Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/January 18
This is a lists selected January 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. Before doing so, please review the selected anniversaries guidelines. If your suggestion is potentially controversial or relates to a day currently or soon to appear on the Main Page, post it on the talk page instead.
Please note:
- Events listed on the Main Page are selected based on article quality and to provide a diverse range of topics, rather than solely on the importance or significance of the events.
- Only four or five events are featured each day; therefore, not all important or significant events can be included.
- An event is generally excluded if it is already the subject of the scheduled featured article or picture of the day.
To report an error in content currently on the Main Page, see Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors. If a listed event is inaccurate, please first seek consensus and update the corresponding article before making changes here.
| ← January 17 | January 19 → |
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Staging area
Images
Use only ONE image at a time
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Satellite view of the Hawaiian Islands -
Emperor Huizong -
Jim Thorpe -
Wilhelm I of Germany -
Flag of the German Empire, 1871–1918 -
Elizabeth of York -
Houses at Kealakekua, Sandwich Islands, c. 1779 -
Marion Barry -
Legionella colonies under ultraviolet light
.svg)
Ineligible
| Blurb | Reason |
|---|---|
| Royal Thai Armed Forces Day in Thailand (1593); | refimprove section |
| The Week of Prayer for Christian Unity begins | lots of CN tags |
| Paryaya Festival inUdupi City, Karnataka, India (2025);}} | refimprove |
| 1126 – Emperor Huizong of the Song dynasty of China abdicated in favour of his son Qinzong. | refimprove section |
| 1486 – Elizabeth of York married King Henry VII, becoming queen consort of England. | Yellow "tone" banner |
| 1778 – English explorer James Cook became the first known European to reach the Sandwich Islands, now known as the Hawaiian Islands. | refimprove |
| 1866 – Frederick Binks, the first student, arrives at Wesley College in Melbourne, which is today one of the largest schools in Australia by enrolment. | Citations needed, problems with verifying blurb. |
| 1919 – World War I: The Paris Peace Conference opened to set the peace terms for the Central Powers. | refimprove section |
| 1955 – Chinese Civil War: The People's Liberation Army engaged the National Revolutionary Army on the Yijiangshan Islands, one of the last strongholds of nationalist forces near mainland China. | no footnotes |
| 1977 – The CDC announced that the lung infection Legionnaires' disease is caused by a previously unknown bacterium now known as Legionella. | Too much uncited |
| 2003 – Bushfires burning out of control began blazing through residential areas of Canberra, Australia, eventually killing four people and damaging or destroying more than 500 homes. | needs more footnotes |
| Damaris Cudworth Masham |b|1659 | source in the article states she was born in 1658, not 1659, and there is some confusion about which is correct; article doesn't clarify either way |
| Marthinus Nikolaas Ras |b|1853| | Orange tagged for notability and citations. Article states birthdate is uncertain |
Eligible
- 474 – The young child Leo II became the sole Byzantine emperor upon the death of his grandfather Leo I.
- 1535 – Francisco Pizarro founded Ciudad de los Reyes (present-day Lima, Peru) as the capital of the lands he conquered for the Spanish crown.
- 1788 – The armed tender HMS Supply, the first ship of the First Fleet, arrived at Botany Bay, Australia.
- 1915 – Japanese prime minister Ōkuma Shigenobu issued the Twenty-One Demands to China in a bid to increase Japan's power in East Asia.
- 1939 – The Cathedral of Christ the King, currently the cathedral for the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, was dedicated.
- 1943 – World War II: In Operation Iskra, the Red Army established a narrow land corridor to Leningrad, partially easing the protracted German siege.
- 1958 – Members of the Lumbee tribe arrived to protest at a Ku Klux Klan rally near Maxton, North Carolina, which turned into an armed confrontation between the two.
- 1958 – Willie O'Ree of the Boston Bruins played his first game in the National Hockey League, becoming the first black Canadian to compete in the NHL.
- 1983 – Singaporean communist activist Tan Chay Wa was executed, leading to a much-publicised trial of his brother for engraving 'subversive' material on the gravestone.
- 1990 – In a sting operation conducted by the FBI, Marion Barry (pictured), the mayor of Washington, D.C., was arrested for possession of crack cocaine.
- 2019 – An oil pipeline explosion killed 137 people in Tlahuelilpan, Mexico.
- Born/died: | Tamar of Georgia |d|1213| Jobst of Moravia |d|1411| Jean-François de Surville |b|1717| Jeanne Quinault |d|1783| César Cui |b|1835| Edward Bulwer-Lytton |d|1873| Aleksandra Ekster |b|1882| Goose Tatum |d|1967| Vinod Kambli |b|1972| Eugene Lee Yang |b|1986| N. T. Rama Rao |d|1996
Notes
- Overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii and Second voyage of James Cook both appear on January 17, so Hawaiian Islands should not appear in the same year
- First Fleet appears on January 26, so Botany Bay should not appear in the same year
January 18: World Religion Day (2026)
United Nations Memorial Cemetery
- 1871 – A number of previously independent states united to form the German Empire, with Wilhelm I as German Emperor.
- 1951 – Construction began in Busan, South Korea, on the United Nations Military Cemetery (pictured), the only United Nations cemetery in the world.
- 1956 – Navvab Safavi, an Iranian Shia cleric and the founder of the fundamentalist group Fada'iyan-e Islam, was executed with three of his followers for attempting to assassinate Prime Minister Hossein Ala'.
- 1969 – Thousands of Japanese police stormed the University of Tokyo after six months of nationwide leftist university student protests and occupations.
- 1983 – Thirty years after his death, the International Olympic Committee presented commemorative medals to the family of American athlete Jim Thorpe, who had been stripped of his gold medals for playing semi-professional baseball before the 1912 Summer Olympics.
- Isabella Jagiellon (b. 1519)
- Elena Arizmendi Mejía (b. 1884)
- Philippe Starck (b. 1949)
- Bruce Chatwin (d. 1989)
More anniversaries: