1920Tennessee’s vote gives American women the right to vote
American women had campaigned for the vote since the Seneca Falls convention of 1848, and by 1920 several western states already allowed it. In June 1919 Congress at last passed the Nineteenth Amendment, which said that the right to vote could not be denied ‘on account of sex’, but it needed the approval of 36 of the 48 states. By the summer of 1920 thirty-five had ratified, and the campaign came down to Tennessee, where suffragists and their opponents, wearing yellow and red roses, filled the corridors of the state capitol in Nashville.
On 18 August 1920 the state House of Representatives seemed deadlocked. Harry Burn, at 24 its youngest member, had arrived wearing an anti-suffrage red rose, but in his pocket was a letter from his mother urging him to ‘be a good boy’ and vote for ratification. He voted yes, and the amendment passed. Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify, and the amendment was certified in Washington eight days later, in time for millions of women to vote in that November’s presidential election.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US National Park Service: Tennessee and the 19th Amendment ↗
1572Henry of Navarre marries Margaret of Valois in Paris
By 1572 France had been torn by ten years of war between Catholics and Protestant Huguenots. To seal a fragile peace, the queen mother, Catherine de’ Medici, arranged for her daughter Margaret, sister of the Catholic King Charles IX, to marry the young Huguenot prince Henry, King of Navarre. The pope refused to approve the match, and Paris, a fiercely Catholic city, watched uneasily as hundreds of Protestant nobles arrived for the celebrations.
The couple, both 19, were married on 18 August 1572 on a platform built in front of Notre-Dame. Because of his faith, Henry stayed outside while the wedding mass was said, and his bride’s brother took his place. Six days later the peace collapsed in the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre, in which thousands of Huguenots were killed. Henry survived by converting, escaped the court in 1576 and became King Henry IV of France in 1589. The marriage was childless, and it was annulled in 1599.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Margaret of Valois ↗
1590John White returns to Roanoke and finds the colony gone
In 1587 about 115 English men, women and children landed on Roanoke Island, off what is now North Carolina, to found a colony for Sir Walter Raleigh, with the artist John White as their governor. On 18 August 1587 White’s daughter Eleanor Dare gave birth to Virginia Dare, the first English child born in the Americas. Days later White sailed home for supplies, but war with Spain and the threat of the Armada kept ships in England, and he could not get back for three years.
He finally landed on Roanoke on 18 August 1590, his granddaughter’s third birthday. The houses had been taken down and a palisade put up, and nobody was there. The letters ‘CRO’ were carved on a tree and the word ‘CROATOAN’ on a gatepost. The settlers had agreed to leave such a sign if they moved, with a cross if they left in danger, and there was no cross. White hoped they had gone to the friendly Croatoan people on Hatteras Island, but storms drove his ships away, and the ‘Lost Colony’ was never found.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources: Origins of the Lost Colony mystery ↗
1917The great fire of Thessaloniki
Thessaloniki had been part of Greece for only five years in 1917. For centuries an Ottoman port, it was a city of narrow streets and wooden houses, home to Greeks, Turks and one of the largest Jewish communities in the world, and during the First World War it was crowded with Allied soldiers and refugees.
On the afternoon of 18 August 1917 a fire broke out in a house in the upper town. Driven by a strong wind, and with water scarce, it spread down through the old centre and burned for about 32 hours. Some 9,500 buildings were destroyed and more than 70,000 people were left homeless, many of them Jewish families who lost homes, shops and synagogues. The Greek government asked the French architect Ernest Hébrard to plan a new city, and his broad avenues and Aristotelous Square still shape the centre today.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: National Documentation Centre of Greece (SearchCulture): The Great Thessaloniki Fire of 1917 ↗
2008Pervez Musharraf resigns as president of Pakistan
General Pervez Musharraf seized power in Pakistan in a bloodless coup in October 1999 and made himself president in 2001. He became a key ally of the United States after the attacks of 11 September 2001, but at home his rule grew more troubled: in 2007 he suspended the chief justice, declared a state of emergency and finally gave up command of the army. In elections in February 2008 his supporters were heavily beaten, and the parties of Benazir Bhutto, assassinated weeks before, and Nawaz Sharif, whom he had overthrown, formed a coalition government.
In August 2008 the coalition moved to impeach him for violating the constitution. On 18 August 2008, in a televised address of about an hour, Musharraf defended his record, admitted making mistakes and announced that he would resign rather than put the country through a damaging fight. Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower, was elected president the following month.
Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Britannica: Pakistan, the Pervez Musharraf government ↗
