on this day

February 18

1478		George, the Duke of Clarence, who had opposed his brother Edward IV, is murdered in the Tower of London.
1688		Quakers in Germantown, Pa. adopt the fist formal antislavery resolution in America.
1813		Czar Alexander enters Warsaw at the head of his Army.
1861		Victor Emmanuel II becomes the first King of Italy.
1861		Jefferson F. Davis is inaugurated as the Confederacy‘s provisional president at a ceremony held in Montgomery, Ala.
1865		Union troops force the Confederates to abandon Fort Anderson, N.C.
1878		The bitter and bloody Lincoln County War begins with the murder of Billy the Kid‘s mentor, Englishman rancher John Tunstall.
1885		The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, is published in New York.
1907		600,000 tons of grain are sent to Russia to relieve the famine there.
1920		Vuillemin and Chalus complete their first flight over the Sahara Desert.
1932		Manchurian independence is formally declared.
1935		Rome reports sending troops to Italian Somalia.
1939		The Golden Gate Exposition opens in San Francisco.
1943		German General Erwin Rommel takes three towns in Tunisia, North Africa.
1944		The U.S. Army and Marines invade Eniwetok Atoll in the Pacific.
1945		U.S. Marines storm ashore at Iwo Jima.
1954		East and West Berlin drop thousands of propaganda leaflets on each other after the end of a month long truce.
1962		Robert F. Kennedy says that U.S. troops will stay in Vietnam until Communism is defeated.
1964		The United States cuts military aid to five nations in reprisal for having trade relations with Cuba.
1967		The National Art Gallery in Washington agrees to buy a Da Vinci for a record $5 million.
1968		Three U.S. pilots that were held by the Vietnamese arrive in Washington.
1972		The California Supreme Court voids the death penalty.
1974		Randolph Hearst is to give $2 million in free food for the poor in order to open talks for his daughter Patty.
1982		Mexico devalues the peso by 30 percent to fight an economic slide.
Born on February 18
1516		Queen Mary I, also known as Bloody Mary for her persecution of Protestants.
1795		George Peabody, U.S. merchant and philanthropist.
1848		Louis Comfort Tiffany, glassware artist and designer.
1859		Shalom Aleichem, Yiddish author.
1862		Charles M. Schwab, “Boy Wonder” of the steel industry. President of both U.S. Steel and Bethlehem Steel.
1892		Wendell Wilke, Presidential candidate against President Franklin Roosevelt.
1909		Wallace Stegner, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (Angle of Repose).
1922		Helen Gurley Brown, editor of Cosmopolitan magazine.
1929		Len Deighton, English spy writer (The Ipcress File).
1931		Toni Morrison, Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning author (The Bluest Eye, Beloved).
1934		Audre Lord, poet.