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On this day in History Archives

 
At PaulsQuiz.com we aim to provide you with as much information as we possibly can. That's why we have built our On This Day in History section, to do just that. Our database is forever growing, we're adding more and more events from history to help you write your quiz questions.

Simply enter a date using the drop-down boxes below and click the 'Go' button to display events from the past that ocurred on that day.
 

 
18 December, 2007
Release date of the video game Rock Band for Playstation 2.
18 December, 2006
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld resigns, Robert Gates is sworn in as the new Secretary of Defense.
18 December, 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.
18 December, 1999
NASA launches into orbit the Terra platform carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT.
18 December, 1997
HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.
18 December, 1996
The Oakland, California school board passes a resolution officially declaring "Ebonics" a language or dialect.
18 December, 1987
Larry Wall releases the first version of the Perl programming language.
18 December, 1973
Soviet Soyuz Programme: Soyuz 13, crewed by cosmonauts Valentin Lebedev and Pyotr Klimuk, is launched from Baikonur in the Soviet Union.
18 December, 1969
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghans motion to make permanent the Murder (Abolition of Death Penalty) Act 1965, which had temporarily suspended capital punishment in England, Wales and Scotland for murder (but not for all crimes) for a period of five years, is carried by both the House of Commons and the House of Lords.
18 December, 1966
Saturns moon Epimetheus is discovered by Richard L. Walker.
18 December, 1961
Indonesia invades Netherlands New Guinea.
18 December, 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.
18 December, 1935
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Sri Lanka.
18 December, 1932
The Chicago Bears defeated the Portsmouth Spartans 9-0 in the first ever NFL Championship Game. Because of a blizzard, the game was moved from Wrigley Field to the Chicago Stadium, the field measuring 60 yards long.
18 December, 1926
The first performance of Leoš Janáceks opera The Makropulos Affair is held in Brno, Czechoslovakia.
18 December, 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.
18 December, 1892
The first performance of Tchaikovskys ballet The Nutcracker is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
18 December, 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.
18 December, 1793
Surrender of the frigate La Lutine by French royalists to Lord Hood; renamed HMS Lutine, she later becomes a famous treasure wreck.
18 December, 1642
Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand
18 December, 1271
Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (? yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of China.

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