18 February History
- 1478 - George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, is murdered in the Tower of London.
- 1688 - Quakers in Germantown, Pa. adopt the fist formal antislavery resolution in America.
- 1813 - Czar Alexander enters Warsaw at the head of his Army.
- 1861 - Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first King of Italy.
- 1861 - Jefferson F. Davis is inaugurated as the Confederacy's provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, Ala.
- 1865 - Union troops force the Confederates to abandon Fort Anderson, N.C.
- 1878 - The bitter and bloody Lincoln County War begins with the murder of Billy the Kid's mentor, Englishman rancher John Tunstall.
- 1885 - The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is published in New York.
- 1907 - 600,000 tons of grain are sent to Russia to relieve the famine there.
- 1920 - Vuillemin and Chalus complete their first flight over the Sahara Desert.
- 1932 - Manchurian independence is formally declared.
- 1935 - Rome reports sending troops to Italian Somalia.
- 1939 - The Golden Gate Exposition opens in San Francisco.
- 1943 - German General Erwin Rommel takes three towns in Tunisia, North Africa.
- 1944 - The U.S. Army and Marines invade Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
- 1945 - U.S. Marines storm ashore at Iwo Jima.
- 1954 - East and West Berlin drop thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month long truce.
- 1962 - Robert F. Kennedy says that U.S. troops will stay in Vietnam until Communism is defeated.
- 1964 - The United States cuts military aid to five nations in reprisal for having trade relations with Cuba.
- 1967 - The National Art Gallery in Washington agrees to buy a Da Vinci for a record $5 million.
- 1968 - Three U.S. pilots that were held by the Vietnamese arrive in Washington.
- 1972 - The California Supreme Court voids the death penalty.
- 1974 - Randolph Hearst is to give $2 million in free food for the poor in order to open talks for his daughter Patty.
- 1982 - Mexico devalues the peso by 30 percent to fight an economic slide.
18 February Birthdays
- 1516 - Queen Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary for her persecution of Protestants.
- 1795 - George Peabody, U.S. merchant and philanthropist.
- 1848 - Louis Comfort Tiffany, glassware artist and designer.
- 1859 - Shalom Aleichem, Yiddish author.
- 1862 - Charles M. Schwab, "Boy Wonder" of the steel industry. President of both U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel.
- 1892 - Wendell Wilke, Presidential candidate against President Franklin Roosevelt.
- 1909 - Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Angle of Repose).
- 1922 - Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.
- 1929 - Len Deighton, English spy writer (The Ipcress File).
- 1931 - Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The Bluest Eye, Beloved).
- 1934 - Audre Lord, poet.