April 18 is the 108th day of the year (109th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 257 days remaining until the end of the year.
Holidays
- Army Day (Iran)
- Christian feast day:
- Independence Day (Zimbabwe), celebrates the independence of Zimbabwe from the United Kingdom in 1980.
- International Day For Monuments and Sites (International)
- Invention Day (Japan)
History
In 796, King Æthelred I of Northumbria is murdered in Corbridge by a group led by his ealdormen, Ealdred and Wada. The patrician Osbald is placed on the throne, but is within 27 days abdicated.
In 1025, Bolesław Chrobry is crowned in Gniezno, becoming the first King of Poland.
In 1454, Venice signs a treaty with the Turks
In 1506, The cornerstone of the current St. Peter’s Basilica is laid.
In 1518, Bona Sforza is crowned as queen consort of Poland.
In 1521, Trial of Martin Luther begins its second day during the assembly of the Diet of Worms. He refuses to recant his teachings despite the risk of excommunication.
In 1689, Bostonians rise up in rebellion against Sir Edmund Andros.
In 1738, Real Academia de la Historia (“Royal Academy of History”) is founded in Madrid.
In 1775, The British advancement by sea begins; Paul Revere began his famous ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Massachusetts, warning the American colonists that the British were coming.
In 1797, The Battle of Neuwied – French victory against the Austrians.
In 1807, The Harwich ferry disaster occurred near the North Sea port of Harwich on the Essex coast (England) in which 60-90 people drowned during the capsizing of a small ferry boat.
In 1831, The University of Alabama is founded. Roll Tide!
In 1848, In the American-Mexican War, General Winfield Scott with 8,500 men attacked and defeated General Santa Anna with 12,000 men at the battle of Cerro-Gordo.
In 1853, Vice President William R. King dies one month after his inauguration, and President Pierce will not have a Vice President during his term in office.
In 1857, “The Spirits Book” by Allan Kardec is published, marking the birth of Spiritualism in France.
In 1864, Battle of Dybbøl: A Prussian–Austrian army defeats Denmark and gains control of Schleswig. Denmark surrenders the province in the following peace settlement.
In 1865, Confederate Gen. Joseph E. Johnston meets with Sherman near Durham in North Carolina. After learning of Lee’s surrender at Appomattox Court House on April 9, Johnston agreed to meet with General Sherman between the lines at a small farm known as Bennett Place near present-day Durham, North Carolina. After three separate days (April 17, 18, and 26, 1865) of negotiations, Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee and all remaining Confederate forces still active in North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. It was the largest surrender of the war, totaling 89,270 soldiers. President Davis considered that Johnston, surrendering so many troops that had not been explicitly defeated in battle, had committed an act of treachery. Johnston was paroled on May 2 at Greensboro.
In 1881, Billy the Kid escapes from the Lincoln County jail in Mesilla, New Mexico.
In 1892, Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officer, created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file, associating these fingerprints to the anthropometric system of Alphonse Bertillon, who had created, in 1879, a system to identify individuals by anthropometric photographs and associated quantitative descriptions. In 1892, after studying Galton’s pattern types, Vucetich set up the world’s first fingerprint bureau. In that same year, Francisca Rojas of Necochea, was found in a house with neck injuries, whilst her two sons were found dead with their throats cut. Rojas accused a neighbour, but despite brutal interrogation, this neighbour would not confess to the crimes. Inspector Alvarez, a colleague of Vucetich, went to the scene and found a bloody thumb mark on a door. When it was compared with Rojas’ prints, it was found to be identical with her right thumb. She then confessed to the murder of her sons.
In 1895, New York State passed an act that established free public baths! They were to be open 14 hours a day and provide hot and cold water. Many years later (1960s), Barry Manilow and Bette Midler performed, in the public baths of New York City.
In 1897, The Greco-Turkish War is declared between Greece and the Ottoman Empire.
In 1902, Quetzaltenango, the second largest city of Guatemala, is destroyed by an earthquake.
In 1906, At 5:13 a.m. a devastating earthquake struck San Francisco, followed by raging fires. About 700 people died; 250,000 homeless, 7.9 to 8.3 on Richter Scale, it was “The Big One!”.
In 1909, 15th-century French heroine Joan of Arc was beatified at a ceremony at the Vatican.
In 1910, Walter R. Brookins made the first airplane flight at night. He passed over Montgomery, AL.
In 1921, Junior Achievement, created to encourage business skills in young people, was incorporated in Colorado Springs, Co.
In 1934, the first coin-operated laundry (called a “washateria”) opened by J.F. Cantrell in Fort Worth, Texas.
In 1936, Pan-Am’s “Clipper” starts providing regular passenger flights between San Francisco and Honolulu.
In 1942, Four months after Pearl Harbor, an air squadron from the USS Hornet led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle led sixteen B-25 bombers on the first air raid against the Japanese mainland in WWII and bombed Tokyo and other cities.
In 1942, the first World War II edition of The Stars and Stripes was published as a weekly newspaper for U.S. troops in Northern Ireland. (It became a daily paper the following November.)
In 1943, Isoroku Yamamoto, Japanese admiral (b. 1884) dies. He was a Japanese Marshal Admiral and the commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet during World War II, a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy. Yamamoto held several important posts in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and undertook many of its changes and reorganizations, especially its development of naval aviation. He was the commander-in-chief during the decisive early years of the Pacific War and so was responsible for major battles such as Pearl Harbor and Midway. He died when American codebreakers identified his flight plans and his plane was shot down. His death was a major blow to Japanese military morale during World War II.
In 1945, Clandestine Radio 1212, after broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda for months used their influence to trap 350,000 German army group B troops.
In 1945, Famed American war correspondent Ernie Pyle, 44, was killed by Japanese gunfire on the Pacific island of Ie Shima, off Okinawa. He was an American journalist who was known for his columns as a roving correspondent from 1935 for the Scripps Howard newspaper chain, especially during World War II, when he reported both from Europe and the Pacific, until his death in combat on a Pacific island. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1944. His travel articles, about the out-of-the-way places he visited and the people who lived there, were written in a folksy style, much like a personal letter to a friend; many were collected in Home Country (1947). By the war, he enjoyed a following in some 300 newspapers and was among the best-known American war correspondents in Europe. His wartime writings are preserved in four books: Ernie Pyle In England, Here Is Your War, Brave Men, and Last Chapter.
In 1949, The Irish Republic came into existence as it withdrew from the British Commonwealth.
In 1951, The European Steel & Coal & Community organized with France, German FR, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg & Netherlands.
In 1955, The phrase “Third World” was first used by Indonesia’s President Sukarno in a speech about non-white and underdeveloped areas.
In 1955, Albert Einstein, German-American physicist (b. 1879) dies. He was a German-born theoretical physicist. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). While best known for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed “the world’s most famous equation”), he received the 1921 Nobel Prize in Physics “for his services to theoretical physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect“. The latter was pivotal in establishing quantum theory. Near the beginning of his career, Einstein thought that Newtonian mechanics was no longer enough to reconcile the laws of classical mechanics with the laws of the electromagnetic field. This led to the development of his special theory of relativity. He realized, however, that the principle of relativity could also be extended to gravitational fields, and with his subsequent theory of gravitation in 1916, he published a paper on the general theory of relativity. He continued to deal with problems of statistical mechanics and quantum theory, which led to his explanations of particle theory and the motion of molecules. He also investigated the thermal properties of light which laid the foundation of the photon theory of light. In 1917, Einstein applied the general theory of relativity to model the large-scale structure of the universe. He was visiting the United States when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933 and did not go back to Germany, where he had been a professor at the Berlin Academy of Sciences. He settled in the U.S., becoming an American citizen in 1940. On the eve of World War II, he endorsed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt alerting him to the potential development of “extremely powerful bombs of a new type” and recommending that the U.S. begin similar research. This eventually led to what would become the Manhattan Project. Einstein supported defending the Allied forces, but largely denounced the idea of using the newly discovered nuclear fission as a weapon. Later, with the British philosopher Bertrand Russell, Einstein signed the Russell–Einstein Manifesto, which highlighted the danger of nuclear weapons. Einstein was affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, until his death in 1955. Einstein published more than 300 scientific papers along with over 150 non-scientific works. His great intellectual achievements and originality have made the word “Einstein” synonymous with genius.
In 1956, “the match made in heaven,” when American actress Grace Kelly married Prince Ranier III of Monaco in a civil ceremony. A church wedding took place the following day.
In 1968, London Bridge was sold to American Robert McCullough for one million pounds. It was later re-erected in Arizona.
In 1971, MEET THE PRESS Guests: Vietnam Veterans Against the War members John Kerry (the future Senator from Massachusetts) and Al Hubbard
In 1974, The Washington District Court conducting the Watergate proceedings issued a subpoena on President Richard M. Nixon to produce tape recordings and other material demanded by the Special Prosecutor.
In 1978, the U.S. Senate voted 68-32 to turn the Panama Canal over to Panamanian control on Dec. 31, 1999. Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee lost his job for leading the way.
In 1981, The longest professional baseball game is begun in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. The game is suspended at 4:00 the next morning and finally completed on June 23
In 1983, sixty-two people, including 17 Americans, were killed at the U.S. Embassy in west Beirut, Lebanon, by a suicide bomber.
In 1985, Amid controversy over his plans to visit a German military cemetery, President Reagan told news editors in Washington that the German soldiers had been “victims” of the Nazis “just as surely as the victims in the concentration camps.”
In 1988, an Israeli court convicted John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker from Cleveland, of committing war crimes at the Treblinka death camp more than 40 years earlier. (Israel’s Supreme Court later overturned Demjanjuk’s conviction.)
In 1988, The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.
In 1990, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that states may make it a crime to possess or look at child pornography, even in one’s home.
In 1991, President Bush unveiled his “America 2000” education strategy, which included a voluntary nationwide exam system and aid pegged to academic results.
In 1992, An 11-year-old Florida boy sued to “divorce” his natural parents and remain with his foster parents. The boy eventually won his suit.
In 1993, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina agreed to a truce, effectively relinquishing besieged Srebrenica. Meanwhile, Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic threatened to boycott further U.N. peace talks if tougher U.N. sanctions against Yugoslavia went into effect as scheduled.
In 1994, former President Nixon suffered a stroke at his home in Park Ridge, N.J., and was taken to New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center; he died four days later.
In 1998, the remains of Pol Pot were cremated, three days after the Khmer Rouge leader blamed for the killings of up to two million Cambodians died at age 73.
In 2007, The Supreme Court of the United States upholds the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act in a 5-4 decision.
In 2007, A series of bombings, two of them being suicides, occur in Baghdad, killing 198 and injuring 251.
In 2012, Dick Clark, American television host and producer, founded Dick Clark Productions (b. 1929) dies of a heart attack following a transurethral resection of the prostate. He was an American radio and television personality, as well as a cultural icon who remains best known for hosting American Bandstand from 1957 to 1987. He also hosted the game show Pyramid and Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve, which transmitted Times Square‘s New Year’s Eve celebrations. Clark was also well known for his trademark sign-off, “For now, Dick Clark — so long!”, accompanied with a military salute.
As host of American Bandstand, Clark introduced rock & roll to many Americans. The show gave many new music artists their first exposure to national audiences, including Ike and Tina Turner, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Talking Heads and Simon & Garfunkel. Episodes he hosted were among the first where blacks and whites performed on the same stage and among the first where the live studio audience sat without racial segregation. Singer Paul Anka claimed that Bandstand was responsible for creating a “youth culture.” Due to his perennial youthful appearance, Clark was often referred to as “America’s oldest teenager”.
In 2013, A suicide bombing in a Baghdad cafe kills 27 people and injures another 65.
In 2014, Sixteen people are killed in an avalanche on Mount Everest.
In 2015, In an April 10 letter to Senators Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), Carolyn Colvin, the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, stated that by the end of Fiscal Year 2014, the administration had issued 541,000 Social Security Numbers to individuals authorized to work under the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Colvin’s letter was sent as a response to a March 12 letter from Sessions and Sasse in which the senators requested information about how many illegal immigrants have received Social Security Numbers and benefits thus far under what they referred to as President Obama’s “unlawful and unconstitutional executive amnesty.”
The amnesty has been granted largely through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
In 2016, Rep. Susan Lynn on Monday decided not to pursue a vote on House Bill 2414, the so-called “bathroom bill.” David Fowler, Family Action Council of Tennessee president, said, “We were not able to speak with her before her decision, so we will not attempt to explain her reasons for doing so. We thank Senator Mike Bell for his hard work on the Senate side and agree with his decision not to push for a vote on the bill at this point since it could not pass on House side. We are thankful that Rep. Lynn and Senator Bell brought the bill and we appreciate their efforts in past weeks in the face of consistent opposition from the governor’s office and others, but we join the thousands of parents across the state who are profoundly disappointed that at this point in the process Rep. Lynn has decided not to proceed with a bill that would have simply protected the privacy of the children they have entrusted to our public schools.”