What Happened on April 18th in History

The 7.5 Mw  Guatemala earthquake shakes Guatemala with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe), killing between 800 and 2,000.

The 1902 Guatemala earthquake occurred on April 18 at 8:23 pm with a moment magnitude of 7.5 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). The rupture was initiated at a depth of 25 km (16 mi)...

The 7.9 Mw earthquake and fire destroy much of San Francisco, California, killing more than 3,000 people, making one of the worst natural disasters in American history.

A magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the coast of Northern California at 05:12 am Pacific Standard Time on Wednesday, April 18, 1906. With a maximum Mercalli intensity of XI (Extreme), it created...

Joan of Arc is beatified in Rome.

Joan of Arc is a patron saint of France, honored as a defender of the French nation for her role in the siege of Orléans and her insistence on the coronation of Charles VII of France during the...

The Cunard liner RMS Carpathia brings 705 survivors from the RMS Titanic to New York City.

The Cunard Line is a British shipping company and an international cruise line based at Carnival House at Southampton, England, operated by Carnival UK and owned by Carnival Corporation. Since 2011,...

World War I: French pilot Roland Garros is shot down and glides to a landing on the German side of the lines.

World War I, or the First World War, also known as the Great War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Central Powers. Major areas of conflict included Europe and the...

World War I: During a mine warfare in high altitude on the Dolomites, the Italian troops conquer the Col di Lana held by the Austrian army.

The mines on the Italian front during the First World War comprised a series of underground explosive charges of varying sizes, secretly planted between 1916 and 1918 by Austro-Hungarian and Italian...

A fire kills 118 people at a wooden church in the small Romanian town of Costești, most of them schoolchildren, after starting during Good Friday services.

In 1930, a devastating fire destroyed the wooden church in Costești, a small town in Argeș County, Romania, and killed 118 people, mostly primary school and high school students, the youngest of...

Superman debuts in Action Comics #1 (cover dated June 1938).

Superman is a superhero created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, first appearing in issue #1 of Action Comics, published in the United States on April 18, 1938. Superman has been...

Robert Menzies, who became Australia's longest-serving prime minister, is elected as leader of the United Australia Party after the death of Prime Minister Joseph Lyons.

Sir Robert Gordon Menzies was an Australian politician and lawyer who served as the 12th prime minister of Australia from 1939 to 1941 and from 1949 to 1966. He held office as the leader of the...

World War II: The Doolittle Raid on Japan: Tokyo, Yokohama, Kobe and Nagoya are bombed.

World War II, or the Second World War, was a global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies and the Axis powers. Nearly all of the world's countries participated. Tanks and aircraft played major...

Pierre Laval becomes Prime Minister of Vichy France.

Pierre Jean Marie Laval was a French politician. He served as Prime Minister of France three times: 1931–1932 and 1935–1936 during the Third Republic, and 1942–1944 during Vichy France. After the...

World War II: Operation Vengeance, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto is killed when his aircraft is shot down by U.S. fighters over Bougainville Island.

Operation Vengeance was the American military operation to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto of the Imperial Japanese Navy on 18 April 1943 during the Solomon Islands campaign in the Pacific Theater of...

World War II: Over 1,000 bombers attack the small island of Heligoland, Germany.

A bomber is a military combat aircraft that utilizes air-to-ground weaponry to drop bombs, launch torpedoes, or deploy air-launched cruise missiles.

Italian resistance movement: In Turin, despite the harsh repressive measures adopted by Nazi-fascists, a great pre-insurrectional strike begins.

The Italian Resistance, or simply La Resistenza, consisted of all the Italian resistance groups who fought the occupying forces of Nazi Germany and the fascist collaborationists of the Italian...

The International Court of Justice holds its inaugural meeting in The Hague, Netherlands.

The International Court of Justice, or colloquially the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN). It settles legal disputes submitted to it by states and provides...

Jackie Robinson makes his regular season debut for the Montreal Royals of the International League, to make them the first integrated modern professional baseball team.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who was the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the color line when...

The Operation Big Bang, the largest non-nuclear man-made explosion to that time, destroys bunkers and military installations on the North Sea island of Heligoland, Germany.

Operation Big Bang or British Bang was the explosive destruction of bunkers and other military installations on the island of Heligoland. The explosion used 7400 tons of surplus World War II...

The Republic of Ireland Act comes into force, declaring Éire to be a republic and severing Ireland's "association" with the Commonwealth of Nations.

The Republic of Ireland Act 1948 is an Act of the Oireachtas which declares that the description of Ireland is the Republic of Ireland, and vests in the president of Ireland the power to exercise...

Gamal Abdel Nasser seizes power in Egypt.

Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was an Egyptian military officer and revolutionary who served as the second president of Egypt from 1954 until his death in 1970. Nasser led the Egyptian revolution of...

Twenty-nine nations meet at Bandung, Indonesia, for the first Asian-African Conference.

Bandung is the capital city of the West Java province of Indonesia. Located on the western highland of Java island, it has one of the coolest climates compared to other provincial capitals in...

East African Airways Flight 720 crashes during a rejected takeoff from Addis Ababa Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, killing 43.

East African Airways Flight 720 (EC720) was an international scheduled passenger flight, operated by jointly operated East African Airways, routing from Kenya via Ethiopia and Italy to the United...

The Republic of Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) comes into being, with Canaan Banana as the country's first President. The Zimbabwean dollar replaces the Rhodesian dollar as the official currency.

Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo River, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest,...

The town of Elmore City, Oklahoma holds its first dance in the town's history.

Elmore City is a town in Garvin County, Oklahoma, United States. This town is 58 miles south of Oklahoma City. The population was 738 at the time of the 2020 census, up from 697 at the 2010 census....

The United States launches Operation Praying Mantis against Iranian naval forces in the largest naval battle since World War II.

Operation Praying Mantis was the 18 April 1988 attack by the United States on Iranian naval targets in the Persian Gulf in retaliation for the mining of a U.S. warship four days earlier. It took...

In Israel John Demjanjuk is sentenced to death for war crimes committed in World War II, although the verdict is later overturned.

John Demjanjuk, was a Trawniki and Nazi camp guard at Sobibor extermination camp, Majdanek, and Flossenbürg. Demjanjuk became the center of global media attention in the 1980s, when he was tried and...

The Israeli military commits the Qana massacre in a deliberate shelling of a United Nations compound near the village of Qana in southern Lebanon, killing 106 Lebanese civilians who were taking shelter there and wounding over 100 more.

The Qana massacre took place on April 18, 1996, near Qana, a village in then Israeli-occupied Southern Lebanon, when the Israeli military fired artillery shells at a United Nations compound, which...

King Mswati III of Swaziland announces that his country's name will change to Eswatini.

The King of Eswatini, officially Ngwenyama, is the title of the male monarch and head of state of Eswatini. The King (Ngwenyama) reigns together with the Queen Mother (Indlovukazi), a spiritual...

Anti-government protests start in Nicaragua.

Protests against Daniel Ortega, Co-president of Nicaragua, began in 2014, when the construction of the Nicaragua Canal was about to begin, and several hundred protesters blocked roads and clashed...

A redacted version of the Mueller report is released to the United States Congress and the public.

Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference In The 2016 Presidential Election, more commonly known as the Mueller report, is the official report documenting the findings and conclusions of...

Seven people are killed and fourteen others are injured in a mass shooting in Kyiv, Ukraine

On 18 April 2026, a mass shooting occurred in the Demiivka neighborhood of the Holosiivskyi District of Kyiv, Ukraine, when a man opened fire on his neighbours and passers-by in the street before...