October 18 - Events

Events

• 1009 – The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by theFatimid 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.
• 1081 – The Normans defeat the Byzantine Empire in the Battle of Dyrrhachium.
• 1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates German leader Otto IV.
• 1356 – Basel earthquake, the most significant historic seismological event north of the Alps, destroyes the town of Basel, Switzerland.
• 1386 – Opening of the University of Heidelberg
• 1561 – Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima – Takeda Shingen defeats Uesugi Kenshin in the climax of their ongoing conflicts.
• 1599 – Michael the Brave, Prince of Wallachia, defeats the Army of Andrew Bathory in the Battle of Şelimbăr, leading to the first recorded unification of the Romanian people.
• 1648 – Boston Shoemakers form first U.S. labor organization.
• 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.
• 1775 – African-American poet Phillis Wheatley freed from slavery.
• 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 after purchasing it from Russia for $7.2 million. Celebrated annually in the state asAlaska Day.
• 1898 – United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.
• 1912 – The First Balkan War begins.
• 1914 – The Schoenstatt Movement is founded in Germany.
• 1921 – The Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic is formed as part of the RSFSR.
• 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 in Nashville, Tennessee.
• 1929 – Women are considered "Persons" under Canadian law.
• 1936 – Adolf Hitler announces the Four Year Economic Plan to the German people. The plan details the rebuilding of the German military from 1936 to 1940.
• 1944 – Adolf Hitler orders the establishment of a German national militia.
• 1944 – Soviet Union begins liberation of Czechoslovakia.
• 1945 – The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
• 1945 – A group of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, led by Mario Vargas, Marcos Pérez Jiménez and Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, stages acoup d'état against then president Isaías Medina Angarita, who is overthrown by the end of the day.
• 1954 – Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio.
• 1964 – The 1964-1965 New York World's Fair closes for its first season after a six-month run.
• 1967 – The Soviet probe Venera 4 reaches Venus and becomes the first spacecraft to measure the atmosphere of another planet.
• 1968 – The U.S. Olympic Committee suspends Tommie Smith and John Carlos for giving a "black power" salute during a victory ceremony at the Mexico City games.
• 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 murdered and various RAF members allegedly commit suicide.
• 1991 – Azerbaijan declares independence from USSR.
• 2003 – Bolivian Gas War: President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, is forced to resign and leave Bolivia.
• 2007 – Karachi bombings: A suicide attack on a motorcade carrying former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto kills 139 and wounds 450 more. Bhutto herself was not injured.