San Francisco 1906

The Great San Francisco Earthquake topples buildings, killing thousands

Born on This Day

TBS Night Out

Conan O'Brien

1963 -

Emmy-winning talk-show host of "Late Night," "The Tonight Show" and "Conan."

Portrait Of Lucrezia Borgia 1480-1519

Lucrezia Borgia

1480 - 1519

Scheming Italian noblewoman during the Renaissance whose three marriages advanced the powerful Borgia family.

3rd Annual Academy Museum Gala - Arrivals

America Ferrera

1984 -

Emmy-winning actress who starred in "Real Women Have Curves," "Ugly Betty" and "Barbie."

Lucrezia BorgiaGetty Images

America FerreraWireImage

1923

APR18

Yankee Stadium opens in the Bronx, New York. The press nicknames it the “House that Ruth Built” for slugger Babe Ruth, and he marks the occasion with a three-run homer.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on April 18th

Martin Luther defiant at Diet of Worms

Martin Luther, the chief catalyst of Protestantism, defies the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V by refusing to recant his writings. He had been called to Worms, Germany, to appear before the Diet (assembly) of the Holy Roman Empire and answer charges of heresy. His response, known as the “Here I Stand” speech, would go down […]

Siege of Derry begins

James II, the former British king, begins a siege of Derry, a Protestant stronghold in Northern Ireland. In 1688, James II, a Catholic, was deposed by his Protestant daughter, Mary, and her husband, William of Orange, in a bloodless coup known as the Glorious Revolution. James fled to France and in 1689 landed in Ireland, […]

1:22m read

Revere and Dawes warn of British attack

On April 18, 1775, British troops march out of Boston on a mission to confiscate the American arsenal at Concord and to capture Patriot leaders Samuel Adams and John Hancock, known to be hiding at Lexington. As the British departed, Boston Patriots Paul Revere and William Dawes set out on horseback from the city to […]

2:56m read

Doolittle leads air raid on Tokyo

On April 18, 1942, 16 American B-25 bombers, launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet 650 miles east of Japan and commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle, attack the Japanese mainland. The now-famous Tokyo Raid did little real damage to Japan (wartime Premier Hideki Tojo was inspecting military bases during the raid; one B-25 […]

0:52m read

War correspondent Ernie Pyle killed

During World War II, journalist Ernie Pyle, America’s most popular war correspondent, is killed by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of Ie Shima in the Pacific. Pyle, born in Dana, Indiana, first began writing a column for the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain in 1935. Eventually syndicated to some 200 U.S. newspapers, Pyle’s column, which related […]

1:28m read

Federal court decides to release poet Ezra Pound from hospital for criminally insane

A federal court rules that Ezra Pound should no longer be held at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, D.C. Pound had been held for 13 years, following his arrest in Italy during World War II on charges of treason. Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho, and grew up in a suburb […]

Joan Benoit wins Boston Marathon, besting women’s record by almost three minutes

On April 18, 1983, Joan Benoit wins her second Boston Marathon in the women’s division with a time of 2:22:43, shattering the record time by nearly three minutes. The following year, she went on to win the first-ever women’s marathon at the Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles and became the first person to win […]

1:58m read

Suicide bomber destroys U.S. embassy in Beirut

The U.S. embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, is almost completely destroyed by a car-bomb explosion that kills 63 people, including the suicide bomber and 17 Americans. The terrorist attack was carried out in protest of the U.S. military presence in Lebanon. In 1975, a bloody civil war erupted in Lebanon, with Palestinian and leftist Muslim guerrillas […]

1:06m read

Dick Clark, host of “American Bandstand” and “New Year’s Rockin’ Eve,” dies

On April 18, 2012, Dick Clark, the TV personality and producer best known for hosting “American Bandstand,” an influential music-and-dance show that aired nationally from 1957 to 1989 and helped bring rock `n’ roll into the mainstream in the late 1950s, dies of a heart attack at age 82 in Santa Monica, California. The clean-cut, […]

2:22m read

Avalanche kills 16 Sherpas on Mt. Everest

On April 18, 2014, 16 Nepali mountaineering guides, most of them ethnic Sherpas, are killed by an avalanche on Mt. Everest. It was one of the deadliest accidents in the history of the Himalayan peak, which rises more than 29,000 feet above sea level and lies across the border between Nepal and China. The avalanche, […]

2:06m read

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