Friday 18 December 2020, 17:16:03
18 December
1412: Chinese admiral Zheng He sets out on the Fourth Voyage of the Treasure Fleet, sailing to Java, Malacca, Sumatra, Ceylon, Cochin, Calicut, the Maldives, Muscat, Aden, Mogadishu, Malindi and beyond.
18 December
1642: Dutch merchant and explorer Abel Tasman is the first European to land in New Zealand.
18 December
1737: Jacques-Louis David, Italian stringed instruments maker, dies in Cremona at age 93.
18 December
1878: Joseph Stalin, first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1953, is born in Gori.
18 December
1916: The Battle of Verdun in World War I ends after ten months when German forces, having suffered 337000 casualties, are defeated by the French and British.
18 December
1918: The United States Senate proposes the Eighteenth Amendment to enact Prohibition.
18 December
1956: Japan joins the United Nations.
Life yields
only to the conqueror. Never accept
what can be gained by giving in. You
will be living off stolen goods, and
your muscles will atrophy. ~ Dag Hammarskjöld, Swedish diplomat (1905-1961)
