What is today history February 18

Today in History : 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 first 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 Wilkie, 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.