November 18 Historical Events

The following events took place on November 18. The list is arranged in chronological order.

Found 51 events. Showing 1 - 30.

• 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 St. Elizabeth’s flood.
• 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.
• 1730
  The future 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 signs 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 considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey’s birthday.
• 1929
  Grand Banks earthquake: Off the south coast of Newfoundland in the Atlantic Ocean, a Richter magnitude 7.2 submarine earthquake, centered on the 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 Tsunesaburō Makiguchi and Jōsei Toda.
• 1938
  Trade union members elect John L. Lewis as the first president of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.