This is a list of selected August 18 anniversaries that appear in the "On this day" section of the Main Page. To suggest a new item, in most cases, you can be bold and edit this page. Please read the selected anniversaries guidelines before making your edit. However, if your addition might be controversial or on a day that is or will soon be on the Main Page, please post your suggestion on the talk page instead.
Please note that the events listed on the Main Page are chosen based more on relative article quality and to maintain a mix of topics, not based solely on how important or significant their subjects are. Only four to five events are posted at a time and thus not everything that is "most important and significant" can be listed. In addition, an event is generally not posted this year if it is also the subject of the scheduled featured article, featured list or picture of the day.
To report an error when this appears on the Main Page, see Main Page errors. Please remember that this list defers to the supporting articles, so it is best to achieve consensus and make any necessary changes there first.
Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Royal Australian Air Force helicopter -
Pierre Jules Janssen -
Helium atom nucleus -
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Margaret of Valois -
Phobos -
The depot ship Pamiat Azova, sunk at Kronstadt -
Statue of Alice Nutter, hanged during the Pendle witch trials -
White's discovery of the abandoned Roanoke Colony
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Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Paryushana begins (Svetambar Jains, 2017); | unreferenced section |
| 1572 – French Wars of Religion: Margaret of Valois married Huguenot King Henry of Navarre, in an attempt to reconcile Protestants and Catholics. | Lots of cn |
| 1868 – Astronomer Pierre Jules Janssen discovered helium while analysing the chromosphere of the sun during a total solar eclipse in Guntur, India. | refimprove section |
| 1917 – A fire destroyed about 9,500 homes in Thessaloniki, Greece, leaving 70,000 homeless. | refimprove |
| 1976 – North Korean soldiers killed two American soldiers in the Demilitarized Zone, heightening tensions over a poplar tree that blocked the line of sight between a UN Command checkpoint and an observation post. | refimprove section |
| 1989 – Leading Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galán was assassinated during a public demonstration in the town of Soacha, Cundinamarca. | lots of CN tags in one section |
| 2008 – War in Afghanistan: French ISAF forces were ambushed by Afghan militants, suffering heavy casualties. | unreferenced section |
| Agneta Horn |b|1629| | refimprove |
| Robert Redford |b|1936| | Too much uncited |
| Cameron White |b|1983| | Multiple cn tags |
Eligible
- Long Tan Day in Australia (1966)
- 1487 – Reconquista: After a four-month siege, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain conquered the city of Málaga from the Emirate of Granada.
- 1590 – John White, governor of the Roanoke Colony, the first English settlement in North America (located in present-day North Carolina), returned after a three-year absence to find it deserted (depicted).
- 1612 – The trials of the Pendle and Samlesbury witches (statue pictured), among the most famous of England's witch trials, began at the assizes in Lancaster.
- 1783 – A meteor procession blazed across the night sky over Great Britain.
- 1877 – American astronomer Asaph Hall discovered Phobos, the larger of Mars's two moons, six days after discovering Deimos, the smaller one.
- 1891 – A hurricane struck the Caribbean island of Martinique, killing about 700 people, injuring at least 1,000 others, and causing severe damage.
- 1919 – Russian Civil War: British motor torpedo boats raided the Bolshevik Baltic Fleet's home base of Kronstadt, sinking a depot ship and damaging a battleship.
- 1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the country.
- 1940 – Second World War: During the Battle of Britain, the Luftwaffe made an all-out effort to destroy RAF Fighter Command, with both sides combined losing more aircraft on this day than at any other point during the campaign.
- 1945 – World War II: Amid a Soviet invasion of Japanese-held Sakhalin, Japanese police massacred 18 Koreans in Kamishisuka.
- 1948 – Australia won the fifth Test of the 1948 Ashes series, becoming the first Test cricket team to go undefeated in England, earning them the nickname "The Invincibles".
- 1964 – East German Communist Party member Hildegard Trabant was killed while attempting to cross the Berlin Wall.
- 1966 – Vietnam War: Members of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Australian Regiment were surrounded by a much larger Viet Cong unit at the Battle of Long Tan, but held them off for several hours until reinforcements arrived.
- 1983 – Hurricane Alicia made landfall near Galveston, Texas, causing $3 billion in damage and 21 fatalities.
- 2008 – Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf resigned under pressure from a movement to impeach him.
- Born/died this day: | Olaf I of Denmark |d|1095| Baji Rao I |b|1700| Ruth Norman |b|1900| Learned Hand |d|1961| Jack Hobbs |b|1988
Notes
- Deimos (moon) appears on August 12, so Phobos should not appear in the same year
- 1915 Galveston hurricane appears on August 17, so Hurricane Alicia should not appear in the same year
August 18: Ghost Festival in China (2024)
Blackwater Fire
- 684 – Second Fitna: Umayyad partisans defeated the supporters of Abd Allah ibn al-Zubayr near Damascus, cementing Umayyad control of Syria.
- 1823 – At least 9,000 enslaved people rebelled in the British colony in Demerara-Essequibo (in present-day Guyana), demanding emancipation.
- 1864 – American Civil War: At the Battle of Globe Tavern, Union forces attempted to sever the Weldon Railroad during the siege of Petersburg.
- 1937 – A lightning strike started the Blackwater Fire (pictured) in Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming, consuming 1,700 acres (7 km2) of old-growth forest and killing 15 firefighters.
- 2017 – Two people were fatally stabbed and eight others wounded by a rejected asylum seeker in an Islamist terrorist attack in Turku, Finland.
- Knut Alvsson (d. 1502)
- Maria Ulfah Santoso (b. 1911)
- Edward Norton (b. 1969)
- Evan Gattis (b. 1986)