May 18 in History

1302 - The weaver Peter de Coningk led a massacre of the Flemish oligarchs. 

1642 - Montreal, Canada, was founded. 

1643 - Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, was granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king's will. 

1652 - In Rhode Island, a law was passed that made slavery illegal in North America. It was the first law of its kind. 

1792 - Russian troops invaded Poland. 

1798 - The first Secretary of the U.S. Navy was appointed. He was Benjamin Stoddert. 

1802 - Great Britain declared war on Napoleon's France. 

1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor by the French Senate. 

1828 - Battle of Las Piedras ended the conflict between Uruguay and Brazil. 

1896 - The U.S. Supreme court upheld the "separate but equal" policy in the Plessy vs. Ferguson decision. The ruling was overturned 58 years later with Brown vs. Board of Education. 

1897 - A public reading of Bram Stoker's new novel, "Dracula, or, The Un-dead," was performed in London. 

1904 - Brigand Raizuli kidnapped American Ion H. Perdicaris in Morocco. 

1917 - The U.S. Congress passed the Selective Service act, which called up soldiers to fight in World War I. 

1926 - Evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson vanished while visiting a beach in Venice, CA. She reappeared a month later with the claim that she had been kidnapped. 

1931 - Japanese pilot Seiji Yoshihara crashed his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the first to cross the ocean nonstop. He was picked up seven hours later by a passing ship. 

1933 - The Tennessee Valley Authority was created. 

1934 - The U.S. Congress approved an act, known as the "Lindberg Act," that called for the death penalty in interstate kidnapping cases. 

1942 - New York ended night baseball games for the duration of World War II. 

1944 - Monte Cassino, Europe's oldest Monastic house, was finally captured by the Allies in Italy. 

1949 - Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America was incorporated 

1951 - The United Nations moved its headquarters to New York City. 

1953 - The first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound, Jacqueline Cochran, piloted an F-86 Sabrejet over California at an average speed of 652.337 miles-per-hour. 

1974 - India became the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb. 

1980 - Mt. Saint Helens erupted in Washington state. 57 people were killed and 3 billion in damage was done. 

1983 - The U.S. Senate revised immigration laws and gave millions of illegal aliens legal status under an amnesty program. 

1994 - Israel's three decades of occupation in the Gaza Strip ended as Israeli troops completed their withdrawal and Palestinian authorities took over. 

1998 - The U.S. federal government and 20 states filed a sweeping antitrust case against Microsoft Corp., saying the computer software company had a "choke hold" on competitors which denied consumer choices by controlling 90% of the software market. 

1998 - U.S. federal officials arrested more than 130 people and seized $35 million. This was the end to an investigation of money laundering being done by a dozen Mexican banks and two drug-smuggling cartels.