May 18 in History

Constantine I (27 February 272 – 22 May 337), also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from AD 306 to 337 and the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity. He played a pivotal role in elevating the status of Christianity in the Roman Empire, the Edict of Milan decriminalising Christian practice and ceasing Christian persecution. This was a turning point in the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. He founded the city of Constantinople (now Istanbul) and made it the capital of the Empire, which it remained for over a millennium. Born in Naissus, a city located in the province of Moesia Superior (now Niš, Serbia), Constantine was the son of Flavius Constantius, a Roman army officer from Moesia Superior, who would become one of the four emperors of the Tetrarchy. His mother, Helena, was a Greek woman of low birth, probably from Bithynia. Later canonised as a saint, she is credited for the conversion of her son in some traditions, though others believe that Constantine converted her. He served with distinction under emperors Diocletian and Galerius. He began his career by campaigning in the eastern provinces against the Persians, before being recalled to the west in AD 305 to fight with his father in the province of Britannia. After his father's death in 306, Constantine was proclaimed as augustus (emperor) by his army at Eboracum (York, England). He eventually emerged victorious in the civil wars of the Tetrarchy against the emperors Maxentius and Licinius to become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire by 324. Upon his accession, Constantine enacted many reforms to strengthen the empire. He restructured the government, separating civil and military authorities. To combat inflation, he introduced the solidus, a new gold coin that became the standard for Byzantine and European currencies for more than a thousand years. He disbanded the Praetorian Guard, which had supported Maxentius. The Roman army was reorganised to consist of mobile units (comitatenses), often around the emperor, to serve on campaigns against external enemies or Roman rebels, and frontier-garrison troops (limitanei) who could counter barbarian raids but were less and less effective against full-scale barbarian invasions. Constantine pursued campaigns against the tribes on the Roman frontiers—such as the Franks, the Alemanni, the Goths, and the Sarmatians—and resettled territories abandoned by his predecessors during the Crisis of the Third Century with citizens of Roman society. Although Constantine lived much of his life as a pagan, he later became a catechumen, as he began to favour Christianity in 312, finally being baptised by Eusebius of Nicomedia, an Arian bishop. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire. He convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the Christian statement of belief known as the Nicene Creed. On his orders, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was built at the site claimed to be the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem and was deemed the holiest place in Christendom. He has historically been referred to as the "First Christian Emperor" but while he did favour the Christian Church, some modern scholars debate his beliefs and even his comprehension of Christianity. He is venerated as a saint in Eastern Christianity and parts of Western Christianity, and he did much to push Christianity towards the mainstream of Roman culture. The age of Constantine marked a distinct epoch in the history of the Roman Empire and a pivotal moment in the evolution from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages. He built a new imperial residence in the city of Byzantium, which was officially renamed New Rome, while also taking on the name Constantinople in his honour. It subsequently served as the capital of the empire for more than a thousand years—with the Eastern Roman Empire for most of that period commonly referred to retrospectively as the Byzantine Empire in English. In leaving the empire to his sons and other members of the Constantinian dynasty, Constantine's immediate political legacy was the replacement of Diocletian's Tetrarchy with the principle of dynastic succession. His memory was held in high regard during the lifetime of his children and for centuries after his reign. The medieval church held him up as a paragon of virtue, while secular rulers invoked him as a symbol of imperial legitimacy. The rediscovery of anti-Constantinian sources in the early Renaissance engendered more critical appraisals of his reign, with modern and contemporary scholarship often seeking to balance the extremes of earlier accounts.

Louis II (825 – 12 August 875), sometimes called the Younger, was the king of Italy and emperor of the Carolingian Empire from 844, co-ruling with his father Lothair I until 855, after which he ruled alone. Louis's usual title was imperator augustus ("august emperor"), but he used imperator Romanorum ("emperor of the Romans") after his conquest of Bari in 871, which led to poor relations with the Eastern Roman Empire. He was called imperator Italiae ("emperor of Italy") in West Francia while the Byzantines called him Basileus Phrangias ("Emperor of Francia"). The chronicler Andreas of Bergamo, who is the main source for Louis's activities in southern Italy, notes that "after his death a great tribulation came to Italy."

Pope Benedict VIII (Latin: Benedictus VIII; c. 980 – 9 April 1024) was bishop of Rome and ruler of the Papal States from 18 May 1012 until 1024. He was born Theophylact of Tusculum to the noble family of the counts of Tusculum. Unusually for a medieval pope, he had strong authority both in Rome and abroad. Theophylact was born to Count Gregory I of Tusculum. The family had already produced three popes: John XI (r. 931–935), John XII (r. 955–964), and Benedict VII (r. 973–974). Theophylact became pope on 18 May 1012 and took the name Benedict VIII.

The First Crusade (1096–1099) was the first of a series of religious wars, or Crusades, which were initiated, supported and at times directed by the Latin Church in the Middle Ages. Their aim was to return the Holy Land to Christian rule after its conquest by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 7th century. By the 11th century, although Jerusalem had then been ruled by Muslims for hundreds of years, the practices of the Seljuk rulers in the region began to threaten local Christian populations, pilgrimages from the West, and the Byzantine Empire itself. The earliest impetus for the First Crusade came in 1095 when Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos sent ambassadors to the Council of Piacenza to request military support in the empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, at which Pope Urban II gave a speech supporting the Byzantine request and urging faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Henry II was King of England from 1154 until his death in 1189. During his reign he controlled England, limited parts of Wales and Ireland, and much of France, an area that was later called the Angevin Empire, and also held power over Scotland for a time and the Duchy of Brittany.

The Principality of Antioch (Latin: Principatus Antiochenus; Norman: Princeté de Antioch) was one of the Crusader states created during the First Crusade which included parts of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) and Syria. The principality was much smaller than the County of Edessa or the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It extended around the northeastern edge of the Mediterranean, bordering the County of Tripoli to the south, Edessa to the east, and the Byzantine Empire or the Kingdom of Armenia to the northwest, depending on the date. It had roughly 20,000 inhabitants in the 12th century, most of whom were Armenians and Greek Orthodox Christians, with a few Muslims outside the Antioch city itself. Most of the crusaders who settled there were of Norman origin, notably from the Duchy of Apulia and Calabria in southern Italy, as were the first rulers of the principality, who surrounded themselves with loyal subjects. Few of the inhabitants apart from the crusaders were Roman Catholic even though the city was under the jurisdiction of the Latin Patriarchate of Antioch, established in 1100. This patriarchate would endure as a titular one after the Crusades, until it was dropped in 1964.

The siege of Acre took place in 1291 and resulted in the Crusaders' losing control of Acre to the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt. It is considered one of the most important battles of the period. Although the crusading movement continued for several more centuries, the capture of the city marked the end of further crusades to the Levant. When Acre fell, the Crusaders lost their last major stronghold of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem.

The Matins of Bruges (Dutch: Brugse Metten) was the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges and their Leliaards supporters, a political faction in favour of French rule, on 18 May 1302 by the members of the local Flemish militia. It has been named "Matins" (after a monastic liturgy) in analogy to the Sicilian Vespers of 1282. The revolt led to the Battle of the Golden Spurs, which saw the Flemish militia defeat French troops on 11 July 1302.

The Battle of Buir Lake was fought between the Ming and Northern Yuan dynasties at the Buir Lake in 1388. The Ming army was led by General Lan Yu, who undertook the military campaign against the Northern Yuan horde led by Tögüs Temür. The Ming army defeated the Northern Yuan horde at the Buir Lake and captured many of their people.

Alonso de Ojeda (Spanish pronunciation: [aˈlonso ðe oˈxeða]; c. 1466 – c. 1515) was a Spanish explorer, governor and conquistador. He is famous for having named Venezuela, which he explored during his first two expeditions, for having been the first European to visit Guyana, Curaçao, Colombia (La Guajira) and Lake Maracaibo, and later for founding Santa Cruz (La Guairita). He also travelled to Trinidad, Tobago and Aruba, in some of his travels he journeyed with Amerigo Vespucci and Juan de la Cosa. Ojeda was part of the first wave of Spanish conquistadors in the Americas.

The Great Siege of Malta (Maltese: L-Assedju l-Kbir) occurred in 1565 when the Ottoman Empire attempted to conquer the island of Malta, then held by the Knights Hospitaller. The siege lasted nearly four months, from 18 May to 8 September 1565. The Knights Hospitaller had been headquartered in Malta since 1530, after being driven out of Rhodes, also by the Ottomans, in 1522, following the siege of Rhodes. The Ottomans first attempted to take Malta in 1551 but failed. In 1565, Suleiman the Magnificent, the Ottoman Sultan, made a second attempt to take Malta. The Knights, who numbered around 500 together with approximately 6,000 footsoldiers, withstood the siege and repelled the invaders. This victory became one of the most celebrated events of sixteenth-century Europe, to the point that Voltaire said in 1753: Rien n’est plus connu que ce siége, où la fortune de Soliman échoua ("Nothing is more known than this siege, where the fortune of Suleiman failed)." It undoubtedly contributed to the eventual erosion of the European perception of Ottoman invincibility, although the Mediterranean continued to be contested between Christian coalitions and the Muslim Turks for many years.

Dorchester is a neighborhood comprising more than 6 square miles (16 km2) in the city of Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Originally, Dorchester was a separate town, founded by Puritans who emigrated in 1630 from Dorchester, Dorset, England, to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This dissolved municipality, Boston's largest neighborhood by far, is often divided by city planners in order to create two planning areas roughly equivalent in size and population to other Boston neighborhoods.

The 1695 Linfen earthquake struck Shanxi Province in North China, Qing dynasty on May 18. Occurring at a shallow depth within the continental crust, the surface-wave magnitude 7.8 earthquake had a maximum intensity of XI on the China seismic intensity scale and Mercalli intensity scale. This devastating earthquake affected over 120 counties across eight provinces of modern-day China. An estimated 52,600 people died in the earthquake, although the death toll may have been 176,365.

The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 1763, was a global war fought by numerous great powers, primarily in Europe, with significant subsidiary campaigns in North America and the Indian subcontinent. The primary warring states were Great Britain and Prussia fighting against France and Austria, with other countries joining these coalitions: Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Russia, plus Saxony and many other minor states of the Holy Roman Empire. Related conflicts include the Third Silesian War, French and Indian War, Third Carnatic War, Anglo-Spanish War (1762–1763), and Spanish–Portuguese War. Although the War of the Austrian Succession ended with the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748), none of the signatories were happy with the terms, and it was generally viewed as a temporary armistice. It led to a strategic realignment known as the Diplomatic Revolution that ended the long-running rivalry between Austria and France. The two declared war on Britain after signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1756, with a second agreement in 1757 bringing Prussia into the war on the side of Britain. Spain became a French ally in 1762, unsuccessfully invading Portugal, and losing Havana and Manila to Britain. Although these were returned under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, France lost its possessions in North America, while Britain established its commercial dominance in India. The conflict in Europe centred on Austrian attempts to recover Silesia, and ended with the Treaty of Hubertusburg in 1763. This confirmed Prussian occupation of Silesia and its status as a great power, challenging Austria for dominance within Germany and altering the European balance of power.

United Empire Loyalist is an honorific title which was first given by the 1st Lord Dorchester, the governor of Quebec and governor general of the Canadas, to American Loyalists who resettled in British North America during or after the American Revolution. At that time, the demonym Canadian or Canadien was used by the descendants of New France settlers inhabiting the Province of Quebec.

The Battle of Tourcoing (17–18 May 1794) saw a Republican French army directed by General of Division Joseph Souham defend against an attack by a Coalition army led by Emperor Francis II and Austrian Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The French army was temporarily led by Souham in the absence of its normal commander Jean-Charles Pichegru. Threatened with encirclement, Souham and division commanders Jean Victor Marie Moreau and Jacques Philippe Bonnaud improvised a counterattack which defeated the Coalition's widely separated and poorly coordinated columns. The War of the First Coalition action was fought near the town of Tourcoing, north of Lille in northeastern France. The Coalition battle plan drawn up by Karl Mack von Leiberich launched six columns that attempted to envelop part of the French army holding an awkward bulge at Menen (Menin) and Kortrijk (Courtrai). On 17 May, the French defeated Georg Wilhelm von dem Bussche's small column while the columns of Count François of Clerfayt, Count Franz Joseph of Kinsky, and Archduke Charles made slow progress. On 18 May, Souham concentrated his main strength on the two center columns under the command of Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany and Rudolf Ritter von Otto, inflicting a costly setback on the Coalition's Austrian, British, Hanoverian, and Hessian troops. The action is sometimes referred to as the Battle of Tourcoin, a gesture towards the English pronunciation of the town.

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a global series of conflicts fought by a fluctuating array of European coalitions against the French First Republic (1803–1804) under the First Consul followed by the First French Empire (1804–1815) under the Emperor of the French, Napoleon. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802) and produced a period of French domination over continental Europe. The wars are categorised as seven conflicts, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: the War of the Third Coalition, War of the Fourth Coalition, War of the Fifth Coalition, War of the Sixth Coalition, War of the Seventh Coalition, the Peninsular War, and the French invasion of Russia. The first stage of the wars broke out when Britain declared war on France on 18 May 1803. After minor campaigns, Britain allied with Austria, Russia, and minor powers, to form the Third Coalition in April 1805. Napoleon defeated the allied Russo-Austrian armies in the subsequent war which climaxed in French victories at Ulm and at Austerlitz, leading to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire and Austria being forced to make peace. Britain and Russia remained at war with France. Concerned about increasing French power, Prussia joined Britain and Russia in the Fourth Coalition, which resumed war in October 1806. Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Jena-Auerstedt and the Russians at Friedland, bringing an uneasy peace to the continent by July 1807, and again leaving Britain as France's sole major enemy. Britain was unable to dispute French dominance on the continent but obtained hegemony over the seas after victories including Trafalgar. Russia used the interim peace to resolve wars with the Ottomans, Swedes, and Iranians. Hoping to isolate and weaken Britain economically through his Continental System, Napoleon launched an invasion of Portugal, the only remaining British ally in continental Europe. After occupying Lisbon in November 1807, and with the bulk of French troops present in Spain, Napoleon seized the opportunity to turn against his former ally, depose the reigning Spanish royal family, and declare his brother as Joseph I the King of Spain in 1808, to the disapproval of the Spanish populace. Spain joined Britain and Portugal, with the three powers engaging France in the Peninsular War. The diversion of French armies to the large new Anglo-Spanish front led to Austria reentering the conflict and forming the Fifth Coalition in April 1809, composed of Austria, Spain, and Britain. Austria won the Battle of Aspern-Essling but was defeated at Wagram, forcing the imposition of a harsh peace in October 1809. Britain, Spain, and Portugal remained at war with France. Concurrently Russia, unwilling to bear the economic consequences of reduced trade, violated the Continental System, prompting Napoleon to launch an invasion in June 1812. The resulting campaign was costly for both sides, but ultimately ended in disaster for France and the near-destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée. French forces retreated from Russia by December 1812 and began reconstituting their lost strength. Encouraged by the defeat, Austria, Prussia, and several minor powers joined Russia, Britain, and Spain in a Sixth Coalition and began a campaign against France. The Sixth Coalition defeated Napoleon at Leipzig in October 1813. The allies then invaded France on two fronts: the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians invaded France from the east, while the British, Spanish, and Portuguese invaded France from the west. Coalition troops captured Paris in March 1814, forced Napoleon to abdicate in April, exiled him to the island of Elba, and restored power to the Bourbons. Napoleon escaped exile in February 1815 and reassumed control of France for around one hundred days, igniting the eponymous conflict. The allies formed the Seventh Coalition, which defeated him at Waterloo in June 1815 and exiled him to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The wars had profound consequences on history. New methods of warfare were introduced, including mass conscription and guerrilla warfare. Politically, the wars greatly influenced Europe through the advancements in civil law brought about by the Napoleonic Code, which was largely retained where it was adopted, and the spread of nationalism and liberalism. Independence movements emerged in Spanish America as a direct consequence of the wars, leading to the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires. France's defeat led to the rise of Britain as the world's foremost naval and economic power, a status it would hold for the remainder of the century. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's borders and brought a relative peace to the continent, with no major great power conflicts until the Crimean War in 1853.

Napoleon Bonaparte (born Napoleone di Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was Emperor of the French from 18 May 1804 until his first abdication in 1814, with a brief restoration during the Hundred Days in 1815. He rose to prominence as a general during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe and the Middle East during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. As a statesman, he implemented numerous legal and administrative reforms in France and Europe. Born on the island of Corsica to a family of Italian origin, Napoleon moved to mainland France in 1779 and was commissioned as an officer in the French Royal Army in 1785. He supported the French Revolution in 1789 and promoted its cause in Corsica. He rose rapidly through the ranks after winning the siege of Toulon in 1793 and defeating royalist insurgents in Paris on 13 Vendémiaire in 1795. In 1796 he commanded a military campaign against the Austrians and their Italian allies in the War of the First Coalition, scoring decisive victories and becoming a national hero. He led an invasion of Egypt and Syria in 1798, which served as a springboard for his rise to political power. In November 1799 Napoleon engineered the Coup of 18 Brumaire against the French Directory and became First Consul of the Republic. He won the Battle of Marengo in 1800, which secured France's victory in the War of the Second Coalition, and in 1803 he sold the territory of Louisiana to the United States. In December 1804 Napoleon crowned himself Emperor of the French, further consolidating his power. The breakdown of the Treaty of Amiens led to the War of the Third Coalition by 1805. Napoleon shattered the coalition with a decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, which led to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. In the War of the Fourth Coalition, Napoleon defeated Prussia at the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt in 1806, marched his Grande Armée into Eastern Europe, and defeated the Russians in 1807 at the Battle of Friedland. Seeking to extend his trade embargo against Britain, Napoleon invaded the Iberian Peninsula and installed his brother Joseph as King of Spain in 1808, provoking the Peninsular War. In 1809 the Austrians again challenged France in the War of the Fifth Coalition, during which Napoleon consolidated his dominance over Europe after winning the Battle of Wagram. In the summer of 1812 he launched an invasion of Russia. After forcing the Russians to abandon Moscow following the Battle of Borodino, Napoleon briefly occupied the city before conducting a catastrophic retreat of his army that winter. In 1813 Prussia and Austria joined Russia in the War of the Sixth Coalition, in which Napoleon was decisively defeated at the Battle of Leipzig. The coalition invaded France and captured Paris, forcing Napoleon to abdicate in April 1814. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba and the Bourbons were restored to power. Ten months later Napoleon escaped from Elba with around a thousand men and marched on Paris, reclaiming control of the country. His opponents responded by forming a Seventh Coalition, which defeated him at the Battle of Waterloo in June 1815. Napoleon was exiled to the remote island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died of stomach cancer in 1821, aged 51. Since his death, Napoleon has maintained a prominent place in historical research and popular culture. He is considered one of the greatest military commanders in history, and Napoleonic tactics are still studied at military schools worldwide. His legacy endures through the legal and administrative reforms he enacted in France and Western Europe, most notably the Napoleonic Code. He established a system of public education, abolished the vestiges of feudalism, emancipated Jews and other religious minorities, abolished the Spanish Inquisition, enacted the principle of equality before the law for an emerging middle class, and centralized state power at the expense of religious authorities. His conquests also acted as a catalyst for political change and the development of nation-states. However, he remains controversial because of his role in wars that devastated Europe, his looting of conquered territories, and his mixed record on civil rights. He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and imprisoned critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in French colonies, banned the entry of black people and mulattos into France, reduced the civil rights of women and children, reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.

The Battle of Las Piedras was fought on May 18, 1811 as part of the Rio de la Plata war of independence. It was a resounding victory for the revolutionary forces, led by José Gervasio Artigas.

John Bellingham (c. 1769 – 18 May 1812) was an English merchant and perpetrator of the 1812 murder of Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to be assassinated.

The Disruption of 1843, also known as the Great Disruption, was a schism in 1843 in which 450 evangelical ministers broke away from the Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland. The main conflict was over whether the Church of Scotland or the British Government had the power to control clerical positions and benefits. The Disruption came at the end of a bitter conflict within the Church of Scotland, and had major effects in the church and upon Scottish civic life.

A United States presidential election was held on November 6, 1860. The Republican Party ticket of Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin emerged victorious. In 1860, the United States was divided over the issue of slavery, and four major political parties had nominated candidates in the 1860 presidential election. Incumbent president James Buchanan, a Democrat, did not seek re-election. The anti-slavery Republican Party nominated Abraham Lincoln, who previously had been a one-term Whig Representative from Illinois, for president. Its platform promised not to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed, but opposed its extension into the territories. A group of former Whigs and Know Nothings formed the Constitutional Union Party, which sought to avoid disunion by resolving divisions over slavery with some new compromise. The 1860 Constitutional Union Convention put forward former Tennessee senator John Bell for president. After the 1860 Democratic National Convention adjourned without agreeing on a nominee, a second convention nominated Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas as the Northern Democratic presidential candidate. Douglas's support for the concept of popular sovereignty, which called for each territory's settlers to decide the status of slavery within the territory, alienated many radical pro-slavery Southern Democrats. With President Buchanan's support, Southern Democrats held their own convention, nominating Vice President John C. Breckinridge of Kentucky for president. Lincoln received a majority in the Electoral College, with all his Electoral College votes coming from Northern states. He prevailed in 18 states, won 180 electoral votes, and received 39.7 percent of the popular vote. Douglas won the second-highest popular vote total, but won only the state of Missouri; he was the only candidate in the 1860 election to win electoral votes in both free and slave states. Breckinridge won 11 states, finishing third in the popular vote, while Bell finished fourth in the popular vote and won the electoral votes of the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia. In the last presidential election in which it appointed its presidential electors at the discretion of the state legislature rather than by popular vote (and was the only state to do so), the presidential electors of South Carolina cast their ballots for Breckinridge. The 1860 election was the first of six consecutive Republican presidential victories. Lincoln's election as the first Republican president served as the main catalyst for Southern secession and the American Civil War. His election motivated seven Southern states, all of which had voted for Breckinridge, to secede from the United States before Lincoln's inauguration on March 4, 1861. The Civil War began less than two months after the inauguration with the Battle of Fort Sumter, after which four more slave states seceded.

The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), which was formed in 1861 by states that had seceded from the Union to preserve slavery in the United States. The South saw slavery as threatened because of the election of Abraham Lincoln and the growing abolitionist movement in the North. The war ended with Union victory, the dissolution of the Confederacy and the abolition of slavery, freeing four million African Americans. Decades of controversy over slavery came to a head when Abraham Lincoln, a Republican who opposed slavery's expansion, won the 1860 presidential election. Seven slave states in the South responded to Lincoln's victory by seceding from the United States and forming the Confederate States of America. The Confederacy seized US forts and other federal assets in the South. The war began on April 12, 1861, when the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter in South Carolina. A wave of enthusiasm for war swept over the North and South, as military recruitment soared. Four more Southern states seceded after the war began and, led by its president, Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy comprised eleven states, containing a third of the US population. Four years of intense combat, mostly in the South, ensued. During 1861–1862 in the western theater, the Union made permanent gains, though in the eastern theater the conflict was inconclusive. The abolition of slavery became a Union war goal on January 1, 1863, when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared all slaves in rebel states to be free, applying to more than 3.5 million of the 4 million enslaved people in the country. To the west, the Union first destroyed the Confederacy's river navy by the summer of 1862, then much of its western armies, and seized New Orleans. The successful 1863 Union siege of Vicksburg split the Confederacy in two at the Mississippi River, while Confederate general Robert E. Lee's incursion north failed at the Battle of Gettysburg. General Ulysses S. Grant's western successes led Lincoln to promote him to command of all Union armies in 1864. Inflicting an ever-tightening naval blockade of Confederate ports, the Union marshaled resources and manpower to attack the Confederacy from all directions. This led to the fall of Atlanta in 1864 to Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, followed by his March to the Sea, which culminated in his taking Savannah. The last significant battles raged around the ten-month siege of Petersburg, gateway to the Confederate capital of Richmond. The Confederates abandoned Richmond, and on April 9, 1865, Lee surrendered to Grant following the Battle of Appomattox Court House, setting in motion the end of the war. Lincoln lived to see this victory but was shot by an assassin on April 14, dying the next day. By the end of the war, much of the South's infrastructure had been destroyed. The Confederacy collapsed, the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and four million enslaved black people were freed. The war-torn nation then entered the Reconstruction era in an attempt to rebuild the country, bring the former Confederate states back into the United States, and grant civil rights to freed slaves. The war is one of the most extensively studied and written about episodes in the history of the United States. It remains the subject of cultural and historiographical debate. Of continuing interest is the myth of the Lost Cause of the Confederacy. The war was among the first to use industrial warfare. Railroads, the electrical telegraph, steamships, the ironclad warship, and mass-produced weapons were widely used. The war left an estimated 700,000 soldiers dead, along with an undetermined number of civilian deaths, making it the deadliest in American history. The technology and brutality of the Civil War foreshadowed the coming world wars.

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that turn on questions of U.S. constitutional or federal law. It also has original jurisdiction over a narrow range of cases, specifically "all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party". In 1803, the court asserted the power of judicial review, the ability to invalidate a statute for violating a provision of the Constitution. It is also able to strike down presidential directives for violating either the Constitution or statutory law. Under Article Three of the United States Constitution, the composition and procedures of the Supreme Court were originally established by the 1st Congress through the Judiciary Act of 1789. As currently constituted the court consists of nine justices—the chief justice of the United States and eight associate justices—who meet at the Supreme Court Building in Washington, D.C. Justices have lifetime tenure, meaning they remain on the court until they die, retire, resign, or are impeached and removed from office. When a vacancy occurs, the president, with the advice and consent of the Senate, appoints a new justice. Each justice has a single vote in deciding the cases argued before the court. When in the majority, the chief justice decides who writes the opinion of the court; otherwise, the most senior justice in the majority assigns the task. A justice may write an opinion in concurrence with the court, or they may write a dissent, and these concurrences or dissents may also be joined by other justices. On average, the Supreme Court receives about 7,000 petitions for writs of certiorari each year, but only grants about 80.

The Khodynka Tragedy (Russian: Ходынская трагедия) was a crowd crush that occurred on 30 May [O.S. 18 May] 1896, on Khodynka Field in Moscow, Russia. The crush happened during the festivities after the coronation of the last Emperor of Russia, Nicholas II. While 1,282 corpses were collected from the scene, injury estimates range widely from 1,200 to 20,000.

The cinema of India, consisting of motion pictures made by the Indian film industry, has had a large effect on world cinema since the second half of the 20th century. India does not have a single national film industry for any particular language; instead, Indian cinema is made up of various film industries, each focused on producing films in a specific language, such as Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Punjabi, Bhojpuri, Assamese, Odia and others.

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. One of the deadliest conflicts in history, World War I resulted in an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths, including those in war crimes and genocides. The war also helped spread the Spanish flu pandemic. The conflict saw important developments in weaponry, including the first large-scale use of machine guns, artillery, aircraft, chemical weapons, and tanks.

Evangelism, evangelisation, witnessing, or preaching the Gospel, is the act of sharing the Christian gospel, the message and teachings of Jesus Christ. It is typically done with the intention of converting others to Christianity. Evangelism can take several forms, such as personal conversations, preaching, media, and is especially associated with missionary work.

The Bath School disaster was a series of violent attacks perpetrated by Andrew Kehoe upon the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan, United States, on May 18, 1927. That morning, Kehoe, the school treasurer of Bath Township, detonated explosives he had previously planted underneath the school building, killing 38 people. As rescue efforts began, Kehoe drove to the school in a truck filled with explosives and shrapnel, where he detonated it, killing himself and four others. Earlier the same day, he had also destroyed his farmstead with explosives after having murdered his wife, Nellie Price Kehoe.

The Nationalist government, officially the National Government of the Republic of China was the government of China from 1925 to 1948. It was established by the Kuomintang (KMT) in Guangzhou after the reorganization of the Army and Navy Marshal stronghold. Following the Northern Expedition, the government was able to defeat and overthrow the Beiyang government and become the legitimate government of China with its capital settled in Nanjing since 1927. The Nationalist government lasted until 20 May 1948 when it dissolved itself and was replaced by a constitutional government following the promulgation of a formal constitution. During the period the KMT-led government ruled China as a one-party state.

The New Deal refers to a series of economic, social, and political reforms in response to the Great Depression in the United States under the first and second administrations of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Following a demand-side economic theory, Roosevelt sought to utilize the authority of the federal government to increase spending and introduce programs to spur growth and combat issues specific to the depression, such as unemployment, labor relations, financial reform, and social welfare.

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, with many engaging in total war on an unprecedented scale. World War II was the deadliest conflict in history, causing the deaths of 60 to 75 million people, a majority of whom were civilians. Millions died as a result of massacres, starvation, disease, and genocides including the Holocaust. After the Allied victory, Germany, Austria, Japan, and Korea were occupied, and German and Japanese leaders were tried for war crimes.

During the Sürgünlik ("exile"), at least 191,044 Crimean Tatars were subjected to ethnic cleansing and cultural genocide through deportation carried out by Soviet Union authorities from 18 to 20 May 1944. The deportation was supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, chief of Soviet state security and the secret police, and ordered by the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Within those three days, the NKVD used cattle trains to deport the Crimean Tatars, even Soviet Communist Party members and Red Army soldiers, from Crimea to the Uzbek SSR, several thousand kilometres away. They were one of several ethnicities that were subjected to Stalin's policy of population transfer in the Soviet Union.

The Legislative Yuan is the unicameral legislature of the Republic of China (Taiwan), located in Taipei. Since 2008, it is composed of 113 members who serve four-year terms. They are directly elected by voters in the Taiwan Area, through a parallel voting system.

Jacqueline Cochran was an American pilot and business executive. She pioneered women's aviation and was the first woman to break the sound barrier on 18 May 1953. Cochran was the wartime head of the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) (1943–1944), which employed about 1,000 civilian American women in a non-combat role to ferry planes from factories to port cities. Later on, Cochran was initially a sponsor of the Mercury 13 women astronaut program, before testifying against it in a congressional subcommittee.

Operation Passage to Freedom was a term used by the United States Navy to describe the propaganda effort and the assistance in transporting 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to non-communist South Vietnam between the years 1954 and 1955. The French and other countries may have transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of French Indochina after eight years of war between the French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which fought for Vietnamese independence under communist rule. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel north, with Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the French-backed State of Vietnam in the south. The agreements allowed a 300-day period of grace, ending on May 18, 1955, in which people could move freely between the two Vietnams before the border was sealed. The partition was intended to be temporary, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country under a national government. Between 600,000 and one million people moved south, including more than 200,000 French citizens and soldiers in the French army while between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved in the opposite direction.

The Provisional Government of the Algerian Republic was the government-in-exile of the Algerian National Liberation Front (FLN) during the latter part of the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962).

Eliyahu Ben-Shaul Cohen was an Egyptian-born Israeli spy. He is best known for his espionage work in Syria between 1961 and 1965, where he developed close relationships with the Syrian political and military hierarchy.

The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. The Apollo program was conceived in 1960 in the Dwight D. Eisenhower presidency during Project Mercury and executed after Project Gemini. The Apollo program was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in his address to the U.S. Congress on May 25, 1961.

Kharkiv International Airport is an airport located in Kharkiv, Ukraine.

Aeroflot Flight 109 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight from Moscow to Chita with stopovers in Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, and Irkutsk. On the final leg of the route on 18 May 1973 a terrorist hijacked the aircraft, demanding to be flown to China; the terrorist's bomb detonated in flight after he was shot by the air marshal. The aircraft broke-up at altitude, killing all 81 on board.

Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of their explosion. Over 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out since 1945. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to signal strength. Because of their destruction and fallout, testing has seen opposition by civilians as well as governments, with international bans having been agreed on. Thousands of tests have been performed, with most in the second half of the 20th century.

Likud, officially known as Likud – National Liberal Movement, is a major right-wing political party in Israel. It was founded in 1973 by Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon in an alliance with several right-wing parties. Likud's landslide victory in the 1977 elections was a major turning point in the country's political history, marking the first time the left had lost power. In addition, it was the first time in Israel that a right-wing party received the most votes. After ruling the country for most of the 1980s, the party lost the Knesset election in 1992. Likud's candidate Benjamin Netanyahu won the vote for prime minister in 1996 and was given the task of forming a government after the 1996 elections following Yitzak Rabin's assassination. Netanyahu's government fell apart after a vote of no confidence, which led to elections being called in 1999 and Likud losing power to the One Israel coalition led by Ehud Barak.

Mount St. Helens is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It lies 52 miles (83 km) northeast of Portland, Oregon, and 98 miles (158 km) south of Seattle. Mount St. Helens takes its English name from that of the British diplomat Alleyne FitzHerbert, 1st Baron St Helens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver who surveyed the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire.

The Gwangju Uprising, also known in South Korea as the May 18 Democratization Movement, was a series of student-led demonstrations that took place in Gwangju, South Korea, in May 1980, against the coup d'état of May Seventeenth by Chun Doo-hwan that strengthened his power. Chun had previously taken power and become military dictator through the coup d'état of December Twelfth at the end of 1979. He implemented martial law, arrested opposition leaders, closed all universities, banned political activities, and suppressed the press. The uprising was violently suppressed by the South Korean military who retook Gwangju. Between 600 and 2,300 people were killed.

The TGV is the generic name of the trainsets used for the intercity high-speed rail service run by France's national rail operator, SNCF Voyageurs. It is also a quasi-generic initialism for high-speed trains in French, even when not operated by SNCF Voyageurs. With commercial operating speeds of up to 320 km/h (200 mph) on the newer lines, the TGV was conceived at the same period as other technological projects such as the Ariane 1 rocket and Concorde supersonic airliner; sponsored by the Government of France, those funding programmes were known as champion national policies. In 2025, the TGV network in France carried 168 million passengers.

Somalia, officially the Federal Republic of Somalia, is the easternmost country in continental Africa. Stretching across the Horn of Africa, it borders Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the northwest, Kenya to the southwest, the Gulf of Aden to the north, and the Indian Ocean to the east. Somalia has the longest coastline on Africa's mainland. Somalia has an estimated population over 19 million, of which 2.7 million live in the capital and largest city, Mogadishu. As one of Africa's most ethnically homogeneous countries, around 85% of its residents are ethnic Somalis. The official and national language of the country is Somali, and Arabic is recognised as a second language. The overwhelming majority of the population are Sunni Muslims.

Nørrebro is one of the 10 official districts of Copenhagen Municipality, Denmark. It is northwest of the city centre, beyond the location of the old Northern Gate (Nørreport), which, until dismantled in 1856, was near the current Nørreport station.

The Gaza Strip, also known simply as Gaza, is the smaller of the two Palestinian territories that make up the State of Palestine in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. Gaza is bordered by Egypt on the southwest, Israel on the east and north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Its capital and largest city is Gaza City.

The Hubble Space Telescope is a space telescope that was launched into low Earth orbit in 1990 and remains in operation. It was not the first space telescope, but it is one of the largest and most versatile, renowned as a vital research tool and as a public relations boon for astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope is named after astronomer Edwin Hubble and is one of NASA's Great Observatories. The Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) selects Hubble's targets and processes the resulting data, while the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) controls the spacecraft.

The 2006 Nepal revolution, also known as the Democracy Movement, was a political movement in Nepal opposed to the authoritarian, absolutist form of monarchy adopted by King Gyanendra of Nepal. The movement was the second protest against the monarchy, following the first revolution.

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam was a Tamil militant organization, that was based in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. LTTE sought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the northeast of the island in response to violent persecution and discriminatory policies against Sri Lankan Tamils by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government.

The 2015 Salgar landslide was a landslide that struck the municipality of Salgar in Colombia on May 18, 2015. The landside was triggered by heavy rains that fell on the watershed of the Libordiana stream, and resulted in around 100 deaths and the destruction of portions of the residential area of Salgar. While the government of Colombia and several international agencies provided aid to the area following the landslide, the long-term efforts to restore the area to its pre-landslide state have been the subject of sociological study to determine its effectiveness in reducing the vulnerability of the area to such a disaster.

Cubana de Aviación Flight 0972 was a scheduled domestic flight operated by Mexican charter airline Global Air on behalf of Cubana de Aviación, from José Martí International Airport, Havana, Cuba, to Frank País Airport in Holguín, Cuba. On 18 May 2018, the 39-year-old Boeing 737-200 operating the route crashed shortly after takeoff, near Santiago de las Vegas, 19 kilometres from Havana city centre. Of those on board, 112 died and one passenger survived with critical injuries. There were initially four survivors, but three of them later died at a local hospital. Most of the passengers on board were Cuban nationals, although the crew was entirely Mexican.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 3, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former vice president Joe Biden and California junior senator Kamala Harris defeated the incumbent Republican president Donald Trump and vice president Mike Pence. The election saw the highest voter turnout by percentage since 1900. Biden received more than 81 million votes, the most votes ever cast for a presidential candidate in U.S. history.

On May 18, 2026, a shooting occurred at the Islamic Center of San Diego (ICSD), the largest mosque in San Diego, California, United States. Two gunmen, 17-year-old Cain Lee Clark and 18-year-old Caleb Liam Vazquez, fatally shot a security guard and two community members outside the mosque before fleeing. Subsequently, they shot at a landscaper in a drive-by shooting and committed suicide in a nearby neighborhood. They had originally planned other shootings.