November 18 - Events

Events

• 326 – The old St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
• 401 – The Visigoths, led by king Alaric I, cross the Alps and invade northern Italy.
• 1105 – Maginulfo is elected the Antipope as Sylvester IV.
• 1180 – Phillip II becomes king of France.
• 1210 – Pope Innocent III excommunicates Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV
• 1302 – Pope Boniface VIII issues the Papal bull Unam sanctam (One Faith).
• 1307 – William Tell shoots an apple off his son's head.
• 1421 – A seawall at the Zuiderzee dike in the Netherlands breaks, flooding 72 villages and killing about 10,000 people. This event will be known as Sint-Elisabethsvloed.
• 1493 – Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
• 1494 – French King Charles VIII occupies Florence, Italy.
• 1601 – Tiryaki Hasan Pasha, provincial governor of Ottoman Empire, utterly defeats Habsburg forces, commanded by Ferdinand the Archduke of Austria during the Siege of Nagykanizsa.
• 1626 – St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
• 1686 – Charles Francois Felix operates on King Louis XIV of France's anal fistula after practicing the surgery on several peasants.
• 1730 – Frederick II (known as Frederick the Great), King of Prussia, is granted a royal pardon and released from confinement.
• 1803 – The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
• 1809 – In a naval action during the Napoleonic Wars, French frigates defeat British East Indiamen in the Bay of Bengal.
• 1812 – Napoleonic Wars: The Battle of Krasnoi ends in French defeat, but Marshal of France Michel Ney's leadership leads to him becoming known as "the bravest of the brave".
• 1863 – King Christian IX of Denmark decides to sign the November constitution that declares Schleswig to be part of Denmark. This is seen by the German Confederation as a violation of the London Protocol and leads to the German–Danish war of 1864.
• 1865 – Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
• 1883 – American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
• 1903 – The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States and Panama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
• 1904 – General Esteban Huertas steps down after the government of Panama fears he wants to stage a coup.
• 1905 – Prince Carl of Denmark becomes King Haakon VII of Norway.
• 1909 – Two United States warships are sent to Nicaragua after 500 revolutionaries (including two Americans) are executed by order of José Santos Zelaya.
• 1916 – World War I: First Battle of the Somme – in France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
• 1918 – Latvia declares its independence from Russia.
• 1926 – George Bernard Shaw refuses to accept the money for his Nobel Prize, saying, "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for inventing dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize".
• 1928 – Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
• 1929 – 1929 Grand Banks earthquake: off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on Grand Banks, breaks 12 submarine transatlantic telegraph cables and triggers a tsunami that destroys many south coast communities in the Burin Peninsula.
• 1930 – Soka Kyoiku Gakkai, a Buddhist association later renamed Soka Gakkai, is founded by Japanese educators Tsunesaburo Makiguchi and Josei Toda.
• 1938 – Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.
• 1940 – World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
• 1943 – World War II– Battle of Berlin: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF loses nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
• 1944 – The Popular Socialist Youth is founded in Cuba
• 1947 – The Ballantyne's Department Store fire in Christchurch, New Zealand, kills 41; it is the worst fire disaster in the history of New Zealand.
• 1949 – The Iva Valley Shooting occurs after the coal miners of Enugu in Nigeria go on strike over withheld wages; 21 miners are shot dead and 51 are wounded by police under the supervision of the British colonial administration of Nigeria.
• 1961 – United States President John F. Kennedy sends 18,000 military advisors to South Vietnam.
• 1963 – The first push-button telephone goes into service.
• 1970 – U.S. President Richard Nixon asks the U.S. Congress for $155 million USD in supplemental aid for the Cambodian government.
• 1978 – In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
• 1987 – Iran-Contra Affair: the U.S. Congress issues its final report on the Iran-Contra Affair.
• 1987 – King's Cross fire: in London, 31 people die in a fire at the city's busiest underground station, King's Cross St Pancras.
• 1988 – War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
• 1991 – Shiite Muslim kidnappers in Lebanon release Anglican Church envoys Terry Waite and Thomas Sutherland.
• 1991 – After an 87-day siege, the Croatian city of Vukovar capitulates to the besieging Yugoslav People's Army and allied Serb paramilitary forces.
• 1993 – In the United States, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is ratified by the House of Representatives.
• 1993 – In South Africa, 21 political parties approve a new constitution.
• 1999 – In College Station, Texas, 12 are killed and 27 injured at Texas A&M University when the 59-foot-tall (18 m) Aggie Bonfire, under construction for the annual football game against the University of Texas, collapses at 2:42am.
• 2002 – Iraq disarmament crisis: United Nations weapons inspectors led by Hans Blix arrive in Iraq.
• 2003 – In the United Kingdom, the Local Government Act 2003, repealing controversial anti-gay amendment Section 28, becomes effective.