February 18: Today in History – Historical Events
Early Centuries – February 18 Historic Events – Before the 1700s
1. 18th Feb 1129: Christians re-take Jerusalem in a peace treaty between Holy Roman Emperor Fredrik II and Egyptian ruler Al-Kamil.
2. 18th Feb 1478: George, Duke of Clarence was on this day convicted for treason against his older brother Edward IV of England. He was privately executed in the Tower of London.
3. 18th Feb 1503: Henry Tudor, who was later known as Henry VIII, created the Prince of Whales.
4. 18th Feb 1536: France and Turkey on this day signed a military and trade agreement against King Karel.
5. 18th Feb 1563: General Francois De Guise was on this day shot by Huguenot Jean Poltrot de Mere.
6. 18th Feb 1574: Dutch rebels on this day captured Zeeland.
7. 18th Feb 1634: Commander Albrecht Von Wallenstein was ordered to be executed by Ferdinand II.
8. 18th Feb 1685: A Frenchman at Matagorda Bay established Fort St. Louis on this day, thus forming France’s claim to Texas.
9. 18th Feb 1688: In Germantown, Pennsylvania, Quakers conducted the first formal protest of slavery.
18th Century – What Happened on February 18 – The 1700s
10. 18th Feb 1713: The French on this day invaded Curacao under Jacques Cassard.
11. 18th Feb 1787: Austrian Emperor Jozef II bans children under the age of 8 from labor.
12. 18th Feb 1797: Trinidad surrenders to the British Fleet commanded by Sir Ralf Abercrombie.
19th Century – February 18 This Day That Year – The 1800s
13. 18th Feb 1804: The first US Land-grant College was chartered on this day at the Ohio University in Athens, Ohio.
14. 18th Feb 1814: French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte emerged victorious in the Battle of Montereau against Austria and Württembergers.
15. 18th Feb 1828: A storm destroys over 100 vessels in Gibraltar on this day.
16. 18th Feb 1834: The first US Labor newspaper “The Man” was published on this day in New York City.
17. 18th Feb 1839: Detroit Boat Club was formed on this day. The club still exists.
18. 18th Feb 1849: The first steamboat service to California was started on this day.
19. 18th Feb 1850: Nine Bay Area counties were created by the California legislature on this day.
20. 18th Feb 1856: The American party “Know-Nothings” was on this day convened in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to nominate former President, Millard Fillmore as its first Presidential candidate.
21. 18th Jan 1861: Jefferson Davis on this day was inaugurated as President of the Confederate States during the Civil War.
22. 18th Feb 1861: King Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia becomes the first king of Italy.
23. 18th Feb 1865: Confederates were forced to abandon Ft Anderson by the Union troops.
24. 18th Feb 1876: A direct telegraph link was established on this day between Britain and New Zealand.
25. 18th Feb 1878: The murder of the Englishman rancher John Tunstall by the hired killers of James J Dolan, started the bloody Lincoln country war.
26. 18th Feb 1879: Egyptian Prime Minister Nabar Pasha was on this day captured by the Arabs.
27. 18th Feb 1879: Sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi was on this day awarded a patent for his design for the Statue of Liberty.
28. 18th Feb 1884: General Charles Gordon arrived in Khartoum to battle Mahdi and his terrorists.
29. 18th Feb 1884: On this day Police sized all copies of Tolstoy’s “What I Believe In”.
30. 18th Feb 1885: Mark Twain on this day published his work “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” in the United States.
31. 18th Feb 1891: Captain Archinard’s Army fights with Nyamina of Niger in West Sudan.
32. 18th Feb 1899: San Francisco was on this day declared as the port of dispatch for Army transports.
20th Century – Important Events On This Day February 18th – The 1900s
33. 18th Feb 1900: 1270 British were killed/injured on this day in the battle at Paardeberg.
34. 18th Feb 1900: In Amsterdam, the Ajax Soccer team was formed on this day.
35. 18th Feb 1901: Dust-removing succession cleaner was patented on this day by H. Cecil Booth.
36. 18th Feb 1901: On this day Winston Churchill delivered his maiden speech in the British House of Commons.
37. 18th Feb 1902: The Opera “Hunch Back of the Notre Dame” premiered today at Monte Carlo.
38. 18th Feb 1903: Anti-strike laws were launched on this day by the Kuyper government.
39. 18th Feb 1907: In a famine relief measure 600,000 tons of grains were sent the Russia on this day.
40. 18th Feb 1907: According to the agreement between Mayor Schmidt of San Francisco, US President Theodore Roosevelt, and the San Francisco school board, Japanese children under 16 were to be admitted to the city’s public schools, skilled and un-skilled labor from Japan to be barred from entering the US and American labors to be excluded from Japan.
41. 18th Feb 1908: The Japanese government on this day handed over a note to the US Ambassador agreeing to restrict Japanese emigration to the US. This came to be known as the “Gentleman’s Agreement”.
42. 18th Feb 1908: The US postage stamp was issued in rolls on this day.
43. 18th Feb 1911: The first official flight with airmail takes place in Allahabad in India with Henry Piquet a 23-year-old pilot delivering 6500 letters to Naini about 10 KM away.
44. 18th Feb 1913: The Armory show on this day in New York City displayed Marcel Duchamp’s painting “Nude Descending from the Stairs”.
45. 18th Feb 1913: On this day the Mexican President Francisco Madero was overthrown.
46. 18th Feb 1915: Germany began a blockade of Britain on this day.
47. 18th Feb 1916: This day marks the surrender of the last of the German Garrisons in Cameroon.
48. 18th Feb 1918: Germany on this day renewed its offensive against the Russians. They made tremendous gains against the disorganized and dispirited Russian troops.
49. 18th Feb 1920: Vuillemin and Chalus on this day completed the first flight across the Sahara Desert.s
50. 18th Feb 1921: The British troops on this day occupied Dublin in South Africa.
51. 18th Feb 1922: In Davenport, WOC-AM begins radio transmissions on this day.
52. 18th Feb 1923: Following the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun and a large treasure valued at 6000,000 Luxor in Egypt by British archeologist Lord Carnarvon arguments began as to who should own the treasures as there were claims by Americans, British, and Egypt.
53. 18th Feb 1923: Borinage mineworkers go on strike on this day demanding higher wages in Belgium.
54. 18th Feb 1927: The US and Canada established diplomatic relations independent of Great Britain.
55. 18th Feb 1930: Planet X (Pluto), the ninth planet of our Solar system was on this day discovered by Clyde Tombaugh at Lowell observatory at Flagstaff in Arizona.
56. 18th Feb 1932: Japan declares Manchuria independent on this day.
57. 18th Feb 1937: Dust storm hits Kansas, Colorado, Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico. In a few days, deaths occurred due to influenza and pneumonia as the dust storms had made breathing difficult.
58. 18th Feb 1938: There was a double hanging in San Quentin prison. Convicted murderer
59. 18th Feb 1938: It was reported that Japan was planning an attack on China south of the Yellow River. They were headed towards the western portion of the central front of China.
60. 18th Feb 1938: A twister hit Rodessa in Louisiana. It left a death trail with 25 people killed and several missing.
61. 18th Feb 1942: Japanese troops landed in Bali on this day.
62. 18th Feb 1943: A group of students known as the White Rose Movement were arrested in Germany for distributing anti-Nazi propaganda leaflets. They were later sentenced to death by ”The People Court” and were beheaded.
63. 18th Feb 1943: on this day the first edition of the Dutch resistance newspaper “Trouw” was published.
64. 18th Feb 1943: Rommel on this day took three towns in Tunisia, in North Africa. The intercepted communications of an American in Cairo provided the secret ear for the Desert Fox.
65. 18th Feb 1945: U.S. Marines stormed ashore at Iwo Jima and about 60,000 U.S. Marines went ashore.
66. 18th Feb 1951: The Netherland Radio School was formed on this day.
67. 18th Feb 1951: Nepal on this day became a constitutional monarchy.
68. 18th Feb 1952: Two tanker ships broke apart off Cape Cod on this day. 14 men died in the wrecks.
69. 18th Feb 1953: The first 3-D feature film “Bwana Devil” premiered on this day.
70. 18th Feb 1954: The first Church of Scientology was established on this day in Los Angeles.
71. 18th Feb 1954: After a month-long truce, East and West Berlin dropped thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other.
72. 18th Feb 1956: The U.S. lifted its arms embargo and shipped tanks to Saudi Arabia.
73. 18th Feb 1955: The defense alignment between Turkey and Iraq, the Bagdad Pact, was signed on this day.
74. 18th Feb 1957: The British Colonial government on this day executed a Kenyan freedom fighter Dedan Kimathi.
75. 18th Feb 1962: American President John F Kennedy on this day declared that the U.S. troops would stay in Vietnam until communism was defeated.
76. 18th Feb 1964: The U.S. on this day cut military aid to five nations in reprisal for having trade relations with Cuba.
77. 18th Feb 1965: The Gambia on this day became independent from the United Kingdom.
78. 18th Feb 1967: The National Art Gallery on this day agreed to buy a Da Vinci for a record $5 million.
79. 18th Feb 1972: The Californian Supreme Court on this day abolished the death sentence.
80. 18th Feb 1974: NASA on this day launched the Italian satellite, San Marcos.
81. 18th Feb 1977: Space Shuttle above Boeing 747 goes on its maiden flight.
82. 18th Feb 1979: NASA on this day launched its space vehicle S-202.
83. 18th Feb 1979: President Zia ur-Rahman’s National Party won the elections on this day in Bangladesh.
84. 18th Feb 1980: The Liberal Party led by Pierre Elliott Trudeau won the elections in Canada on this day.
85. 18th Feb 1988: Antony M Kennedy was on this day sworn in as Justice of the Supreme Court.
86. 18th Feb 1998: Two white separatists on this day were arrested in Nevada and were accused of planning a biological attack on New York City’s subways.
21st Century – February 18 This Day In History – The 2000s
87. 18th Feb 2001: In Brazil, 15,000 convicts from 29 prisons were held upraising. This was coordinated by Idemir Carlos Ambrosio a leader of a PCC prison-based gang. 16 people were killed in the uprising.
88. 18th Feb 2001: An FBI agent Robert Hanssen was on this day arrested for spying for the Soviet Union. He was later convicted of life in prison.
89. 18th Feb 2001: In Serbia a suspected mine ripped a police van. 3 Serbian officers were killed just outside Kosovo.
90. 18th Feb 2003: Fire in the Daegu subway in South Korea claimed about 200 lives.
91. 18th Feb 2004: The United Nations on this day said that it would re-deploy 4000 of its forces to Congo’s volatile North East where peacekeepers come under fire from rival ethnic militants fighting for control of mineral riches.
92. 18th Feb 2004: A runaway train carrying sulfur, petrol, and fertilizer catches fire and explodes in Iran. About 295 people including 200 rescue workers lost their lives in the accident.
93. 18th Feb 2005: The British ban on hunting with dogs became effective on this day.
94. 18th Feb 2005: President Vladimir Putin of Russia on this day said that Moscow will continue its nuclear cooperation with Iran and that he is convinced that Tehran has no intention of developing atomic weapons.
95. 18th Feb 2009: The Director General of Budget on this day announced that the economy of Taiwan had contracted 8.3% in the 4th quarter of 2008, placing the country in a technical recession.
96. 18th Feb 2013: Flooding and landslide in Indonesia killed about 15 people on this day.
97. 18th Feb 2013: There was an armed robbery in Brussels airport in Belgium. A diamond worth $50 million was stolen in the robbery.
98. 18th Feb 2014: This day marks the beginning of the Ukrainian Revolution.
99. 18th Feb 2014: In Thailand this day the police clash with protestors in Bangkok.
100. 18th Feb 2016: Pope Francis on this day questions the Christianity of U.S. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump over his call to build a wall on the Mexican border.
See Also: