November 18: What Happened on This Day in History (High_school Level)?

(Page last edited 10/12/2017)

1. 1493 - Christopher Columbus first sights the island now known as Puerto Rico.
2. 1626 - St. Peter's Basilica is consecrated.
3. 1803 - The Battle of Vertières, the last major battle of the Haitian Revolution, is fought, leading to the establishment of the Republic of Haiti, the first black republic in the Western Hemisphere.
4. 1865 - Mark Twain's short story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County is published in the New York Saturday Press.
5. 1883 - American and Canadian railroads institute five standard continental time zones, ending the confusion of thousands of local times.
6. 1903 - The Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty is signed by the United States andPanama, giving the United States exclusive rights over the Panama Canal Zone.
7. 1928 - Release of the animated short Steamboat Willie, the first fully synchronized sound cartoon, directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, featuring the third appearances of cartoon characters Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. This is also considered by the Disney corporation to be Mickey's birthday.
8. 1963 - The first push-button telephone goes into service.
9. 1978 - In Jonestown, Guyana, Jim Jones led his Peoples Temple cult to a mass murder-suicide that claimed 918 lives in all, 909 of them in Jonestown itself, including over 270 children. Congressman Leo J. Ryan is murdered by members of the Peoples Temple hours earlier.
10. 1988 - War on Drugs: U.S. President Ronald Reagan signs a bill into law allowing the death penalty for drug traffickers.
11. Famous Birthdays: Louis Daguerre (French physicist and photographer, developed the daguerreotype), W. S. Gilbert (English playwright, poet, and illustrator), Dorothy Dix (American journalist), George Gallup (American statistician and pollster), George Wald (American scientist, Nobel Prize laureate)

For famous birthdays and other daily events in history, visit our Daily Dose Activities.

Click Here for Yesterday in History: November 17

Click Here for Tomorrow in History: November 19

For more history resources on Internet 4 Classrooms, visit our Social Studies and History index. For Pre K-8th Grade Level History and Social Studies Resources, visit our Grade Level Index.