History of the Day for:
May 18
- 1291: The Sultan of Egypt and his son took the last Christian stronghold of Acre, breaking the hold of Christians in the Holy Land.
- 1631: The Massachusetts Bay Co. gave adult males who joined the Congregational Church the right to vote; John Winthrop was elected the first governor of Massachusetts.
- 1642: Montreal was founded.
- 1652: Rhode Island enacted the first law declaring slavery illegal.
- 1803: Britain declared war on France after Napoleon Bonaparte continued interfering in Italy and Switzerland.
- 1804: France proclaimed Napoleon Bonaparte emperor.
- 1852: Massachusetts ruled all school?age children must attend school.
- 1860: The Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln for president.
- 1896: In Plessy vs. Ferguson, the Supreme Court endorsed "separate but equal" racial segregation.
- 1899: Twenty-six countries met in the Hague for the first World Goodwill Day.
- 1917: The U.S. passed the Selective Service Act, authorizing the draft.
- 1926: Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished in Venice, Calif. She showed up a month later and said she had been kidnapped.
- 1927: Grauman's Chinese Theater opened in Hollywood, Calif.
- 1933: President Roosevelt created the Tennessee Valley Authority to build dams.
- 1934: Congress approved the "Lindbergh Act," making kidnapping a capital offense.
- 1934: TWA began commercial service.
- 1944: In the Soviet Union, the expulsion of more than 200,000 Tartars from the Crimea began. They were accused of collaborating with the Germans.
- 1951: The United Nations moved to its permanent home in Manhattan.
- 1953: Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier.
- 1964: The Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to deprive naturalized citizens of U.S. citizenship if they return to their country of birth for more than three years.
- 1967: Tennessee Gov. Ellington repealed the "Monkey Law," upheld in the 1925 Scopes Trial.
- 1974: India became a nuclear power when its first bomb successfully exploded in the Rajasthan Desert.
- 1977: A nightclub fire in Cincinnati killed 164; Menachem Begin became Israel's Prime Minister.
- 1980: Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, taking 1,300 feet off the mountain's top, killing 57 and creating an ash cloud 2,500 miles long and 1,000 miles wide.
- 1983: The Senate revised immigration laws, giving millions of illegal aliens legal status under an amnesty program.
- 1990: The two Germanys signed a monetary union treaty, the first step on the road to unification.
- 1994: Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip.
- 1998: United States v. Microsoft: The United States Department of Justice and 20 U.S. states file an antitrust case against Microsoft.
- 2006: The post Loktantra Andolan government passes a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country.
- 2009: Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.