February 18 is the 49th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar, with 316 days remaining until the end of the year, or 317 in leap years.
Events that occurred on February 18:
- 3102 BC: The Kali Yuga, the fourth and final yuga of Hinduism, started with the death of Krishna.
- 1229: Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, signed a ten-year truce with al-Kamil, regaining Jerusalem, Nazareth, and Bethlehem without military engagements.
- 1478: George, Duke of Clarence, was executed for treason against his brother Edward IV of England.
- 1791: Congress passed a law admitting Vermont to the Union, effective 4 March.
- 1861: Jefferson Davis was inaugurated as the provisional President of the Confederate States of America in Montgomery, Alabama. Also, Victor Emmanuel II assumed the title of King of Italy.
- 1873: Bulgarian revolutionary leader Vasil Levski was executed by Ottoman authorities in Sofia.
- 1885: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain was published in the United States.
- 1900: Imperial forces suffered their worst single-day loss of life on Bloody Sunday during the Second Boer War.
- 1911: The first official flight with airmail took place in Allahabad, British India.
- 1915: The Imperial German Navy instituted unrestricted submarine warfare around Great Britain and Ireland.
- 1930: Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto.
- 1930: Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to fly in a fixed-wing aircraft and to be milked in an aircraft.
- 1965: The Gambia became independent from the United Kingdom.
- 1977: The Xinjiang 61st Regiment Farm fire, the deadliest fireworks accident in the world, occurred during Chinese New Year, killing 694 personnel.
- 1979: Richard Petty won a then-record sixth Daytona 500.
- 2001: FBI agent Robert Hanssen was arrested for spying for the Soviet Union.
- 2003: An arsonist set fire to a subway train in Daegu, South Korea, killing 192 people.
- 2013: Armed robbers stole diamonds worth $50 million during a raid at Brussels Airport in Belgium.
- 2021: The Mars rover Perseverance successfully landed on Mars.
People born on February 18:
- 1516: Mary I of England
- 1745: Alessandro Volta, Italian physicist, invented the battery
- 1838: Ernst Mach, Austrian physicist and philosopher
- 1898: Luis Muñoz Marín, Puerto Rican poet and politician, 1st Governor of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico
- 1931: Toni Morrison, American novelist and editor, Nobel Prize laureate
- 1933: Yoko Ono, Japanese-American multimedia artist and musician
- 1954: John Travolta, American actor, singer and producer
- 1954:
