27 Azar 1402

Events

• 1271 (755 years ago) Kublai Khan renames his empire "Yuan" (元 yuán), officially marking the start of the Yuan dynasty of Mongolia and China.
• 1622 (404 years ago) Portuguese forces score a military victory over the Kingdom of Kongo at the Battle of Mbumbi in present-day Angola.
• 1867 (159 years ago) A magnitude 7.0 earthquakes strikes off the coast of Taiwan, triggering a tsunami and killing at least 580 people.
• 1935 (91 years ago) The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is founded in Ceylon.
• 1939 (87 years ago) World War II: The Battle of the Heligoland Bight, the first major air battle of the war, takes place.
• 2005 (21 years ago) The Chadian Civil War begins when rebel groups, allegedly backed by neighbouring Sudan, launch an attack in Adré.
• 2006 (20 years ago) The first of a series of floods strikes Malaysia. The death toll of all flooding is at least 118, with over 400,000 people displaced.
• 2006 (20 years ago) United Arab Emirates holds its first-ever elections.

Births

• 1856 (170 years ago) J. J. Thomson, English physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1940)
• 1863 (163 years ago) Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria,
• 1878 (148 years ago) Joseph Stalin, Georgian-Russian marshal and politician,General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (died 1953)
• 1913 (113 years ago) Willy Brandt, German politician, 4th Chancellor of Germany, Nobel Prize laureate (died 1992)
• 1946 (80 years ago) Steven Spielberg, American director, producer, and screenwriter, co-founded DreamWorks
• 1963 (63 years ago) Brad Pitt, American actor and producer
• 1980 (46 years ago) Christina Aguilera, American singer-songwriter, producer, and actress
• 2001 (25 years ago) Billie Eilish, American singer

Deaths

• 1737 (289 years ago) Antonio Stradivari, Italian instrument maker (born 1644)
• 1803 (223 years ago) Johann Gottfried Herder, German philosopher, theologian, and poet (born 1744)
• 1829 (197 years ago) Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, French soldier, biologist, and academic (born 1744)
• 1892 (134 years ago) Richard Owen, English biologist, anatomist, and paleontologist (born 1804)
• 1932 (94 years ago) Eduard Bernstein, German theorist and politician (born 1850)
• 1995 (31 years ago) Konrad Zuse, German engineer, designed the Z3 computer (born 1910)
• 2011 (15 years ago) Václav Havel, Czech poet, playwright, and politician, 1st President of the Czech Republic (born 1936)
• 2016 (10 years ago) Zsa Zsa Gabor, Hungarian-American actress and socialite (born 1917)

All 372 events, births and deaths of December 18