This is a list of selected May 18 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Ulysses S. Grant -
Jackie Cochran -
Sada Abe -
Vietnamese refugees transferring ships -
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Eruption of Mount St. Helens
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Armed Forces Day in the United States (2013) | refimprove |
| 1268 – Baibars and his Mamluk forces captured Antioch, capital of the crusader state, the Principality of Antioch. | needs more footnotes |
| 1848 – During the aftermath of the March Revolution in the German Confederation, the Frankfurt Parliament opened in Paulskirche, Frankfurt. | needs more footnotes |
| 1944 – World War II: Polish forces under Lieutenant General Władysław Anders captured Monte Cassino, Italy, after a four-month battle. | inappropriate tone, refimprove section |
| 1948 – The first session of the Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China convened in the then-Chinese capital of Nanjing. | refimprove section |
| 1953 – At Rogers Dry Lake, California, in her Canadair Sabre, American Jackie Cochran became the first female pilot to break the sound barrier. | refimprove section |
| 1980 – A popular uprising against the nationwide martial law imposed by South Korean President Chun Doo-hwan's government began in Gwangju, but it was ultimately crushed by the army about nine days later. | unreferenced section |
| 1991 – Following the collapse of central government during the Somali Civil War, the Somali National Movement declared the independence of Somaliland (flag pictured), an internationally unrecognized de facto sovereign state. | refimprove sections |
| Alexander Suvorov |d|1800 | inappropriate tone |
| Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry |b|1778 | lots of CN tags (12) |
| * 1980 – Mount St. Helens explosively erupted, killing approximately 57 people in southern Washington state, reducing hundreds of square miles to wasteland, and causing more than US$1 billion in damage. | Tagged as misleading |
Eligible
- 1388 – At the Battle of Buir Lake, a Ming Chinese army led by general Lan Yu defeated the forces of Tögüs Temür, the Mongol khan of Northern Yuan.
- 1863 – American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant led his Army of the Tennessee across the Big Black River in preparation for the Siege of Vicksburg.
- 1896 – Ruling in the landmark decision Plessy v. Ferguson, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legality of racial segregation in public transportation under the "separate but equal" doctrine.
- 1926 – Pentecostal evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson was reportedly kidnapped near Venice Beach in Los Angeles before reappearing five weeks later in Mexico.
- 1933 – U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority to stimulate the economic development of the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly impacted by the Great Depression.
- 1936 – In a crime that captivated Japan, Sada Abe (pictured) strangled her lover, cut off his genitals, and carried them around with her for several days until her arrest.
- 1944 – The Soviet Union forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR and elsewhere in the country.
- 1952 – First Indochina War: Viet Minh forces overran a French and Laotian garrison at Muong Khoua, leaving only four survivors.
- 1955 – Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.
- 1965 – Eli Cohen, a spy who is credited with gathering significant intelligence used by Israel during the Six-Day War, was publicly hanged in Syria.
- 1974 – India conducted its first nuclear test explosion at Pokhran, the first confirmed nuclear test by a nation outside the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council.
- 1996 – Ireland won the Eurovision song contest for the seventh time, the highest number of wins for any country before Sweden tied it in 2023.
- 2005 – The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion publicly debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.
- 2006 – The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.
- Born/died this day: | Omar Khayyam |b|1048| Guido Luca Ferrero |b|1537| John George Children |b|1777| Elijah Craig |d|1808| William Hood Simpson |b|1888| Hedley Verity |b|1905| Charles Louis Alphonse Laveran |d|1922| Frank Hsieh |b|1946| Mary McLeod Bethune |d|1955| Ian Curtis |d|1980|
Notes
- Pokhran-II (1998) appears on May 11, so Smiling Buddha should not appear in the same year
- Brown v. Board of Education (1954) appears on May 17, so Plessy v. Ferguson should not appear the same year
- Lassen Peak appears on May 22, so 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens should not appear the same year
May 18: Haitian Flag Day in Haiti (1803); Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Crimean Tatar Genocide in Ukraine
The Bath School after the explosions
- 1302 – Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.
- 1695 – An earthquake measuring Ms7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.
- 1927 – Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle (aftermath pictured), causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.
- 2009 – The Sri Lanka Army killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to bring an end to the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War.
- Thomas Midgley Jr. (b. 1889)
- Ester Boserup (b. 1910)
- Jean-François Théodore (d. 2015)