What are the important events that happened on December 18? Here are historical events, facts, and some myths about this day.

December 18: Facts & Myths About This Day

December 18 is the 352^nd day of the year 2025 in the Gregorian calendar. There are 13 days remaining until the end of this year. The day of the week is Thursday.

Under the Julian calendar, this day is December 5, 2025 – a Thursday. Both day of the week are the same but did you notice the difference with the Gregorian calendar?

When this day started, 1,766,016,000 seconds has elapsed since midnight of January 1, 1970 – the Unix epoch.

Strange as it may, if we name this day after a polygon then it will be called ‘trihectapentacontadigon’ day.

Sagittarius is the zodiac sign of a person born on this day. Turquoise is the modern birthstone for this month. Onyx is the mystical birthstone from Tibetan origin that dates back over a thousand years.

According to the lunisolar Chinese calendar, there are 61 days remaining before the start of the next Chinese New Year.

The ancient Maya civilization believes that the end of the world will happen on December 21, 2012. There are now 4,745 days since this fabled cataclysmic event.

December 18 Historical 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” (ࠠ3; yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and China.
• 1642 –
  Abel Tasman becomes first European to land in New Zealand.
• 1916 –
  World War I: The Battle of Verdun ends when German forces under Chief of Staff Erich Von Falkenhayn are defeated by the French, and suffer 337,000 casualties.
• 1969 –
  Capital punishment in the United Kingdom: Home Secretary James Callaghan’s 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.
• 1972 –
  Vietnam War: President Richard Nixon announces that the United States will engage North Vietnam in Operation Linebacker II, a series of Christmas bombings, after peace talks collapsed with North Vietnam on the 13th.
• 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.
• 1997 –
  HTML 4.0 is published by the World Wide Web Consortium.
• 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.

Who were born on December 18?

• 1778 –
  Joseph Grimaldi, English clown (d. 1837)
• 1849 –
  Henrietta Edwards, Canadian women’s rights activist (d. 1931)
• 1870 –
  Saki, English writer (d. 1916)
• 1879 –
  Paul Klee, Swiss-born painter (d. 1940)
• 1946 –
  Steve Biko, South African anti-apartheid activist (d. 1977)
• 1953 –
  Khas-Magomed Hadjimuradov, Chechen singer-songwriter
• 1957 –
  Jonathan Cainer, English astrologer
• 1972 –
  Trevor Chowning, American painter
• 1975 –
  Vincent van der Voort, Dutch dart player
• 1977 –
  Ryan Scott Ottney, American journalist and comic book writer

Who died on December 18?

• 821 –
  Theodulf, Bishop of Orléans
• 1829 –
  Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French scientist (b. 1744)
• 1922 –
  Carl Meyer, British banker and mining magnate (b. 1851)
• 1950 –
  Johnny Hyde, Russian-born American talent agent (b. 1895)
• 1968 –
  Joan Tabor, American film and television actress (b. 1932)
• 1985 –
  Xuân Diệu, Vietnamese poet (b. 1916)
• 1990 –
  Anne Revere, American actress (b. 1903)
• 1991 –
  George Abecassis, English Formula 1 driver (b. 1913)
• 1995 –
  Konrad Zuse, German engineer and computing pioneer (b. 1910)
• 2004 –
  Anthony Sampson, British journalist and biographer (b. 1926)