October 18

Events

• 1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.
• 1016 - The Danes defeat the Saxons in the Battle of Ashingdon.
• 1561 - Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima -- Takeda Shingen beats Uesugi Kenshin in the climax of their ongoing conflicts
• 1685 - Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, which has protected French Protestants
• 1748 - Signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of the Austrian Succession.
• 1767 - Mason-Dixon line, survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania is completed
• 1851 - Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is first published as The Whale by Richard Bentley of London.
• 1860 - The Second Opium War finally ends at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.
• 1867 - United States takes possession of Alaska, celebrated annually in the statet as (Alaska Day).
• 1898 - United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.
• 1908 - Belgium annexes the Congo Free State.
• 1912 - The First Balkan War begins.
• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company (later Corporation) is founded by a consortium, to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
• 1925 - The Grand Ole Opry opens.
• 1944 - Adolf Hitler orders the establishment of a German national militia.
• 1944 - Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia
• 1945 - The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
• 1954 - Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio
• 1968 - A police raid on John Lennon and Yoko Ono's flat finds 168 grains of marijuana. They later plead guilty and are fined 150.
• 1969 - Jefferson Airplane member Paul Kantner is charged with possessin of marijuana on Hawaii.
• 1974 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre opens in theaters.
• 1977 - German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of a Lufthansa flight by the Red Army Faction (RAF) comes to an end when Schleyer is executed and various RAF members commit suicide. The German government states that it would never again negotiate with terrorists.
• 1993 - Andreas Papandreou begins his second term as Prime Minister of Greece.
• 2003 - Bolivian Gas War: President Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada, is forced to resign and leave Bolivia.

Births

• 1405 - Pope Pius II (d. 1464)
• 1706 - Baldassare Galuppi, composer (d. 1785)
• 1741 - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French general and author (d. 1803)
• 1785 - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (d. 1866)
• 1859 - Henri Bergson, French writer (d. 1941)
• 1873 - Ivanoe Bonomi, former Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1951)
• 1898 - Lotte Lenya, Austiran singer, actress (d. 1981)
• 1898 - Shin'ichi Suzuki, violin player and teacher, creator of the Suzuki method (d. 1998)
• 1902 - Miriam Hopkins, actress (d. 1972)
• 1903 - Lina Radke, German athlete (d. 1983)
• 1911 - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru
• 1913 - Evelyn Venable Mohr, actress (d. 1993)
• 1918 - Bobby Troup, musician (d. 1999)
• 1919 - Anita O'Day, jazz singer
• 1919 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 2000)
• 1920 - Melina Mercouri, Greek actress (d. 1994)
• 1921 - Jesse Helms, Senator from North Carolina
• 1926 - Chuck Berry, musician
• 1926 - Klaus Kinski, actor (d. 1991)
• 1927 - George C. Scott, actor (d. 1999)
• 1928 - Keith Jackson, American football commentator
• 1928 - Hugh Allan "Buddy" MacMaster, musician
• 1929 - Violeta Chamorro, President of Nicaragua
• 1934 - Inger Stevens, actress (d. 1970)
• 1934 - Chuck Swindoll, American evangelist
• 1935 - Peter Boyle, actor
• 1939 - Mike Ditka, American football player, coach, commentator
• 1939 - Lee Harvey Oswald, American assassin of John F. Kennedy (d. 1963)
• 1947 - Joe Morton, actor
• 1947 - Laura Nyro, singer, songwriter (d. 1997)
• 1948 - Ntozake Shange, author
• 1950 - Om Puri, actor
• 1950 - Wendy Wasserstein, playwright
• 1951 - Terry McMillan, author
• 1956 - Martina Navratilova, tennis player
• 1960 - Jean-Claude Van Damme, Belgian actor
• 1961 - Wynton Marsalis, American jazz musician
• 1962 - Vincent Spano, actor
• 1976 - Azlea Antistia, erotic actress

Deaths

• 707 - Pope John VII
• 1141 - Leopold IV, Margrave of Austria and Duke of Bavaria
• 1417 - Pope Gregory XII
• 1503 - Pope Pius III
• 1545 - John Taverner, English composer
• 1817 - Etienne-Nicolas Mhul, French composer (b. 1763)
• 1871 - Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor of computing machines
• 1893 - Charles Gounod, French composer
• 1921 - King Ludwig III of Bavaria
• 1931 - Thomas Edison, American inventor
• 1959 - Boughera El Ouafi, Algerian athlete
• 1983 - Willie Jones, Major League Baseball player (b. 1925)
• 2000:
• Julie London, singer, actress
• Gwen Verdon, dancer, actress
• 2001 - Micheline Ostermeyer, French athlete and musician
• 2002:
• Nikolai Rukavishnikov, cosmonaut
• Roman Tam, a canto-pop singer (b. 1950)
• 2003:
• Preston Smith, Governor of Texas (b. 1912)
• Manuel Vzquez Montalbn, Spanish writer
• 2004 - Veerappan, Indian forest bandit and sandalwood smuggler (b. 1945)

Holidays and obervances

• Roman Catholic Church - Feast of Saint Luke
• Alaska: Alaska Day

External links

• BBC: On This Day

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