July 18 in History

Significant events that happened on this day.

Historical Events

2013

Detroit became the largest American city ever to file for bankruptcy

Once the wealthy heart of American manufacturing and the automobile industry, Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy with $18-20 billion in debt. The...

1995

Major League Baseball's All-Star Game was played indoors for the first time at the Astrodome in Houston

The 'Eighth Wonder of the World' hosted the midsummer classic in sweltering Texas heat, though fans inside enjoyed air conditioning. The National Leag...

1994

A massive bomb destroyed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people

The attack on the AMIA building was the deadliest in Argentine history and remains unsolved despite evidence pointing to Hezbollah. A suicide bomber d...

1976

Nadia Comăneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10.0 at the Olympics

Major

The 14-year-old Romanian gymnast achieved the feat on the uneven bars at the Montreal Olympics. The scoreboard couldn't display 10.00 because it had o...

1963

The first push-button telephone was made available to AT&T customers

The new Touch-Tone phones replaced rotary dials with buttons that produced different tones for each number. AT&T charged customers an extra $1.50 per...

1947

President Harry Truman signed the Presidential Succession Act, placing the Speaker of the House second in line

The act changed the order of succession to put elected officials (Speaker and President Pro Tempore of the Senate) ahead of Cabinet members. Truman fe...

1936

The Spanish Civil War began with a military uprising against the Second Spanish Republic

Major

General Francisco Franco led a military coup from Morocco that would spark a devastating three-year civil war. The conflict became a proxy war between...

1925

Adolf Hitler published the first volume of 'Mein Kampf' while imprisoned for treason

Major

Written during his incarceration following the failed Beer Hall Putsch, the book outlined Hitler's political ideology and future plans for Germany. In...

1921

Scientists isolated the hormone insulin at the University of Toronto, revolutionizing diabetes treatment

Major

Frederick Banting and Charles Best successfully extracted insulin from a dog's pancreas after weeks of experiments. Before insulin, a diabetes diagnos...

1918

Nelson Mandela was born in the village of Mvezo in South Africa

Major

The man who would become South Africa's first Black president and a global symbol of resistance to oppression was given the birth name Rolihlahla, whi...

1898

Marie and Pierre Curie announced the discovery of a new element they named polonium

Marie Curie named the element after her native Poland, which at the time did not exist as an independent nation but was partitioned between Russia, Pr...