October 18 is the 291st day of the year (292nd in Leap years). There are 74 days remaining.

Events

• 1009 - The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a Christian church in Jerusalem, is completely destroyed by the "mad" Fatimid caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who hacks the Church's foundations down to bedrock.
• 1016 - The Danes defeat the Saxons in the Battle of Ashingdon.
• 1561 - Fourth Battle of Kawanakajima -- Takeda Shingen beats Uesugi Kenshin in the climax of their ongoing conflicts
• 1685 - Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes, which has protected French Protestants
• 1748 - Signing of the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle ended the War of the Austrian Succession.
• 1767 - Mason-Dixon line, survey separating Maryland from Pennsylvania completed
• 1851 - "Moby-Dick", by US-novelist Herman Melville, is first published as "The Whale" by Richard Bentley, London.
• 1860 - The Second Opium War finally ended at the Convention of Peking with the ratification of the Treaty of Tientsin, an unequal treaty.
• 1867 - United States takes possession of Alaska (Alaska Day)
• 1898 - United States takes possession of Puerto Rico.
• 1907 - Second Geneva Convention
• 1908 - Belgium annexes Congo Free State
• 1912 - Beginning of First Balkan War
• 1922 - The British Broadcasting Company was founded by a consortium to establish a nationwide network of radio transmitters to provide a national broadcasting service.
• 1925 - The Grand Ole Opry opens
• 1944 - Adolf Hitler orders the establishment of a German national militia
• 1944 - Soviet Union invades Czechoslovakia
• 1945 - The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the USA's plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory
• 1954 - Texas Instruments announces the first Transistor radio
• 1968 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono are fined UKP 150 after 168 grains of marijuana are found in their apartment in a police raid.
• 1969 - Jefferson Airplane member Paul Kantner is charged with possessin of marijuana on Hawaii.
• 1974 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre opens in theaters.
• 1977 - German Autumn: a set of events revolving around the kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the hijacking of the Lufthansa airplane by the Red Army Faction (RAF) came to an end when Schleyer was executed and various RAF members committed suicide. The German government stated that it would never again negotiate with terrorists.
• 1993 - Andreas Papandreou begins his second term as Prime Minister of Greece.
• 2003 - Bolivian Gas War: President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, was forced to resign and leave Bolivia.

Births

• 1405 - Pope Pius II (d. 1464)
• 1706 - Baldassare Galuppi, composer (d. 1785)
• 1741 - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, French general and author (d. 1803)
• 1785 - Thomas Love Peacock, English satirist (d. 1866)
• 1859 - Henri Bergson, writer (d. 1941)
• 1873 - Ivanoe Bonomi, former Prime Minister of Italy (d. 1951)
• 1898 - Lotte Lenya, singer, actress (d. 1981)
• 1898 - Shin'ichi Suzuki, violin player and teacher, creator of the Suzuki method (d. 1998)
• 1902 - Miriam Hopkins, actress (d. 1972)
• 1903 - Lina Radke, German athlete
• 1911 - Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, guru
• 1913 - Evelyn Venable Mohr, actress (d. 1993)
• 1918 - Bobby Troup, musician (d. 1999)
• 1919 - Anita O'Day, jazz singer
• 1919 - Pierre Elliott Trudeau, fifteenth Prime Minister of Canada (d. 2000)
• 1920 - Melina Mercouri, actress (d. 1994)
• 1921 - Jesse Helms, Senator from North Carolina
• 1926 - Chuck Berry, musician
• 1926 - Klaus Kinski, actor (d. 1991)
• 1927 - George C. Scott, actor (d. 1999)
• 1928 - Keith Jackson, American football commentator
• 1928 - Hugh Allan "Buddy" MacMaster, musician
• 1929 - Violeta Chamorro, President of Nicaragua
• 1934 - Inger Stevens, actress (d. 1970)
• 1934 - Chuck Swindoll, American evangelist
• 1935 - Peter Boyle, actor
• 1939 - Mike Ditka, American football player, coach, commentator
• 1939 - Lee Harvey Oswald, assassin (d. 1963)
• 1947 - Joe Morton, actor
• 1947 - Laura Nyro, singer, songwriter (d. 1997)
• 1948 - Ntozake Shange, author
• 1950 - Om Puri, actor
• 1950 - Wendy Wasserstein, playwright
• 1951 - Terry McMillan, author
• 1956 - Martina Navratilova, tennis player
• 1960 - Jean-Claude Van Damme
• 1961 - Wynton Marsalis, musician
• 1962 - Vincent Spano, actor
• 1976 - Azlea Antistia, erotic actress

Deaths

• 707 - Pope John VII
• 1141 - Austria and Duke of Bavaria
• 1417 - Pope Gregory XII
• 1503 - Pope Pius III
• 1545 - John Taverner, composer
• 1817 - Etienne-Nicolas Méhul, composer
• 1871 - Charles Babbage, mathematician and inventor of computing machines
• 1893 - Charles Gounod, composer
• 1921 - King Ludwig III of Bavaria
• 1931 - Thomas Edison, inventor
• 1959 - Boughera El Ouafi, Algerian athlete
• 1983 - Willie Jones, Major League Baseball player (b. 1925)
• 2000:
  • Julie London, singer, actress
  • Gwen Verdon, dancer, actress
• 2001 - Micheline Ostermeyer, French athlete and musician
• 2002:
  • Nikolai Rukavishnikov, cosmonaut
  • Roman Tam, a canto-pop singer (b. 1950)
• 2003:
  • Preston Smith, Governor of Texas (b. 1912)
  • Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Spanish writer
• 2004 - Veerappan, Indian forest bandit and sandalwood smuggler (b. 1945)

Holidays and obervances

• Christianity - Feast of Saint Luke
• Alaska: Alaska Day

October 17 - October 19 - September 18 - November 18 - more historical anniversaries