December 18, 1981 (Friday)
- Four days after Israel annexed the Golan Heights, the U.S. terminated its recently made Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Israel. The MOU was not reinstated until May 17, 1983.
- Robert Patlescu, 19 months old, fell from his parents' apartment on the 6th floor of a building in Manhattan. His fall was broken by shrubbery, and he landed in soft mud, surviving with no broken bones or even a scratch.
- Tom Brokaw signs off from The Today Show, for the last time as co-anchor on NBC. Bryant Gumbel would succeed him as anchor in January 1982. Brokaw would go on to anchor NBC Nightly News with Roger Mudd, for most of the year before becoming sole anchor.
- Died: Eugene Conley, 73, American operatic tenor and lead singer for the Metropolitan Opera
- Died: Albert Deutscher, 61, member of the Selbstschutz, a Nazi paramilitary group that had carried out the mass murder of hundreds of Jewish civilians in the Ukraine. Detuscher moved to the U.S. and became a naturalized citizen in 1957. The day after a petition was filed to revoke his citizenship, he was killed by a train.
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Famous quotes containing the word december:
“Work—work—work,
In the dull December light,
And work—work—work,
When the weather is warm and bright—
While underneath the eaves
The brooding swallows cling
As if to show me their sunny backs
And twit me with the spring.”
—Thomas Hood (1799–1845)