01011218 This Day In History, December 18

218 BC: The Battle of the Trebia during the Second Punic War; Hannibal's Carthaginian forces defeated those of the Roman Republic (see The Politics Of Rome and A History Of Jerusalem: Pompey And The Caesars).

1118: Afonso the Battler, the King of Aragon, captured Saragossa from the Muslims who then held Spain (listen to our Sermon The Ottoman Empire).

1271: Kublai Khan renamed his empire "Yuan," thereby beginning the Yuan Dynasty of Mongolia and China.

1398: Turkish warrior Timur Lenk (Tamurlane) conquered Delhi.

1642: Abel Tasman became the first (known) European to land in New Zealand (Tasmania is named after Tasman).

1737: Antonio Stradivari, the famous Italian violin-maker, died.

1813: Fort Niagara was captured by the British from the U.S. during the War of 1812 (1812-1814).

1863: Franz Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, was born. His assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 sparked the chain of events which ignited the First World War (listen to our Sermon The European World Wars).

1865: The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, abolishing slavery, was proclaimed.

1892: The first public performance of The Nutcracker by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

1898: The first official automobile speed record was set: 39 miles / 63 kilometers per hour.

1912: Charles Dawson (not to be confused with Charles Darwin) discovered fossils which became known as the "Piltdown Man" in East Sussex, England, and claimed they were remains of primitive man. It was later discovered to be a hoax (listen also to our Sermon Darwin's Theory of Evolution).

1914: A few months after the start of the First World War, Britain declared Egypt its protectorate for the time that it would be freed from Ottoman occupation. Egypt was declared independent in 1922.

1916: During the First World War, the Battle of Verdun ended after 10 months of fighting - France and Germany lost 330,000 killed and wounded.

1939: At the start of the Second World War, the first contingent of Canadian troops arrived in Britain to join with the British in the war against Hitler. The troops of the First Canadian Division had sailed from Halifax on December 10 in 5 ocean liners, accompanied by the Royal Canadian Navy battleship Resolution. When they reached the Clyde there was a great array of British sea power to welcome them. Winston Churchill, then First Lord of The Admiralty, broadcast the news of the Canadians' safe arrival with His famous "It has warmed the cockles of our hearts."

1940: Adolf Hitler issued the orders for the invasion of the Soviet Union - known as Operation Barbarossa (see Presidential Quotes On War, Terrorism, Religion).

1956: Japan was admitted to the United Nations.

1969: Britain abolished the death penalty.

1972: During the Vietnam War, U.S. President Richard Nixon (then under investigation for the criminal Watergate burglaries, and in need of a foreign boogyman to divert attention) declared that the U.S. would attack North Vietnam during a series of Christmas bombings.

1989: The European Economic Community and the Soviet Union signed an agreement on trade, commercial and economic cooperation.

2006: The United Arab Emirates held its first-ever elections.

2008: Mark Felt died at age 95. Felt, an FBI agent before and during the Nixon administration, was identified as the Watergate "Deep Throat" informant to Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post. The leads that Felt provided eventually brought about Nixon's resignation and the criminal conviction of numerous of Nixon's associates.