On August 18th...

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1503 Pope Alexander VI died.

1559 Pope Paul IV died.

1587 Virginia Dare became the first English child to be born in America.

1590 John White, Governor of the Roanoke (Virginia) colony, returned from England to find the colony and all of its inhabitants gone.

1735 The first issue of the Boston Evening Post was published.

1750 Composer Antonio Salieri was born.

1774 American explorer Meriwether Lewis was born.

1817 Gloucester, Massachusetts newspapers tell of a wild sea serpent seen offshore.

1834 Mount Vesuvius erupted.

1835 Merchant Marshall Field was born.

1846 General Stephen W. Kearny captured Santa Fe, New Mexico.

1850 Novelist Honoré de Balzac died.

1872 The first mail-order catalog was issued by A.M. Ward.

1873 Charles Begole, A.H. Johnson, and John Luca became the first men known to have reached the summit of Mount Whitney.

1894 The U.S. Bureau of Immigration was created by Congress.

1914 U.S. President Woodrow Wilson issued a "Proclamation of Neutrality."

1917 American politician Caspar Weinberger was born.

1920 The 19th Amendment, giving women the right to vote, was declared in effect.
1920 Actress Shelley Winters was born.

1927 Eleanor Rosalynn Carter, wife of U.S. President James Earl Carter, was born.

1929 A Travel Air Model R "Mystery Ship" made its first test flight, with pilot Clarence Clark.

1932 James Mollison became the first person to fly east-to-west over the Atlantic Ocean.

1933 Film director Roman Polanski was born.

1934 Attorney Vincent Bugliosi was born.
1934 Baseball player Roberto Clemente was born.

1936 Actor Robert Redford was born.

1940 The British Royal Air Force and German Luftwaffe battled over England in the largest air battle ever fought.
1940 Walter Chrysler, founder of the Chrysler Corporation, died.

1943 Actor Martin Mull was born.

1944 The U.S. 15th Army Corps reached Mantes-Gassicourt near Paris.
1944 The U.S. 20th Army Corps conquered Chartres.

1952 Comedian Elayne Boosler was born.
1952 Actor Patrick Swayze was born.

1954 James Ernest Wilkins became the first black to attend a Cabinet meeting, as an Undersecretary of Labor.

1957 Gavin's Point Dam, in South Dakota, was dedicated.
1957 Fourteen-year-old Terry Townsend won the 20th annual Soap Box Derby at Akron, Ohio.

1958 Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov, was published.

1960 The first commercial oral contraceptive, Enovid 10, was introduced, in Skokie, Illinois.
1960 The first photograph to be bounced off a satellite was transmitted between Cedar Rapids, Iowa and Richardson, Texas.

1963 James Meredith became the first black to graduate from the University of Mississippi.

1964 South Africa was banned from the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies.

1969 The Woodstock Music and Art Fair ended.
1969 Actor Christian Slater was born.

1971 The Lincoln Home National Historic Site was established.

1979 At least 44 persons were killed and dozens were injured when a bus and several trucks collided in the Great Rift Valley of Kenya.

1988 The FDA approved Minoxidil as a hair loss treatment.

1990 Psychologist B.F. Skinner died.

1991 Russian President Boris Yeltsin survived a coup attempt staged by Communists.

2005 Dennis Rader was sentenced to 175 years in prison for the BTK serial killings in Wichita, Kansas.

2009 South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung died.

2012 Singer Scott McKenzie died.

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This page was last updated on August 17, 2018.