May is the fifth month of the year in our modern-day Gregorian calendar. In older versions of the ancient Roman calendar, May was the third month of the year. It became the fifth month when January and February were added to the calendar.
According to Gregory calendar, the day number 365 in a year and if it is a leap year then the day number is 366. May 18 has its own special significance in India and world history.
There are 31 days in May and it does not start or end on the same day of the week as any other month.
May’s birth flower is the Lily of the Valley and the Crataegus monogyna.
Here you will find some important events that happened today in Indian and world History on May 18. Read on to know more about this day.
List of Important Historical events of 18 May:
- 1703: Dutch and British troops capture the city of Cologne, Germany.
- 1756: Britain declares war against France.
- 1756: Great Britain declares war against France.
- 1769: The East India Company imposed several restrictions on the weavers of Bengal.
- 1794: Battle of Trecoing: French troops defeated the British Army.
- 1803: Great Britain starts a war on France, after which France is not allowed to withdraw from Dutch territory, which led to the war with Napoleon.
- 1804: Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor of France.
- 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte declared Emperor of the French by the French Senate.
- 1852: Massachusetts rules that all school children must attend school.
- 1860: Abraham Lincoln is elected as the US presidential candidate for the Republican Party.
- 1865: World Communication Day begins.
- 1888: The first gramophone record in the United States was played.
- 1912: The first Indian feature length film Shree Pundalik was released.
- 1940: German forces capture Brussels.
- 1950: 12 NATO member countries agreed to form a permanent organization to protect America and Europe.
- 1974: India became the sixth nuclear power country in the world with its first underground nuclear bomb test at Pokhran in Rajasthan. The trial was named ‘Smiling Buddha’.
- 1991: Helen Sherman, Britain’s first astronaut, flew to space. 27-year-old Helen departed from Kazakhstan in a Soviet space called Soyuz.
- 2004: Israeli soldiers killed 19 Palestinians in Israel’s Rafah displaced camp.
- 2012: Social networking company Facebook Inc. begins trading on Nasdaq.