February 18 birthdays & history

Famous people born on February 18

• 1931Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate.
• 1745Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery
• 1954John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer
• 1836Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Indian mystic and yogi
• 1516Mary I, Queen of England
• 1933Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician
• 1965Dr. Dre, American rapper, record producer, and entrepreneur
• 1838Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher
• 1967Roberto Baggio, Italian footballer
• 1932Miloš Forman, Czech-American actor, director, and screenwriter

What happened on February 18

• 3102 BCAccording to Hindu scriptures, Kali Yuga, the last of the four stages that the world goes through as part of the cycle of yugas, began.
• 1861In Montgomery, Alabama, Jefferson Davis is inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America.
• 1861With Italian unification almost complete, Victor Emmanuel II of Piedmont, Savoy and Sardinia assumes the title of King of Italy.
• 1885Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain is published in the United States.
• 1906Édouard de Laveleye forms the Belgian Olympic Committee in Brussels.
• 1911The first official flight with airmail takes place from Allahabad, United Provinces, British India (now India), when Henri Pequet, a 23-year-old pilot, delivers 6,500 letters to Naini, about 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) away.
• 1930While studying photographs taken in January, Clyde Tombaugh discovers Pluto.
• 1930Elm Farm Ollie becomes the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and also the first cow to be milked in an aircraft.
• 1932The Empire of Japan creates the independent state of Manzhouguo (the obsolete Chinese name for Manchuria) free from the Republic of China and installed former Chinese Emperor Puyi as Chief Executive of the State.
• 1954The first Church of Scientology is established in Los Angeles.
• 1977NASA's first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, made its first test flight on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
• 2010WikiLeaks published the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by Chelsea Manning.

Also observed on February 18

• Dialect Day (Amami Islands, Japan)
• Independence Day, celebrates the independence of the Gambia from the United Kingdom in 1965
• Kurdish Students Union Day (Iraqi Kurdistan)