Year 1778
Captain James Cook became the first European to reach the Hawaiian Islands.
JANUARY 18
Daily Historical Chronicle
UPSC CSE • State PSC • SSC CGL Matrix
18 January: What Happened On This Day in History
Curated historical timeline of momentous political pacts, freedom struggle uprisings, constitutional developments, scientific breakthroughs, and prominent birthdays recorded on 18 January.
Year 1896
First exposure to the X-ray machine.
Year 1911
Eugene B. Ilay landed on the USS Pennsylvania, anchored in the port of San Francisco. It was the first time a plane had landed on a ship.
Year 1919
Establishment of Bentley Motors Limited.
Year 1951
First lie machine used in the Netherlands.
Year 1959
Meera Ben (Madeline Slade), an aide of Mahatma Gandhi, left India.
Year 1964
Inauguration of the World Trade Center building in New York.
Year 1974
A peace treaty signed between Egypt and Israel.
Year 1997
Norway’s Borg Ausland crosses the Atlantic Ocean alone.
Year 1997
Nafisa Joseph became Miss India.
Year 1998
Madan Mohan Poonchi became the 28th Chief Justice of India.
Year 1999
Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen awarded the Bharat Ratna, the highest civilian honor of India.
Year 2002
The US agreed to provide state-of-the-art weapons to India.
Year 2005
The world’s largest passenger plane, the Airbus A380, was unveiled.
Year 2007
The strongest storm in the United Kingdom in 17 years kills 14 people and Germany sees the worst storm since 1999 with 13 deaths. Cyclone Kyrill causes at least 44 deaths across 20 countries in Western Europe.
Year 2008
The Euphronios Krater is unveiled in Rome after being returned to Italy by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Year 2018
A bus catches fire on the Samara–Shymkent road in Yrgyz District, Aktobe, Kazakhstan.[5] The fire kills 52 passengers, with three passengers and two drivers escaping.
Born 1689
Montesquieu, a French judge, the man of letters, and political philosopher.
Born 1842
Mahadev Govind Ranade, an Indian scholar, social reformer, judge, and author.
Born 1854
Thomas A. Watson, an assistant to Alexander Graham Bell, notably in the invention of the telephone.
Born 1882
A. A. Milne, an English author.
Born 1892
Oliver Hardy, an American comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy.
Born 1927
Sundaram Balachander, Indian actor, singer, and veena player (d. 1990)
Born 1969
Dave Bautista, an American actor, retired professional wrestler, former mixed martial artist, and bodybuilder.
Born 1933
Ray Dolby, an American engineer, and inventor of the noise reduction system known as Dolby NR.
Born 1937
John Hume, an Irish nationalist politician from Northern Ireland.
Born 1952
Veerappan, an Indian bandit.
Born 1966
Alexander Khalifman, a Russian chess player and writer.
Born 1972
Vinod Kambli, a former Indian cricketer.
Died 1936
Rudyard Kipling, an English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist.
Died 1947
K. L. Saigal, an Indian singer, and actor.
Died 1955
Saadat Hasan Manto, a colonial Indian and Pakistani writer, playwright, and author.
Died 1971
Nath Pai, an Indian freedom fighter, Barrister, and Member of Parliament.
Died 1993
Wasif Ali Wasif, a teacher, writer, poet, and Sufi intellectual from Pakistan.
Died 1996
N. T. Rama Rao, popularly known as NTR, an Indian actor, producer, director, film editor, politician, and the former Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh.
Died 2003
Harivansh Rai Bachchan, an Indian poet of the Nayi Kavita literary movement of early 20th century Hindi literature.
Died 2003
Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Indian poet and author (b. 1907): Harivansh Rai Bachchan was an Indian poet of the Nayi Kavita literary movement of early 20th century Hindi literature. Born in the village of Babupatti, in the district of Pratapgarh, in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh in British India, he was also a poet of the Hindi Kavi Sammelan.
Died 2012
Anthony Gonsalves, Indian composer and educator (b. 1927)