On April 18, 1906, a major earthquake struck San Francisco and set off
raging fires. More than 3,000 people died.
On April 18, 1857, Clarence Darrow, the defense attorney in many dramatic criminal trials, was born. Following his death on March 13, 1938, his obituary appeared in The Times.
Go to obituary » | Other birthdays »
On This Date
| 1775 | Paul Revere began his ride from Charlestown to Lexington, Mass., warning American colonists that the British were coming. |
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| 1923 | The first baseball game was played at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, with New York beating the Boston Red Sox 4-1. |
| 1942 | An air squadron led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle raided Tokyo and other Japanese cities. |
| 1946 | The League of Nations went out of business. |
| 1949 | The Irish Republic was proclaimed. |
| 1955 | Physicist Albert Einstein died at age 76. |
| 1956 | Actress Grace Kelly married Prince Rainier of Monaco. |
| 1978 | The U.S. Senate approved the Panama Canal Treaty, providing for the complete turnover of control of the waterway to Panama on the last day of 1999. |
| 1983 | A suicide bomber killed 63 people, including 17 Americans, at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. |
| 1989 | Thousands of Chinese students demanding democracy tried to storm Communist Party headquarters in Beijing. |
| 1999 | Wayne Gretzky, the National Hockey League's all-time leading scorer, played his last professional game, at Madison Square Garden in New York. |
| 2004 | Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero ordered a withdrawal of Spanish troops from Iraq. |
| 2007 | The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld a federal ban on a medical procedure that opponents calls partial-birth abortion. |
| 2011 | Standard & Poor's lowered its long-term outlook for the U.S. government's fiscal health from "stable" to "negative." |
| 2012 | Dick Clark, the TV host and producer who helped bring rock 'n' roll into the mainstream on "American Bandstand" and rang in the New Year for the masses at Times Square, died at age 82. . |
Historic Birthdays
Clarence Darrow
4/18/1857 - 3/13/1938
American defense lawyer; represented Eugene V. Debs and John T. Scopes.Go to obituary »
| 39 |
Lucrezia Borgia 4/18/1480 - 6/24/1519 Italian Renaissance noblewoman of the Borgia family |
|---|---|
| 79 |
Gaetano Vestris 4/18/1729 - 9/23/1808 French ballet dancer |
| 61 |
George Henry Lewes 4/18/1817 - 11/28/1878 English philosopher, critic, actor, scientist and editor |
| 55 |
Carlos Cespedes 4/18/1819 - 3/22/1874 Cuban revolutionary; early fighter for independence from Spain |
| 104 |
Dhondo Keshav Karve 4/18/1858 - 11/9/1962 Indian social reformer; supported the education of women |
| 80 |
Max Weber 4/18/1881 - 10/4/1961 Russian-born American painter, printmaker and sculptor |
| 95 |
Leopold Stokowski 4/18/1882 - 9/13/1977 English-born American conductor |
| 93 |
George H. Hitchings 4/18/1905 - 2/27/1998 American Nobel Prize-winning pharmacologist (1988) |
| 79 |
Little Brother Montgomery 4/18/1906 - 9/6/1985 American jazz pianist and vocalist |