December 18

Blessed is the man that heareth me, watching daily at my gates, waiting at the posts of my doors. 

– Proverbs 8:34

December is:

Safe Toys and Gifts Month - Choose your gifts carefully so they are safe for children. Sponsor: Prevent BlindnessAmerica.

Born on this Day

• 1610: Charles Du Fresne, sieur Du Cange, French scholar, philologist
  

• 1619: Prince Rupert, Duke of Bavaria
  

• 1644: Antonio Stradivari
  

• 1707: Clergyman Charles Wesley. He was an English clergyman, poet and hymn writer. With his elder brother John, they started the Methodist movement in England.
  

• 1778: Clown Joseph Grimaldi (‘greatest clown in history,’‘king of pantomime’ Joey the Clown; singer, dancer, acrobat)
  

• 1786: German composer Carl Maria von Weber (opera Der Freischutz)
  

• 1819: Father Isaac Thomas Hecker. A Roman Catholic priest who founded the Paulist Fathers, a diocesan organization for missionary work in New York.
  

• 1835: Clergymn Lyman Abbott. An American Congregationalist minister and a leading exponent of the Social Gospel movement.
  

• 1856: English physicist Joseph J(ohn) Thompson. He helped revolutionize the knowledge of atomic structure by his discovery of the electron (1897). He received the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1906 and was knighted in 1908.
  

• 1861: Edward MacDowell was born in New York. MacDowell was at one time considered America's greatest composer and some of his music is still occasionally performed today.
  

• 1870: British short story writer (Hector Hugh Munro) Saki (The Rise of the Russian Empire, Reginald, The Chronicles of Clovis, Beasts & Super-beasts, The Square Egg)
  

• 1879: Paul Klee, abstract artist (Twittering Machine)
  

• 1886: Ty Cobb (TYRUS RAYMOND COBB). He is frequently considered the greatest offensive player in baseball history and generally regarded as the fiercest competitor in the game. During his 24-season playing career in the American League he played 3,000+ games with a .367 batting average.
  

• 1890: Inventor Edwin Armstrong (EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG). A radio pioneer who laid the foundation for much of modern radio and electronic circuitry, including the regenerative and superheterodyne circuits and the frequency modulation (FM) system.
  

• 1907: Poet and dramatist Christopher Fry (Harris) (The Boy with a Cart, A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Lady’s Not for Burning)
  

• 1913: West German statesman Willy (Herbert Frahm) Brandt (Nobel Peace Prize-winner 1971)
  

• 1916: Actress Pinup Girl Betty (Ruth Elizabeth) Grable
  

• 1917: Actor Ossie Davis (A Raisin in the Sun, Grumpy Old Men, Evening Shade)
  

• 1917: Actress Lynn (Marjorie Bitzer) Bari (The Young Runaways,Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops, Sunny Side of the Street, The Bridge of San Luis Rey)
  

• 1919: Jazz singer Anita (Colton) O'Day (Chickery Chick, Boogie Blues; films: The Gene Krupa Story, Jazz on a Summer’s Day, Zigzag, The Outfit)
  

• 1927: Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark (U.S. Attorney General under President Lyndon Johnson [1967-1969])
  

• 1932: Actor Roger Smith
  

• 1933: Blues musician Lonnie Brooks
  

• 1943: Rock singer-musician Keith Richards
  

• 1946: Football player and coach Greg Landry
  

• 1947: Movie producer-director Steven Spielberg (Schindler’s List [1993]; E.T., Indiana Jones series, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jurassic Park, The Color Purple)
  

• 1950: Movie director Gillian Armstrong ("My Brilliant Career")
  

• 1950: Movie reviewer Leonard Maltin
  

• 1955: Actor Ray Liotta (Unforgettable, Operation Dumbo Drop, Corrina, Corrina, Goodfellas, Field of Dreams, Dominck &
  Eugene, Something Wild, The Lonely Lady, Our Family Honor, Casablanca)
  

• 1963: Actor Brad Pitt (12 Monkeys, Seven, Legends of the Fall, A River Runs Through It, Thelma and Louise, Cutting Class, Head of the Class, Dallas)
  

• 1966: Country singer Tracy Byrd
  

• 1971: Tennis player Arantxa Sanchez Vicario
  

• 1978: Actress Katie Holmes ("Dawson's Creek") 
  

• 1980: Singer Christina Aguilera

Events in History on this day
  

• 0761: Death of St. Winebald
  

• 1118: Saragossa taken by Alfonso "the Battler," King of Aragon
  

• 1127: Election of Conrad III as King of Germany
  

• 1378; Charles V confiscates the Duchy of John VI of Brittany
  

• 1398: Timur sacks Delhi
  

• 1541: Culpeper & Dereham, alleged paramours of Katherine Howard, executed
  

• 1621: The English House of Commons begins to assert its power, denying the King's right to imprison its members
  

• 1640: Archbishop Laud accused of Treason by the "Long Parliament"
  

• 1737: Antonio Stradivari died in Cremona. Stradivari lived more than 90 years and was building his famous violins to the very end.
  

• 1787: New Jersey became the third state to ratify the US Constitution.
  

• 1792: Beethoven's father died. Ludwig had just turned 12 years old.
  

• 1796: The "Monitor", of Baltimore, Maryland, was published as
  the first Sunday newspaper.
  

• 1862: Grant announces the organization of his army. Sherman, Hurlbut, McPherson, and McClernand were to be Corps Commanders.
  

• 1862: The first orthopedic hospital was organized in New York City. It was called the Hospital for Ruptured and Crippled.
  

• 1865: The 13th Amendment to the Constitution, abolishing slavery, was declared in effect. "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, save as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist in the
  United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
  

• 1892: Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" publicly premiered in St. Petersburg, Russia.
  

• 1915: President Wilson, a widower for one year, married the widow Edith Bolling Galt.
  

• 1915: In a single night, about 20,000 Australian and New Zealand troops slip away from Gallipoli, undetected by the Turks defending the peninsula.
  

• 1920: Conductor Arturo Toscanini made his first recording for Victor Records in Camden, New Jersey.
  

• 1924: Pope Pious denounces the Bolshevik regime in the Soviet Union.
  

• 1932: Beau Jack defeated Tippy Larkin in New York City to win the World Lightweight Boxing Championship.
  

• 1935: A $1 silver certificate was issued. It was the first currency to depict the front and back sides of the Great Seal of the United States.
  

• 1936: Su-Lin arrived in San Francisco, California. She was the first giant panda to come to the U.S. from China. The bear was sold to the Brookfield Zoo for $8,750.
  

• 1940: Adolf Hitler signed a secret directive ordering preparations for a Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. (Operation "Barbarossa" was launched in June 1941.)
  

• 1941: Defended by 610 fighting men, the American-held island of Guam fell to more than 5,000 Japanese invaders in a three-hour battle.
  

• 1944: The Supreme Court upheld the wartime relocation of Japanese-Americans, but also said undeniably loyal Americans of Japanese ancestry could not be detained.
  

• 1951: North Koreans give the Allies a list of 3,100 POWs.
  

• 1956: "To Tell the Truth," one of America’s great panel shows debuted on CBS-TV. Bud Collyer hosted the program which enjoyed a 10-year run. The show made stars of panelists: Phyllis Newman, Orson Bean, Kitty Carlisle (Hart), Sam Levinson, Tom Poston, Milt Kamen and Bess Myerson.
  

• 1956: Japan is admitted to the UN.
  

• 1957: The motion picture "The Bridge on the River Kwai" premiered at the RKO Palace Theater in New York.
  

• 1957: The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania, the first nuclear facility to generate electricity in the United States, went on line. (It was taken out of service in 1982.)
  

• 1969: Britain's Parliament abolished the death penalty for murder.
  

• 1969: Singer Tiny Tim, 44, married 17-year-old Miss Vicky Budinger on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show."
  

• 1970: An atomic leak in Nevada forces hundreds to flee the test site.
  

• 1972: The United States began its heaviest bombing of North Vietnam at that time during the Vietnam War. (The bombardment ended 12 days later.) President Nixon declares that the bombing of North Vietnam will continue until an accord can be reached.
  

• 1972: Helen Reddy received a gold record for the song that became an anthem for women’s liberation, "I Am Woman". The song had reached number one on December 9, 1972.
  

• 1980: Former Soviet Premier Alexei N. Kosygin died at age 76.
  

• 1984: Christopher Guest of "Saturday Night Live" and actress Jamie Lee Curtis were married in the Los Angeles home of comedian Rob Reiner.
  

• 1987: Ivan F. Boesky was sentenced to three years in prison for plotting Wall Street's biggest insider-trading scandal. (Boesky served about two years of his sentence).
  

• 1987: Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was married in a traditional Islamic ceremony to businessman Asif Ali Zardari.
  

• 1988: PLO chairman Yasser Arafat met in Cairo with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to discuss how to continue the momentum gained by the first US - PLO dialogue.
  

• 1989: Robert E. Robinson, an attorney and alderman in Savannah, Georgia, was killed by a mail bomb similar to a device that had claimed the life of a federal judge in Alabama two days earlier. (Walter Leroy Moody Junior was later convicted of both bombings, and is on Alabama's death row.)
  

• 1990: Less than a month before a U.N. deadline for Iraq to withdraw from Kuwait, President Bush told reporters he believed Americans would support a military strike, if one proved necessary. 
  

• 1990: In Baghdad, the ruling Revolutionary Command Council said Iraq was "ready for the decisive showdown." 
  

• 1992: The UN Security Council unanimously denounced Israel's deportation of more than 400 Palestinians and demanded their immediate return. Kim Young-sam was elected South Korea's first civilian president in three decades.
  

• 1993: The United States and Germany pledged close cooperation to help Boris Yeltsin through Russia's political and economic crises in a two-hour meeting in Oggersheim between Vice President Al Gore and Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
  

• 1994: Former US president Jimmy Carter arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina on a private mission to seek an end to 32 months of war.
  

• 1995: The Dow industrials dropped 101.52 points, its biggest one-day loss in four years, amid investor worries over the budget stalemate between Congress and President Clinton. 
  

• 1995: A powerful fertilizer bomb was found outside an Internal Revenue Service office in Reno, Nev., but fizzled before its lit fuse could do much damage. 
  

• 1996: FBI agent Earl Edwin Pitts was arrested, accused of selling secrets to the Russians. (Pitts was sentenced in June 1997 to 27 years in prison after admitting that he'd conspired and attempted to commit espionage.)
  

• 1996: Aides to President Clinton disclosed that Asian-American businessman Charles Yah Lin Trie, who delivered $460,000 in questionable donations to the Clintons' legal defense fund, had been to the White House at least 23 times since 1993.
  

• 1997: President Clinton extended indefinitely the deadline for withdrawal of US troops helping with the UN peacekeeping effort in Bosnia.
  

• 1997: Onetime dissident Kim Dae-jung of South Korea was elected the country's president.
  

• 1997: Fired California highway employee Arturo Reyes Torres shot and killed four people at a maintenance yard before being killed by police.
  

• 1997: Comedian Chris Farley was found dead in his Chicago apartment; he was 33.
  

• 1998: South Carolina carried out the nation's 500th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977.
  

• 1998: The House debated articles of impeachment against President Clinton. US and British forces blasted Iraq with a third day of airstrikes.
  

• 1999: In St. Martinville, La., Cuban inmates who'd held a jail warden and six others hostage for almost a week surrendered. 
  

• 1999: After living atop an ancient redwood in Humboldt County, California, for two years, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill came down, ending her anti-logging protest. 
  

• 1999: French film director Robert Bresson died in Paris at age 98.    

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