June 18
1155 - Frederick I Barbarossa was crowned emperor of Rome.
1429 - French forces defeated the English at the battle of Patay. The English had been retreating after the siege of Orleans.
1621 - The first duel in America took place in the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts.
1667 - The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames toward London.
1778 - Britain evacuated Philadelphia during the U.S. Revolutionary War.
1812 - The War of 1812 began as the U.S. declared war against Great Britain. The conflict began over trade restrictions.
1815 - At the Battle of Waterloo Napoleon was defeated by an international army under the Duke of Wellington. Napoleon abdicated on June 22.
1817 - London's Waterloo Bridge opened. The bridge, designed by John Rennie, was built over the River Thames.
1861 - The first American fly-casting tournament was held in Utica, NY.
1863 - J.J. Richardson received a patent for the ratchet wrench.
1873 - Susan B. Anthony was fined $100 for attempting to vote for a U.S. President.
1898 - Atlantic City, NJ, opened its Steel Pier.
1915 - During World War I, the second battle of Artois ended.
1918 - Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the German army. (World War I)
1925 - The first degree in landscape architecture was granted by Harvard University.
1927 - The U.S. Post Office offered a special 10-cent postage stamp for sale. The stamp was of Charles Lindbergh’s "Spirit of St. Louis."
1928 - Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as she completed a flight from Newfoundland to Wales.
1936 - The first bicycle traffic court was established in Racine, WI.
1939 - The CBS radio network aired "Ellery Queen" for the first time.
1942 - The U.S. Navy commissioned its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
1948 - The United Nations Commission on Human Rights adopted its International Declaration of Human Rights.
1951 - General Vo Nguyen Giap ended his Red River Campaign against the French in Indochina.
1953 - Seventeen major league baseball records were tied or broken in a game between the Boston Red Sox and the Detroit Tigers.
1953 - Egypt was proclaimed to be a republic with General Neguib as its first president.
1959 - A Federal Court annulled the Arkansas law allowing school closings to prevent integration.
1959 - The first telecast received from England was broadcast in the U.S. over NBC-TV.
1961 - "Gunsmoke" was broadcast for the last time on CBS radio.
1966 - Samuel Nabrit became the first African American to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission.
1975 - Fred Lynn of the Boston Red Sox hit three home runs, a triple and a single in a game against the Detroit Tigers.
1979 - In Vienna, U.S. President Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 2.
1982 - The U.S. Senate approved the renewal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act for an additional twenty-five years.
1983 - Dr. Sally Ride became the first American woman in space aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
1998 - The Walt Disney Co. purchased a 43% stake in the Web search engine company Infoseek Corp.
1998 - Nine commemorative U.S. postage stamps were reissued. The stamps were considered to be classically beautiful examples of stamp engraving.
1998 - "The Boston Globe" asked Patricia Smith to resign after she admitted to inventing people and quotes in four of her recent columns.
1999 - Walt Disney's "Tarzan" opened.
2000 - In Algiers, Algeria, the foreign ministers of Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a preliminary cease-fire accord and agreed to work toward a permanent settlement of their two-year border war.
2009 - NASA launched the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter/LCROSS probes to the Moon. It was the first American lunar mission since Lunar Prospector in 1998.
2009 - Greenland assumed control over its law enforcement, judicial affairs, and natural resources from the Kingdom of Denmark. Greenlandic became the official language.
