Today is December 18 2014

National Roast Suckling Pig Day: More

• International Migrants Day: More
  
• National Re-Gifting Day: More
  Thursday before Christmas
• Bake Cookies Day: More
• Answer The Telephone Like Buddy The Elf Day: More
• Arabic Language Day: More
  A U.N. language recognition day. One of the six official languages of the U.N. (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish)
• Free Shipping Day: More
  Varies yearly for participating companies.

• In 1787, New Jersey becomes the third state of the U.S. by ratifying the U.S. Constitution.
  From Wikipedia: 'New Jersey is a state in the northeastern and mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania, and on the southwest by Delaware. New Jersey is the fourth-smallest state but the 11th-most populous and the most densely populated of the 50 United States. New Jersey lies entirely within the combined statistical areas of New York City and Philadelphia and is the third-wealthiest U.S. state by per capita income as of 2014.
  
  New Jersey was inhabited by Native Americans for more than 2,800 years, with historical tribes such as the Lenape along the coast. In the early 17th century, the Dutch and the Swedes made the first European settlements. The English later seized control of the region, naming it the Province of New Jersey after the largest of the Channel Islands, Jersey, and granting it as a colony to Sir George Carteret and John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton. New Jersey was the site of several decisive battles during the American Revolutionary War in the 18th century.
  
  In the 19th century, factories in cities such as Camden, Paterson, Newark, Trenton, and Elizabeth helped to drive the Industrial Revolution. New Jersey's geographic location at the center of the Northeast megalopolis, between Boston and New York City to the northeast, and Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington, D.C., to the southwest, fueled its rapid growth through the process of suburbanization in the second half of the 20th century. In the first decades of the 21st century, this suburbanization began reverting to consolidation of New Jersey's culturally diverse populace toward more urban settings within the state, with towns home to commuter rail stations outpacing the population growth of more automobile-oriented suburbs since 2008'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1865, It is announced that the Thirteenth Amendment, prohibiting slavery, has been adopted.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. In Congress, it was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, and by the House on January 31, 1865. The amendment was ratified by the required number of states on December 6, 1865. On December 18, 1865, Secretary of State William H. Seward proclaimed its adoption. It was the first of the three Reconstruction Amendments adopted following the American Civil War'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1892, The first performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker,is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Nutcracker is a two-act ballet, originally choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov with a score by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (op. 71). The libretto is adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann's story The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by way of Alexandre Dumas' adapted story 'The Nutcracker'. It was given its première at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on Sunday, December 18, 1892, on a double-bill with Tchaikovsky's opera Iolanta.
  
  Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute suite that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was. However, the complete Nutcracker has enjoyed enormous popularity since the late 1960s, and is now performed by countless ballet companies, primarily during the Christmas season, especially in North America. Major American ballet companies generate around 40 percent of their annual ticket revenues from performances of The Nutcracker.
  
  Tchaikovsky's score has become one of his most famous compositions, in particular the pieces featured in the suite. Among other things, the score is noted for its use of the celesta, an instrument that the composer had already employed in his much lesser known symphonic ballad The Voyevoda'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
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• In 1912, The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is announced by Charles Dawson.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Piltdown Man was a paleoanthropological hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human.
  
  In 1912 amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson claimed he had discovered the "missing link" between ape and man. After finding a section of a human-like skull in Pleistocene gravel beds near Piltdown, East Sussex, Dawson contacted Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum. Dawson and Smith Woodward made further discoveries at the site which they connected to the same individual, including a jawbone, more skull fragments, a set of teeth and primitive tools.
  
  Smith Woodward reconstructed the skull fragments and hypothesised that they belonged to a human ancestor from 500,000 years ago. The discovery was announced at a Geological Society meeting and was given the Latin name Eoanthropus dawsoni ("Dawson's dawn-man"). The questionable significance of the assemblage remained the subject of considerable controversy until it was conclusively exposed in 1953 as a forgery. It was found to have consisted of the altered mandible and some teeth of an orangutan deliberately combined with the cranium of a fully developed, though small-brained, modern human.
  
  The Piltdown hoax is prominent for two reasons: the attention it generated around the subject of human evolution, and the length of time, 45 years, that elapsed from its alleged initial discovery to its definitive exposure as a composite forgery'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1956, The panel TV game show 'To Tell the Truth' debuts. It's original release was from December 18, 1956 - December 14, 2001.
  From Wikipedia: 'To Tell the Truth is an American television panel game show created by Bob Stewart and produced by Goodson-Todman Productions that has aired in various forms since 1956 both on networks and in syndication. As of June 14, 2016, the show is one of two game shows in the United States to have aired at least one new episode in at least seven consecutive decades, the other game show being both incarnations of The Price Is Right. As of the 2016 version, a total of 26 seasons of the various versions of To Tell the Truth have been produced, surpassing the 25 of What's My Line? and the 20 of I've Got a Secret.
  
  The show features a panel of four celebrities whose object is the correct identification of a described contestant who has an unusual occupation or has undergone an unusual experience. This "central character" is accompanied by two impostors who pretend to be the central character; together, the three persons are said to belong to a "team of challengers." The celebrity panelists question the three contestants; the impostors are allowed to lie, but the central character is sworn "to tell the truth." After questioning, the panel attempts to identify which of the three challengers is telling the truth and is thus the central character.
  
  To Tell the Truth was to have premiered on Tuesday, December 18, 1956, on CBS in prime time as Nothing But The Truth, but the program title was changed to To Tell the Truth the day before the show's debut. (There was one pilot episode titled "Nothing But The Truth", and the pilot / planned title, and the eventual title, both derive from the standard English court oath "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.") The series was recorded in New York City; initially at CBS-TV Studio 52, moving to Studio 50 late in its run. The existence of an audience ticket for a taping indicates that the show originated in color at the CBS Broadcast Center in late 1966.
  
  Bud Collyer was the show's host (Mike Wallace hosted the pilot); recurring panelists by the 1960s included Tom Poston, Peggy Cass, Orson Bean, and Kitty Carlisle. (Cass and Carlisle stayed on as panelists for most subsequent editions.) Earlier regular panelists had included Johnny Carson, Polly Bergen, Jayne Meadows, Don Ameche, Hy Gardner, Dick Van Dyke, Faye Emerson, Hildy Parks, John Cameron Swayze, and Ralph Bellamy. Bern Bennett, Collyer's announcer on Beat the Clock, was the inaugural announcer of To Tell the Truth in the 1950s. Upon Bennett's transfer to CBS's Los Angeles studios, Johnny Olson, who in time became the best-known of all Goodson-Todman Productions announcers, joined the show in 1960 and remained through the end of its CBS runs'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1957, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania U.S.A., is the world's first nuclear power plant and begins to generate electricity. It was Decommissioned October 1, 1982.
  From Wikipedia: 'The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was (according to the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission) the world’s first full-scale atomic electric power plant devoted exclusively to peacetime uses. It was located near the present-day Beaver Valley Nuclear Generating Station on the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States, about 25 miles (40 km) from Pittsburgh.
  
  The reactor reached criticality on December 2, 1957, and aside from stoppages for three core changes, it remained in operation until October 1982. The first electrical power was produced on December 18, 1957 as engineers synchronized the plant with the distribution grid of Duquesne Light Company.
  
  The first core used at Shippingport originated from a cancelled nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and used highly enriched uranium (93% U-235) as "seed" fuel surrounded by a "blanket" of natural U-238, in a so-called seed-and-blanket design; in the first reactor about half the power came from the seed. The first Shippingport core reactor turned out capable of an output of 60 MWe one month after its launch. The second core was similarly designed but more powerful, having a larger seed. The highly energetic seed required more refueling cycles than the blanket in these first two cores.
  
  The third and final core used at Shippingport was an experimental, light water moderated, thermal breeder reactor. It kept the same seed-and-blanket design, but the seed was now Uranium-233 and the blanket was made of Thorium. Additionally, being a breeder reactor, it had ability to transmute relatively inexpensive Thorium to Uranium-233 as part of its fuel cycle. The breeding ratio attained by Shippingport's third core was 1.01. Over its 25-year life, the Shippingport power plant operated for about 80,324 hours, producing about 7.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity.
  
  Owing to the aforementioned peculiarities, some non-governmental sources label Shippingport a "demonstration PWR reactor" and consider that the "first fully commercial PWR" in the US was Yankee Rowe. Criticism centers on the fact that the Shippingport plant had not been built to commercial specifications. Consequently, the construction cost per kilowatt at Shippingport was about ten times those for a conventional power plant'.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1958, The Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), the world's first communications satellite, is launched.
  From Wikipedia: 'Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment) was the world’s first communications satellite. Launched aboard an American Atlas rocket on December 18, 1958, SCORE provided a first test of a communications relay system in space, as well as the first successful use of the Atlas as a launch vehicle. It captured world attention by broadcasting a Christmas message via short wave radio from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower through an on-board tape recorder.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1966, Dr. Seuss', How The Grinch Stole Christmas, first airs on CBS television.
  From Wikipedia: 'Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is a 1966 Christmas animated musical comedy television special directed by Chuck Jones. It is based on the eponymous children's book by Dr. Seuss, the story of the Grinch trying to take away Christmas from the townsfolk of Whoville below his mountain hideaway. Originally telecast in the United States on CBS on December 18, 1966, it went on to become a perennial holiday special. Directed by Chuck Jones, it features the voice of Boris Karloff.
  
  The Grinch (voiced by Boris Karloff) is the film's main character. He lives in a cave atop Mt. Crumpit, located above the village of Whoville. The Grinch is a surly character with a heart "two sizes too small" who has especially hated Christmas for 53 years. On Christmas Eve, he finally becomes fed up with seeing the decorations and hearing all the music and caroling in the village and wishes he could stop Christmas Day from coming to Whoville. When he sees his dog, Max, with snow all over his face in the shape of a beard, he decides to disguise himself as Santa Claus and steal Christmas.
  
  The Grinch makes himself a Santa coat and hat and disguises the innocent Max as a reindeer. He loads empty bags onto a sleigh and travels to Whoville with some difficulty. In the first house he is almost caught by Cindy Lou Who (voiced by an uncredited June Foray), a small Who girl who wakes up and sees him taking the Christmas tree. Pretending to be Santa, the Grinch tells Cindy Lou that he is merely taking the tree to his workshop for repairs, and then gets her a drink before sending her back to bed. He empties the first house of all the food and Christmas-related items, namely presents, trees, mistletoes, and even the stockings on the chimney, then repeats the process at the other houses in Whoville, while also taking the village decorations.
  
  With the Whos' stolen Christmas goods, the Grinch and Max travel back up Mt. Crumpit. Before dropping the loaded sleigh off the mountain, the Grinch waits to hear a sad cry from the Whos. However, down in the village, the Whos joyously begin to sing Christmas carols, proving that the spirit of Christmas does not depend on material things. The Grinch begins to understand the true meaning of Christmas, though he barely does so in time to prevent the stolen treats from going over the cliff and while he tries to stop the sleigh from falling off, his heart grows three sizes—granting him "the strength of ten Grinches, plus two!", which he needs to lift up the sleigh. He brings everything back to the Whos and participates in the holiday feast. He is given the honor of carving the roast beast, while Max gets the first slice for himself for all his troubles'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More
  - On YouTube (trailer): More
• In 1971, The Capitol Reef National Park is established in Utah.
  From Wikipedia: 'Called 'Wayne Wonderland' in the 1920s by local boosters Ephraim P. Pectol and Joseph S. Hickman, Capitol Reef National Park protects colorful canyons, ridges, buttes, and monoliths. About 75 mi (121 km) of the long up-thrust called the Waterpocket Fold, a rugged spine extending from Thousand Lake Mountain to Lake Powell, is preserved within the park. 'Capitol Reef' is the name of an especially rugged and spectacular segment of the Waterpocket Fold near the Fremont River.
  - At Wikipedia: More
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• In 1997, The World Wide Web Consortium published HTML 4.0.
  From Wikipedia: 'HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. With Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and JavaScript, it forms a triad of cornerstone technologies for the World Wide Web. Web browsers receive HTML documents from a webserver or from local storage and render them into multimedia web pages. HTML describes the structure of a web page semantically and originally included cues for the appearance of the document.
  
  HTML elements are the building blocks of HTML pages. With HTML constructs, images and other objects, such as interactive forms may be embedded into the rendered page. It provides a means to create structured documents by denoting structural semantics for text such as headings, paragraphs, lists, links, quotes and other items.
  
  HTML can embed programs written in a scripting language such as JavaScript which affect the behavior and content of web pages. Inclusion of CSS defines the look and layout of content. The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), maintainer of both the HTML and the CSS standards, has encouraged the use of CSS over explicit presentational HTML since 1997.
  
  HTML 4.0 was published as a W3C Recommendation. It offers three variations:
  
  Strict, in which deprecated elements are forbidden
  
  Transitional, in which deprecated elements are allowed
  
  Frameset, in which mostly only frame related elements are allowed.
  
  Initially code-named "Cougar", HTML 4.0 adopted many browser-specific element types and attributes, but at the same time sought to phase out Netscape's visual markup features by marking them as deprecated in favor of style sheets. HTML 4 is an SGML application conforming to ISO 8879 – SGML'.
  - At FamousDaily: More
  - At Wikipedia: More

Tomorrow's food holiday is 'National Roast Suckling Pig Day'. [The Hankster says] Polish up those apples and if in Hawaii, start digging that roasting pit. It takes a while to heat those stones.

Yet another reminder that, tise season for baked goodies. Tomorrow is 'Bake Cookies Day'.

We have a U.N. awareness day tomorrow. It will be 'International Migrants Day'. 'On 18 December 1990, the General Assembly had adopted the International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families.

Tomorrow is 'National Re-Gifting Day'. On the Thursday before Christmas. [The Hankster says] As best as I can understand it, this is a day to pass off that office Christmas party gift you got to someone else. Just remember, that next year you may get it back.

Another U.N. day tomorrow. It will be 'Arabic Language Day'. A U.N. language recognition day. It is one of the six official languages of the U.N. (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian, Spanish)

Tomorrow, many companies will have 'Free Shipping Day'. They will provide free shipping and Christmas delivery.

Steve Jobs once said 'My favorite things in life don't cost any money. It's really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.' [The Hankster says] On this post, we believe that time is important now and in the past. Let us run our fingers through and celebrate the feel of the golden memories of December 18. And this is the: app for that.

In 1892, The first performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Nutcracker ,is held at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia.

In 1912, The Piltdown Man, later discovered to be a hoax, is announced by Charles Dawson. An investigation in 1953 showed the find to consiste 'of a human skull of medieval age, the 500-year-old lower jaw of a Sarawak orangutan and chimpanzee fossil teeth'.

In 1956, The TV panel game show 'To Tell the Truth' debuts. The panel had to decide which of three persons was telling the truth and was thus the person described by the narrator.

In 1957, The Shippingport Atomic Power Station in Pennsylvania U.S.A., is the world's first nuclear power plant and begins to generate electricity.

In 1958, Project SCORE (Signal Communications by Orbiting Relay Equipment), the world's first communications satellite, is launched. The first ever voice message from space was a broadcasted Christmas message via short wave radio from U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

In 1966, Dr. Seuss' 'How The Grinch Stole Christmas' first airs on CBS television.

In 1971, The Capitol Reef National Park is established in Utah.

No. 1 song

• Ringo - Lorne Greene: More
  'She's Not There' has been displaced by 'Ringo', which will hold the no. 1 spot until December 19 1964, when 'I Feel Fine (The Beatles)', takes over.

Top movie

• Father Goose More
  Having displaced 'Roustabout', it will be there until the weekend box office of December 20 1964 when, 'Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte', takes over.

• FamousBirthdays.com: December 18 Birthdays More
• FamousDaily.com: December 18 History More
• History.com: Historical Events on 18th December More
• HistoryOrb.com: Famous Deaths on 18th December More
• On-This-day.com history 18th December More
• On-This-day.com music history 18th December More
• Wikipedia.com: History December 18 More

Food:
Buckwheat Month
Tomato and Winter Squash Month
Worldwide Food Service Safety Month
National Egg Nog Month
National Fruit Cake Month
Root Vegetables Month
Other:
World Aids Month
National Write A Business Plan Month
Safe Toys and Gifts Month
National Tie Month Universal Human Rights Month
National Drunk and Drugged Driving (3D) Prevention Month
Colorectal Cancer Education and Awareness Month National Tie Month

December is:

December origin (from Wikipedia): ' December gets its name from the Latin word decem (meaning ten) because it was originally the tenth month of the year in the Roman calendar, which began in March. The winter days following December were not included as part of any month. Later, the months of January and February were created out of the monthless period and added to the beginning of the calendar, but December retained its name. '

' December is the first month of meteorological winter in the Northern Hemisphere. In the Southern Hemisphere, December is the seasonal equivalent to June in the Northern hemisphere, which is the first month of summer. D ecember is the month with the shortest daylight hours of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and the longest daylight hours of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. '

December at Wikipedia: More

If you couldn't afford 90 cents for a movie ticket, 50 years ago, or your 45 RPM record player was broke, you might watch one of these shows on TV.
From this Wikipedia article: More

Best selling books of 1964 More

• Astronomy Picture of the Day: More
• NOAA: - National Hurricane Center - Atlantic Graphical Tropical Weather Outlook: More
• Listen to Old Radio Shows: (streaming mp3 with schedule) More
• NASA TV: (video feed) More
  NASA TV schedule: More
• Public Domain eBook Links

  Sites for downloading or reading free Public Domain eBooks. Available in various formats. More

• Podcast: A Moment of Science. Approximately 1 minute general science facts.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: The Naked Scientists. Current science, medicine, space and other science
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Podcast: Quirks & Quarks. Current science news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Articles and videos: Universe Today. Current space and astronomy news.
  Home page: More
  RSS: More
• Old Picture of the Day - "Each day we bring you one stunning little glimpse of history in the form of a historical photograph."
  Home page: More
  RSS: More

Below, are listed several holiday sites that I reference in addition to other holiday researches.

US Government Holidays

• 2014 Postal Holidays More
• 2014 Official Federal Holidays More

Holidays Worldwide

• List of holidays by country More
• Holidays and Observances around the World More