Raphael Saadiq

The Way I See It (2008) is the third studio album by American R&B singer, songwriter, and producer Raphael Saadiq (pictured), released by Columbia Records. After independently releasing the 2004 album Ray Ray, Saadiq continued working on other artists' projects and developed a partnership with audio engineer Charles Brungardt, who shared the singer's fascination with historic recording techniques and equipment. Pursuing classic soul music, they recorded The Way I See It primarily at Saadiq's North Hollywood studio. Their experimentation produced a traditional soul album that draws on the Motown Sound and Philadelphia soul styles. The lyrics mostly deal with romantic subjects. The album was a critical success and charted steadily on the Billboard 200, selling 282,000 copies in the United States by 2011, while also performing well in Europe. Saadiq toured extensively in the US, Europe, and Asia to support the album. (Full article...)

Leonard Hall

• ... that Leonard Hall (pictured), a leading member of the British Independent Labour Party, worked as a cowboy in the United States?
• ... that the first own goal and penalty kick in MLS Cup history were caused by the same player at MLS Cup 2003?
• ... that Wang Guangying, the brother-in-law of Chinese President Liu Shaoqi, was likely the first person to be publicly referred to as a "red capitalist"?
• ... that in 2011, the serra antwren was found 200 km (124 mi) further north than its previously known range, when it responded to recordings of its song?
• ... that singer-songwriter Sharon Dyall translated the song lyrics from the Disney film Frozen into Swedish?
• ... that the far-right newspaper National Zeitung received funding from the West German government?
• ... that the gay manga artist Jiraiya has been called "kind of a Tom of Finland for the Asian market"?
• ... that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos aims to land rockets on a moving ship?

The Balangiga bells

• The Balangiga bells (pictured), taken by US Army soldiers from the Philippines in 1901 as war trophies, are repatriated.
• Nine people are killed when a high-speed train collides with a locomotive in Ankara, Turkey.
• Two days after a shooting at the Christmas market in Strasbourg, France, in which five people died, French police kill the suspected perpetrator.
• Scientists announce that Voyager 2 has left the heliosphere and entered interstellar space, becoming the second artificial object to do so.

December 18: Tenth of Tevet (Judaism, 2018); National Day in Qatar (1878)

Atlas rocket carrying the SCORE satellite

• 1499 – Muslims in the city of Granada rebelled against their rulers in response to forced conversions to Catholicism.
• 1898 – Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first official land speed record, averaging 63.15 km/h (39.24 mph) over 1 km (0.62 mi).
• 1916 – The French defeated German forces around the city of Verdun-sur-Meuse in northeast France, ending the longest and one of the bloodiest battles in the First World War.
• 1958 – The United States launched SCORE (launch vehicle pictured), the world's first communications satellite.
• 2010 – The Tunisian Revolution began, and what was initially a series of protests with a set of demands evolved into nationwide demonstrations that eventually toppled the regime of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali after more than 23 years of rule.

Yaonian Yanmujin (d. 933) · Lionel Monckton (b. 1861) · Edwin Howard Armstrong (b. 1890)