November 18 is:
National Apple Cider Day
Kids were baptized in cider during the 14th century because it was believed that cider was more sanitary than water.
President John Adams drank cider every morning because he believed it promoted good health. Adams lived to 90 years old.
It takes about 36 apples to make one gallon of apple cider.
According to legend, William Tell shot an apple off his son’s head on this date in 1307.
Birthday of Louis Jacques Daguerre (November 18, 1789), French inventor of the “daguerreotype” method of producing permanent pictures.
Mark Twain’s short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County was published in the New York Saturday Press. on November 18, 1865. The Calaveras County Fair and Jumping Frog Jubilee takes place for a four day weekend, in Angels Camp, CA the third weekend in May every year and is one of California’s longest continually running fairs.
Birthday of Clarence Shepard Day (November 18, 1874), American author of “Life With Father”, a book famous in the late 1930’s, made into a movie in 1947.
In 1883, American and Canadian railroads instituted five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
Death of Chester Alan Arthur , twenty-first President of the United States (November 18, 1886). He became President upon the death of James Garfield. Arthur died in New York City at age 57. He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and never regained consciousness.
In 1926, George Bernard Shaw refused to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying,
“I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.”
Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie in 1928, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.
United States President John F. Kennedy sent 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam in 1961.
In 1966, U.S. Roman Catholic bishops did away with the rule forbidding the eating of meat on Fridays.
In Jonestown, Guyana, on November 18, 1978, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, including over 270 children.