August 18

0472 Birth: Flavius Ricimer, general of the Western Roman Empire, kingmaker.

1227 Death: Genghis Khan, Mongol conqueror, and leader who will forge an empire stretching from the east coast of China west to the Aral Sea. He dies in camp during a campaign against the Chinese kingdom of Xi Xia.

1559 Death: Pope Paul IV, pope from 1555 to 1559. Note: His pontificate was marked by his implacable opposition to Spain, renewing the war between France and the Hapsburgs.

1587 Birth: Virginia Dare, first child born of English parents in the New World, on what is now Roanoke Island, North Carolina.

1590 John White, the governor of the Roanoke Island colony in present-day North Carolina, returns from a supply-trip to England to find the settlement deserted. White and his men find no trace of the 100 or so colonists he left behind, and there is no sign of violence. Among the missing are Ellinor Dare, White's daughter; and Virginia Dare, White's granddaughter and the first English child born in America. August 18 was to have been Virginia's third birthday. The only clue to their mysterious disappearance was the word "CROATOAN" carved into the palisade that had been built around the settlement. White took the letters to mean that the colonists had moved to Croatoan Island, some 50 miles away, but a later search of the island found none of the settlers.

The Roanoke Island colony, the first English settlement in the New World, was founded by English explorer Sir Walter Raleigh in August 1585. The first Roanoke colonists did not fare well, suffering from dwindling food supplies and Indian attacks, and in 1586 they returned to England aboard a ship captained by Sir Francis Drake. In 1587, Raleigh sent out another group of 100 colonists under John White. White returned to England to procure more supplies, but the war with Spain delayed his return to Roanoke. By the time he finally returned in August 1590, everyone had vanished. In 1998, archaeologists studying tree-ring data from Virginia found that extreme drought conditions persisted between 1587 and 1589. These conditions undoubtedly contributed to the demise of the so-called Lost Colony, but where the settlers went after they left Roanoke remains a mystery. One theory has them being absorbed into an Indian tribe known as the Croatans.

1686 Cassini reports seeing a satellite orbiting Venus.

1685 Birth: Brook Taylor, in England, mathematician, discoverer of Taylor's Theorem.

1698 After invading Denmark and capturing Sweden, Charles XII of Sweden forces Frederick IV of Denmark to sign the Peace of Travendal.

1735 The Evening Post, of Boston, Massachusetts, is published for the first time.

1759 A French fleet is destroyed at the battle of Lagos Bay, Portugal, by the British under Admiral Boscawen.

1778 Birth: Fabian Gottlieb von Bellinghausen, first to circumnavigate Antarctica.

1782 Poet and artist William Blake marries Catherine Sophia Boucher.

1792 Birth: Lord John Russel, Whig Prime Minister of England (1846-1852 and 1865-1866), first Earl Russell.

1807 Birth: Charles F Adams, US diplomat, public official, son of former president John Quincy Adams.

1817 Newspapers in Gloucester, Mass, tell of a wild sea serpent seen offshore.

1825 Scottish explorer Alexander Gordon Laing becomes the first European to reach Timbuktu, now in Mali. He is murdered there the following month.

1834 Mt. Vesuvius burps.

1835 The last Pottawatomie Indians leave Chicago.

1846 Mexican War: General Stephen W. Kearney's US forces capture Santa Fe, New Mexico.

1862 Indian War: The Sioux Indians begin an uprising, eventually crushed, in Minnesota.

1862 US Civil War: Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart's headquarters is raided by Union troops of the 5th New York and 1st Michigan cavalries.

1864 US Civil War: Union General William T. Sherman sends General Judson Kilpatrick to raid Confederate lines of communication outside Atlanta. The raid is unsuccessful.

1864 US Civil War: The three day Battle of Weldon Railroad starts during the Petersburg Campaign.

1868 Pierre Janssan discovers helium in the solar spectrum during an eclipse.

1870 Franco-Prussian War: The French are defeated at the Battle of Gravelotte with more than 30,000 casulaties.

1890 Birth: Walter Funk, journalist for the "Berlin Stock Exchange Journal" and Reich economic minister from 1937-1945. Succeeded Hjalmar Schacht as President of the Reichsbank in 1939, a position he held until the end of the war. Funk was sentenced to life imprisonment at Nuremberg in 1946, but was release in 1958 for reasons of health.

1894 The Bureau of Immigration is established by the US Congress.

1896 Adolph Ochs purchases controlling interest in The New York Times for $75,000 ($25,000 of which, he says, is a loan from J. P. Morgan).

1897 Birth: Bern Dibner, Ukrainian-American engineer and historian of science. Dibner worked as an engineer during the electrification of Cuba. Wrote many books and pamphlets, on topics from the transport of ancient obelisks, to authorative biographies of many scientific pioneers, including Volta, inventor of the electric battery, and Roentgen, discoverer of the X ray. Dies 6 January 1988.

1914 President Woodrow Wilson issues his "Proclamation of Neutrality," temporarily keeping America out of the war.

1916 Abraham Lincoln's birthplace in Kentucky is given to the US government as a national shrine to the 16th president.

1917 WW1: General Luigi Cadorna launches the Eleventh Battle of the Isonzo with 52 Italian divisions and 5,000 guns.

1918 Volkishness: A formal dedication of the Germanenorden rooms at the Four Seasons Hotel in Munich is attended by Hermann Pohl, G.W. Freese and a number of other Germanenorden Walvater brothers from Berlin and Leipzig. (Roots)

1919 The "Anti-Cigarette League of America" is formed in Chicago, IL.

1920 Tennessee becomes the thirty-sixth state to ratify the nineteenth amendment granting women's sufferage, completing the three-quarters necessary to put the amendment into effect.

1920 Pilsudski's Poles complete the defeat of the Soviets in the Battle of Warsaw, also known as the Miracle on the Wisla. Note: This is considered the 18th-decisive battle in world history as Soviet plans for a European invasion are thwarted.

1924 French troops begin evacuation of the Ruhr.

1926 The first television picture is broadcast from Arlington, Virginia to Washington, D.C. The technological achievement is of a picture of a weather map.

1926 Volkishness: Georg Hauerstein, Jr., son of Georg Hauerstein, a friend of Guido von List and an ONT brother associated with Detlef Schmude before the war, establishes a fund for the purchase of an ancient earthwork called the Hertesburg near Prenow on the Baltic Sea coast. ONT brothers from Hungary and Berlin palmist, Ernst Issberner-Haldane contribute. (Roots)

1929 Austria bans the book, All Quiet on the Western Front, from army libraries. The novel is a best-seller in Germany.

1932 Birth: Luc Montagnier, virologist who discovered the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

1935 President Roosevelt implores Mussolini to preserve the peace in East Africa.

1937 The Romanian Orthodox Church urges the Romanian people to fight the "Jewish parasite."

1938 The Thousand Islands Bridge that connects the US and Canada is dedicated by President Franklin Roosevelt.

1939 Weizsäcker repeats his warning to the British and French Ambassadors. (See August 15)

1939 After learning a German attack on Poland is threatened to take place within two weeks, Sir Nevile Henderson, the British Ambassador in Berlin, implores Chamberlain to write personally to Hitler.

1939 Doenitz despatches Germany's 35 operational U-boats. 18 are sent to the eastern Atlantic and the remaining 17 to the Baltic for operations against Poland and possibly Russia.

1940 WW2: Hitler tells Vidkun Quisling, "I now find myself forced against my will to fight this war against Britain. I find myself in the same position as Martin Luther, who had just as little desire to fight Rome but was left with no alternative." (Irving III; Duffy)

1941 Barbarossa: German troops under von Leeb surround Leningrad in the north. (Clark II)

1942 Holocaust: Colonel Kurt Gerstein, who later claims to have joined the SS to investigate the stories of extermination for himself, tries to tell the Papal Nuncio in Berlin about a gassing he had recently witnessed near Lublin. Monsignor Orsenigo refuses to see him so he tells his story to Dr. Winter, the legal advisor of Bishop Preysing of Berlin and a number of others. He also requests that the report be forwarded to the Holy See.

1943 Holocaust: More than 2,000 Jews are deported from Holland to Auschwitz. Slave labor camps in the General Government are "liquidated," and their inmates murdered. (Atlas)

1943 Holocaust: At Sobibor, members of the corpse-burning squad dig a tunnel, but come out in the minefield. All 150 members of the squad are executed. (Atlas)

1943 Holocaust: The DFG (the German Association for Scientific Research) approves Professor von Verschuer's application for a grant for the study of "specific proteins." (See March 20, 1944) (Science)

1944 WW2: Field Marshal Gunther von Kluge, one day after being relieved of command of the Western Front, commits suicide after writing an apologetic letter to Hitler.

1944 The Warsaw Uprising: Last execution of Poles at Pawiak by Nazis.

1947 A Naval torpedo and mine factory explodes at Cadiz, Spain killing 300.

1964 South Africa is banned from the Olympic Games because of its apartheid policies.

1965 The Nam: Operation Starlite marks the beginning of major US ground combat operations in Vietnam.

1966 The Nam: Australian troops repulse a Viet Cong attack at Long Tan.

1976 Luna 24 lands on the Moon at 02:00:00 UT, Latitude 12.25 N, Longitude 62.20 E, in the Mare Crisium. Lunar samples are collected and returned to Earth.

1976 Korea: Two American soldiers are killed by North Korean soldiers in a skirmish in the Joint Security Area in Panmunjom. Both sides immediately place their forces on a state of war-readiness but the situation is resolved.

1976 President Ford is nominated in Kansas City, Missouri, to head the Republican presidential ticket.

1977 Death: Groucho Marx, comedian, at the age of 87.

1982 Lebanon and the Palestine Liberation Organisation approve a plan for withdrawal of PLO fighters from besieged West Beirut. Israel approves it the following day.

1988 The Republican Convention in New Orleans selects the Bush-Quayle ticket.

1989 Colombian presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan is assassinated.

1990 Desert Shield: The first shots are fired in the Persian Gulf crisis when a US frigate fires rounds across the bow of an Iraqi oil tanker.

1991 An unsuccessful coup is attempted against President Mikhail S. Gorbachev. The Soviet hard-liners are responsible. Gorbechev and his family are effectively imprisoned for three days while vacationing in the Crimea.

1992 A convoy of 17 buses carrying 1,000 women and children leave war-torn Sarajevo in the second such evacuation from Bosnia in a week.

1993 The United States tells Sudan that it has been placed on the list of nations accused of sponsoring terrorism.

1996 The Clean Toilets Education Campaign is launched in Singapore. Clean public toilets and appreciation of music are identified as markers of a more gracious society.

1998 Ex-Klansman Sam Bowers' fifth trial begins. Note: Bowers is being tried again for the 1966 firebombing death of Vernon Dahmer, a civil right activist.

1998 In the wake of his admission of an affair with former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, President Clinton is urged to resign by several members of Congress and more than 100 daily newspapers.

2002 Abu Nidal, one of the most feared of the Palestinian terrorists, is found shot to death. Nidal, blamed for several deadly attacks including the bombing of a TWA jet and the hijacking of an Egyptian airliner, is later reported to have committed suicide.

2004


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