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HISTORY & TIMELINE
18 February

A journey through
18 February in history

The eighteenth day of February has seen the world’s first official airmail flown across a river in India, Japan’s generals set up a puppet state in Manchuria and a rover land in a crater on Mars. This timeline follows 18 February from the nineteenth century to the twenty-first.

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IV
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

The 1800s

Industry, empire, invention, reform and a century of enormous transformation.

1861
The crowd at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis in front of the state capitol at Montgomery, Alabama, on 18 February 1861.The crowd at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis in front of the state capitol at Montgomery, Alabama, on 18 February 1861.Image: Archibald Crossland McIntyre of Montgomery, Alabama · Public domain
politics · Americas

Jefferson Davis is sworn in as president of the Confederacy

After Abraham Lincoln’s election in November 1860, seven slave-holding states of the Deep South voted to leave the United States. Their delegates met at Montgomery, Alabama, in February 1861, formed the Confederate States of America and chose Jefferson Davis of Mississippi, a former US senator and secretary of war, as provisional president. Davis was sworn in on the portico of the Alabama state capitol on 18 February 1861. He sent commissioners to Washington to seek a peaceful separation, but Lincoln would not receive them. Two months later Confederate guns fired on Fort Sumter and the Civil War began.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Jefferson Davis ↗
V
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The 1900s

War and peace, technological leaps, social change, politics, sport and popular culture.

1911
The French pilot Henri Pequet with his Russian flying pupils in Moscow, June 1914.The French pilot Henri Pequet with his Russian flying pupils in Moscow, June 1914.Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
science · Asia

The world’s first official airmail is flown in India

In February 1911 an exhibition at Allahabad (now Prayagraj) in northern India drew huge crowds to see aeroplanes, then a great novelty. The organisers arranged, with the approval of the Indian postal service, for mail to be carried by air as a demonstration. On 18 February 1911 the 23-year-old French pilot Henri Pequet took off in a Humber-Sommer biplane with a sack of about 6,500 letters and cards and flew across the Yamuna river to Naini, a few miles away. It was the first official airmail carried by aeroplane anywhere in the world.

Source: Smithsonian National Postal Museum: world’s first official air mail by airplane, India, 1911 ↗
1930
Clyde Tombaugh with his home-made telescope, around 1930.Clyde Tombaugh with his home-made telescope, around 1930.Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
science · Americas

Clyde Tombaugh finds Pluto

The astronomer Percival Lowell was convinced that an unknown ‘Planet X’ lay beyond Neptune, and after his death his observatory at Flagstaff, Arizona, resumed the search. It hired Clyde Tombaugh, a 22-year-old farm boy from Kansas who had built his own telescopes, to take photographs of the night sky. Tombaugh compared pairs of plates taken days apart in a blink comparator, flicking between them to spot anything that had moved against the stars. On 18 February 1930, examining plates taken in January, he found a faint moving dot. The discovery was announced on 13 March, and the new world was named Pluto. In 2006 astronomers reclassified it as a dwarf planet.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica: Clyde Tombaugh ↗
1932
Puyi, the former emperor of China, in uniform during his years as ruler of Manchukuo.Puyi, the former emperor of China, in uniform during his years as ruler of Manchukuo.Image: Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain
politics · Asia

Japan’s army sets up a puppet state in Manchuria

In September 1931 officers of Japan’s Kwantung Army staged an explosion on a Japanese-owned railway near Mukden (now Shenyang) and blamed it on the Chinese. Using it as a pretext, and without the approval of the government in Tokyo, the army overran all of Manchuria within months. On 18 February 1932 a council of Manchurian leaders, working under Japanese control, declared the region independent of China. On 1 March the new state of Manchukuo was proclaimed, with Puyi, the last emperor of China, as its head. Few countries recognised it, and when the League of Nations condemned the takeover, Japan walked out of the League.

Source: US Department of State, Office of the Historian: the Mukden Incident of 1931 and the Stimson Doctrine ↗
1943
The White Rose memorial outside the University of Munich: bronze copies of the group's leaflets set into the pavement.The White Rose memorial outside the University of Munich: bronze copies of the group’s leaflets set into the pavement.Image: Gryffindor · Public domain
world · Europe

Hans and Sophie Scholl of the White Rose are arrested

The White Rose was a small circle of students at the University of Munich and one of their professors who, from 1942, wrote and secretly spread leaflets calling on Germans to resist Hitler and denouncing the murder of the Jews. On 18 February 1943 the brother and sister Hans and Sophie Scholl carried copies of their sixth leaflet into the university and left them in the corridors, throwing the last ones from a balcony into the atrium. A caretaker saw them and they were arrested. Tried by the People’s Court four days later with their friend Christoph Probst, all three were sentenced to death and executed that same day. Other members were executed later. Today they are honoured across Germany.

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: the White Rose opposition movement ↗
1965
Dawda Jawara, The Gambia's first prime minister and later president, arriving at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands in September 1979.Dawda Jawara, The Gambia’s first prime minister and later president, arriving at Schiphol airport in the Netherlands in September 1979.Image: Fernando Pereira / Anefo · CC BY-SA 3.0 nl
politics · Africa

The Gambia becomes independent

The Gambia, a narrow strip of land along the Gambia River surrounded on three sides by Senegal, grew out of British trading posts founded from the seventeenth century. It became a British colony and protectorate, and after the Second World War it moved step by step towards self-government under the leadership of Dawda Jawara, a veterinary surgeon who became prime minister in 1962. On 18 February 1965 The Gambia became an independent state within the Commonwealth, the smallest country on mainland Africa. It joined the United Nations that September and became a republic in 1970, with Jawara as president. The day is The Gambia’s national holiday.

Source: UK legislation: The Gambia Independence Order 1965 ↗
VI
2000 TO TODAY

Modern Day

The events of recent decades that have already become part of the historical record.

2021
Perseverance photographs itself beside a rock nicknamed 'Rochette', with two holes it drilled for samples, on Mars in September 2021.Perseverance photographs itself beside a rock nicknamed ‘Rochette’, with two holes it drilled for samples, on Mars in September 2021.Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech · Public domain
science · Global

The Perseverance rover lands on Mars

NASA’s Perseverance rover, about the size of a car, was launched in July 2020 to look for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars and to collect rock samples that a later mission might bring back to Earth. Its target was Jezero Crater, which scientists believe once held a lake fed by a river delta. After a journey of seven months, it landed in the crater on 18 February 2021, lowered on cables from a rocket-powered ‘sky crane’. It carried a small helicopter, Ingenuity, which that April made the first powered, controlled flight on another planet.

Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: touchdown! NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover safely lands on Red Planet ↗
RESEARCH

Sources & Further Reading

Selected authoritative references supporting the events on this page.

WHY THESE MOMENTS?

Significance before volume

This page is not the longest possible list of events. It is a chronological journey through 18 February, where each entry is chosen for historical significance, human interest and reliability.

Facts are checked against authoritative museums, archives, universities and reference works. Where sources disagree, the page says so.

EXPLORED THE DEEPER STORY?

Return to the highlights of 18 February

Discover the lighter side of the date with famous birthdays, culture, firsts and lives remembered.

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