet "Nutcracker Suite" premieres

1912 The Piltdown Man was discovered in Sus*** by Charles Dawson. It was claimed to be the fossilized skull and remains of the earliest known European, but in 1953 it was proved to be a hoax. The skull was that of an orang-utan.

1916 The Battle of Verdun, the longest engagement of World War I, ended after 10 months and massive loss of life. 23 million shells had been fired and 650,000 were killed.

1919 Pioneering aviator John Alcock, a Captain in the RAF, died in an aircraft accident whilst flying the new Vickers Viking amphibian to the Paris airshow. Alcock and Lt. Arthur Whitten-Brown were the first to make a non-stop transatlantic flight. A few days after the flight both Alcock and Brown were honoured with a reception at Windsor Castle during which King George V knighted them and invested them with their insignia as Knight Commanders of the Order of the British Empire, but after Alcock's death, Brown never flew again.

1946 Clement Atlee's Labour government won the vote on state ownership. It led to the nationalizing of the railways, ports and mines. Labour MPs triumphantly sang 'The Red Flag'.

1956 Israeli flag hoisted on Mount Sinai

1957 World's 1st full scale nuclear power plant begins to generate electricity, at the Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania

1964 "The Pink Panther" cartoon series premieres (Pink Phink)

1964 During funeral service held for soul singer Sam Cooke, fans cause damage to funeral home

1971 US dollar devalued 7.9% in Holland ($1=Ÿ3,245)

1971 Three members of the Irish Republican Army die when the bomb they were transporting explodes prematurely in King Street, Magherafelt, County Derry.

1974 The Government said that it would pay £42,000 compensation to relatives of the 13 men killed in the Bloody Sunday riots in Londonderry (30th January 1972).

1980 IRA's Sean McKenna becomes critically ill, ends hunger strike

1987 Ivan Boesky, the former US ‘King of Arbitrage’ was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment for insider stock exchange dealings. Some of Boesky’s revelations led to the investigation by the Department of Trade and Industry in Britain into Guinness’s takeover of Distillers.

1989 The Labour Party abandoned its policy on trade union 'closed shops' in line with European legislation.

1997 A bill giving Scotland its own parliament for the first time in three centuries was unveiled in Glasgow. Work commenced in June

1999 on the Scottish Parliament Building. It was built at a cost :- £414 million (ten times over the original budget).

2002 Fashion designer Calvin Klein announces he is selling his company to shirt-maker Phillips-Van Heusen for $430 million

2011 The last US troops withdraw from Iraq, formally ending the Iraq War

2012 The Queen attended a historic cabinet meeting at Downing Street, the first monarch to do so since 1781. Later, Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the southern part of the British Antarctic Territory, an unnamed area almost twice the size of the UK would be called Queen Elizabeth Land.

2012 Comet stores closed their doors for the last time, bringing the electrical retailer's 79 year history to an end.

2012 4 people are killed and 11 are injured after an apartment block collapses in Palermo, Italy

2012 6 health workers dispensing polio vaccinations are gunned down in Pakistan

2013 The death, aged 84, of the criminal Ronnie Biggs who was part of the gang which escaped with £2.6m from the Glasgow to London mail train on 8th August 1963. Biggs was given a 30-year sentence but escaped from Wandsworth prison in 1965. In 2001 he returned to the UK seeking medical helpp, but was sent to prison. He was released on compassionate grounds in 2009 after contracting pneumonia. Coincidentally Biggs' death occurred hours before the first broadcast of a two-part BBC television series 'The Great Train Robbery'.

2013 The Bank of England announced its plans to press ahead with switching to plastic banknotes, starting with the new Sir Winston Churchill £5 note in 2016. The decision will mark the beginning of the end of 320 years of paper notes from the Bank.

2015 The closure of Kellingley Colliery in North Yorkshire, the last remaining deep coal mine in Britain.

Famous Birthday's


Attachment 7606
1779 Joseph Grimaldi, English pantomimist and the "greatest clown in history", born in London (d. 1837)


Attachment 7607
1856 J. J. Thomson, English physicist who discovered the electron (Nobel 1906), born in Manchester, England (d. 1940)

Franz Ferdinand
(1863 - 1914)

Joseph Stalin
(1878 - 1953)

Ty Cobb
(1886 - 1961)


Attachment 7605
1916 Betty Grable, great legs/actress (Gay Divorcee), born in St. Louis, Missouri (d 1973)

1934 John Bingham, Lord Lucan, British peer suspected of murdering his nanny who disappeared, born in London (presumed dead)

Keith Richards
74th Birthday

Steven Spielberg
71st Birthday

Ray Liotta
63rd Birthday

Brad Pitt
54th Birthday

Robson Green
53rd Birthday

Christina Aguilera
37th Birthday

Famous Deaths

Bobby Jones
(1902 - 1971)

Joseph Barbera
(1911 - 2006)

1919 John Alcock, English pilot (1st non-stop flight across Atlantic Ocean), dies in crash at 27

Václav Havel
(1936 - 2011)

2010 James Pickles was an English barrister and circuit judge and who later became a tabloid newspaper columnist. He became known for his controversial sentencing decisions and press statements (b 1925)

2016 Zsa Zsa Gabor [Sari Gabor], Hungarian-born actress (Queen of Outer Space), dies at 99

Famous Weddings

1915 28th US President Woodrow Wilson, widowed the year before marries second wife Edith Bolling Galt, a descendant of native American Pocahontas

1926 Actor George Murphy (24) weds ballroom dancing partner Juliette Henkel

1932 Civil rights activist Rosa Parks (19) weds Raymond Parks (29) in Montgomery, Alabama

1962 Pop singer Little Eva (19) weds James Harris

1966 Actor Strother Martin (47) weds Helen Meisels

Famous Divorces

1923 Jazz musician Louis Armstrong (22) divorces Daisy Parker after 5 years of marriage

Attachment 7604
1968 Actor Peter Sellers (43) divorces actress Britt Ekland after 4 years of marriage


50 Years ago Album and Single # 1s

THE SOUND OF MUSIC - ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK

​HELLO GOODBYE - BEATLES