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Explore 18 November

Explore 18 November: Latvia declares independence, Pope Urban II opens the council that launched the First Crusade, South Africa agrees a democratic constitution and Mickey Mouse makes his debut. Meet Louis Daguerre, Margaret Atwood and Alan Shepard, born on this date.

This day through time →9 verified events across 5 eras

⌛9Full
Timeline ◈4Historic
Moments ♙7Born
Today ✦5Lives
Remembered ◉2Firsts &
Discoveries ♫1Culture
Stories ☉1Observances
The proclamation of Latvia's independence in the National Theatre, Riga, 18 November 1918.
The proclamation of Latvia’s independence in the National Theatre, Riga, 18 November 1918.
Image creditSaulite-a · CC0Resized and cropped for display.
1918

Latvia proclaims its independence

A week after the armistice that ended the First World War, the newly formed Latvian People’s Council met in the Second City Theatre in Riga, now the National Theatre, at 4.30 in the afternoon of 18 November 1918. It proclaimed Latvia an independent, democratic state and set up a provisional government under Kārlis Ulmanis.

Independence had to be defended in a war against both Bolshevik and German forces that lasted until 1920. Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 and regained its freedom in 1991, and 18 November is still its national day.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: President of Latvia: History ↗
Pope Urban II preaching at the Council of Clermont, in a manuscript painted about 1474.
Pope Urban II preaching at the Council of Clermont, in a manuscript painted about 1474.
Image creditJean Colombe · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1095

The Council of Clermont opens

Pope Urban II opened a church council at Clermont in central France on 18 November 1095, attended mostly by bishops from southern France. Much of its business was church reform, but envoys of the Byzantine emperor Alexius I had asked the West for help against the Seljuk Turks.

Towards the end of the council Urban preached to a great crowd, urging Western knights to go to the aid of Eastern Christians and free Jerusalem, and promising those who went the remission of their penance. The crowd is said to have answered ‘God wills it’, and the First Crusade was launched.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Council of Clermont ↗
An American cartoon of 1903 on the Panama canal question.
An American cartoon of 1903 on the Panama canal question.
Image creditunknown artist for New York Times · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1903

The Panama Canal treaty is signed

Two weeks after Panama broke away from Colombia with American support, the US Secretary of State John Hay and Philippe-Jean Bunau-Varilla signed a treaty in Washington on 18 November 1903. Bunau-Varilla, a French engineer acting for the new republic, signed only hours before a Panamanian delegation arrived.

The treaty gave the United States, in perpetuity, control of a zone ten miles wide across the isthmus in which to build a canal, in return for $10 million and an annual payment. Panamanians resented it for decades, and it was replaced by the Torrijos-Carter treaties of 1977.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: US Office of the Historian: Building the Panama Canal, 1903-1914 ↗
F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 1992.
F. W. de Klerk and Nelson Mandela at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 1992.
Image creditCopyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org) · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
1993

South Africa agrees a democratic constitution

After more than two years of often violent upheaval, the multi-party negotiations at the World Trade Centre in Kempton Park, near Johannesburg, reached agreement on 18 November 1993 on an interim constitution to end the legal order of apartheid.

It was passed by the last apartheid parliament as the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, Act 200 of 1993. Described as a ‘historic bridge’ between past and future, it governed the country’s first all-race election in April 1994 and stayed in force while an elected assembly wrote the final constitution of 1996.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: South African History Online: The Interim South African Constitution 1993 ↗
♙
PEOPLE

Born Today

Carl Maria von Weber
Image creditCaroline Bardua · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1786

Carl Maria von Weber

German composer whose opera Der Freischütz helped found German Romantic opera.

Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Image creditAnonymousUnknown author · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1860

Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Polish pianist and composer who became prime minister of newly independent Poland in 1919.

Patrick Blackett
Image creditNobel foundation · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1897

Patrick Blackett

British physicist who won the 1948 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on cosmic rays.

Alan Shepard
Image creditNASA · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Born 1923

Alan Shepard

The first American in space, in 1961, who later walked on the Moon with Apollo 14.

Margaret Atwood
Image creditCollision Conf · CC BY 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1939

Margaret Atwood

Canadian novelist and poet, author of The Handmaid’s Tale.

Peter Schmeichel
Image creditCarlsberg · CC BY 3.0Resized and cropped for display.
Born 1963

Peter Schmeichel

Danish goalkeeper who won the 1992 European Championship with Denmark and five league titles with Manchester United.

◉
IDEAS THAT CHANGED THINGS

Firsts, Science & Discoveries

A plaque in Chicago marking where the railways agreed the standard time system in October 1883.
A plaque in Chicago marking where the railways agreed the standard time system in October 1883.
Image creditKen Lund from Reno, Nevada, USA · CC BY-SA 2.0Resized and cropped for display.
1883

The day of two noons

Until 1883 North American towns kept their own local time, and the railways ran on dozens of different clocks. At noon on 18 November 1883 the railways of the United States and Canada switched to a new system of standard time zones, each an hour apart, devised by William F. Allen.

In many cities clocks struck noon twice that day, once by the old local time and once by the new, and it became known as the ‘day of two noons’. Standard time was not written into American law until 1918.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress: The day of two noons ↗
The Atlas V rocket carrying MAVEN lifts off from Cape Canaveral, 18 November 2013.
The Atlas V rocket carrying MAVEN lifts off from Cape Canaveral, 18 November 2013.
Image creditBill Ingalls · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
2013

MAVEN sets out to study the air of Mars

NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft, MAVEN, was launched on an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral on 18 November 2013. It was the first mission devoted to the upper atmosphere of Mars.

MAVEN entered orbit around Mars in September 2014. Its measurements showed how the solar wind has stripped away much of the planet’s atmosphere over billions of years, helping to explain how a once wetter Mars became cold and dry.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: NASA Space Science Data Coordinated Archive: MAVEN ↗
♫
MUSIC • FILM • BOOKS • CULTURE

Culture Stories

The original poster for Steamboat Willie, 1928.
The original poster for Steamboat Willie, 1928.
Image creditWalt Disney / Ub Iwerks · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
1928

Steamboat Willie introduces Mickey Mouse

Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie opened at the Colony Theatre in New York on 18 November 1928. It was the first cartoon with a fully synchronised soundtrack, with music, sound effects and voices matched to the action, and it made a star of Mickey Mouse, drawn by Ub Iwerks.

Audiences loved it: Variety called it ‘a wow’. Disney treats the premiere as Mickey’s birthday.

Read the full storyHistory & Timeline →Source: Library of Congress National Film Preservation Board: Steamboat Willie, by Dave Smith ↗
✦
LIVES REMEMBERED

Remembered Today

Marcel Proust
Image creditOtto Wegener · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1922

Marcel Proust

French novelist, author of In Search of Lost Time.

Walther Nernst
Image creditUnknown (Mondadori Publishers) · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1941

Walther Nernst

German chemist who formulated the third law of thermodynamics and won the 1920 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Man Ray
Image creditCarl Van Vechten · Public domainResized and cropped for display.
Died 1976

Man Ray

American artist and photographer, a leading figure of Dada and Surrealism in Paris.

☉
AROUND THE WORLD

Observances & Anniversaries

Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco in 1953, the year he was sent into exile.
Sultan Mohammed V of Morocco in 1953, the year he was sent into exile.
Image creditFotograaf Onbekend / Anefo · CC0Resized and cropped for display.
Annual

Independence Day in Morocco

Morocco’s Independence Day recalls 18 November 1955, when Sultan Mohammed V, just back from two years of exile imposed by France, announced in his first throne speech the end of the protectorate and the coming of freedom and independence. Full independence followed in March 1956.

Source: Maroc.ma (Kingdom of Morocco): National and religious holidays and their meanings ↗
HISTORY & TIMELINE

Finished the highlights?

Follow 18 November chronologically, from the Middle Ages to the modern day, with 9 verified events and the sources behind them.

This day through time →
Sources & further reading