#TodayInHistory – May 18

May 18 – Some important events on this day

1291 👉🏼 After 100 years of Crusader control, Acre is the last Crusader stronghold reconquered and destroyed by the Mamluks under Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil
1302 👉🏼 Bruges Matins: the nocturnal massacre of the French garrison in Bruges by local Flemish militia
1652 👉🏼 Rhode Island enacts 1st law declaring slavery illegal
1765 👉🏼 Fire destroys a large part of Montreal, Quebec
1804 👉🏼Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed Emperor of France by the French Senate
1848 👉🏼 Opening of the first German National Assembly (Nationalversammlung) in Frankfurt, Germany 🇩🇪

1871 👉🏼 The Kiowa Chief Satanta joins with other Indians to massacre a wagon train near the Red River in northeastern Texas.
One of the leading chiefs of the Kiowa in the 1860s and 1870s, Satanta was a fearsome warrior but also a skilled orator and diplomat. He helped negotiate and signed treaties with the U.S. establishing a Kiowa reservation in Indian Territory (modern-day Oklahoma), but Satanta remained resistant to government efforts to force the Kiowa to abandon their nomadic ways.

1896 👉🏼 Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field, Moscow, during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II, results in the deaths of 1,389 people
1897 👉🏼 “Dracula” by Irish author Bram Stoker is published by Archibald Constable and Company in London 🧛🏻‍♂️
1934 👉🏼 Academy Award 1st called Oscar in print by Sidney Skolsky

1952 👉🏼 Professor WF Libby (the man who led the team that developed carbon-14 dating that revolutionized archaeology and the dating of artifacts, and winner of the 1962 Nobel prize in Chemistry) says Stonehenge dates back to 1848 BC.
Perhaps the most famous prehistoric monument in the world, Stonehenge is also its most architecturally sophisticated, and served as an important ceremonial site and burial place from Neolithic times to the Bronze Age.
The earliest henge constructions date from 3000 BC. These took the form of circular ditches with timber structures. From about 2500 BC the first stones were erected. Two types of stone were used, large saren stones and smaller bluestones, which were rearranged a number of times over 200-300 years and brought from considerable distance. The last major works which took place 1800-1500 BC were the digging of two rings of concentric pits.
Together with the nearby Avebury site it has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1986.

1955 👉🏼 28.7 cm rain falls at Lake Maloya New Mexico (state record) 🌧
1971 👉🏼 Bulgarian constitution goes into effect 🇧🇬
1971 👉🏼 Vampire rapist Wayne Boden’s last victim found in Calgary, Alberta 🇨🇦
1974 👉🏼 India becomes the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb 💣
1978 👉🏼 Italy legalizes abortion

1980 👉🏼 Mount St Helens erupts in Washington state, causing the largest landslide in history, killing 57 people and costing $1 billion in damage.
One of the most powerful and certainly the most disastrous volcanic eruption in American history, Mount St. Helens exploded on the morning of this day, killing 57 people and destroying the surrounding area. The eruption was the culmination of about three months of increasing volcanic activity. Earthquakes and magma reaching the surface of the volcano had created a large bulge on the mountain’s side. Thus, on May 18, an earthquake caused this bulge to collapse – the largest landslide ever recorded – and an eruption column burst almost 25.000 meters into the sky. The pyroclastic flow from the volcano reached gigantic speeds, as fast as 670 mph (1,080 km/h), and quite possibly breaking the sound barrier.
Ash was deposited in 11 states and several people, including 83-year-old innkeeper Harry R. Truman who ran a lodge near the volcano, were killed, and more than $1 billion in damage was incurred.

1999 👉🏼 “Millennium” 3rd studio album by the Backstreet Boys is released – one of the best-selling albums of all time, over 30 million copies sold 💿
2009 👉🏼 Sri Lankan Civil War: The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides. 🇱🇰