The ceasefire that effectively ended the First World War took place on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of this year. Also in this year, the Spanish flu pandemic killed 50–100 million people worldwide.
In Russia, this year runs with only 352 days. As the result of Julian to Gregorian calendar switch, 13 days needed to be skipped. Wednesday, January 31
(Julian Calendar) was immediately followed by Thursday, February 14 (Gregorian Calendar).
January 9 – Battle of Bear Valley: U.S. troops engage Yaqui Native American warriors in a minor skirmish in Arizona. This is one of the last battles of the American Indian Wars between the United States and Native Americans.
The Finnish Army Corps of Aviation is founded as a forerunner of the Finnish Air Force (established on 4 May 1928). The blue swastika is adopted as its symbol, as a tribute to the Swedish explorer and aviator Eric von Rosen, who donated the first plane. Von Rosen had painted the Viking symbol on the plane as his personal lucky insignia.[5]
WWI: The giant German cannon, the 'Paris Gun' (Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz), begins to shell Paris from 114 km (71 mi) away.
In London at the Wood Green Empire, Chung Ling Soo (William E. Robinson, U.S.-born magician) dies during his trick, where he is supposed to "catch" two separate bullets (but one of them perforates his lung). He dies the following morning in a hospital.
March 27 – WWI: The First Battle of Amman is launched by units of the Egyptian Expeditionary Force, during the First Transjordan attack on Amman; it ends with their withdrawal on 31 March, back to the Jordan Valley.
Styles of Lucy, Lady Duff-Gordon, as presented in a vaudeville circuit pantomime and sketched by Marguerite Martyn of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in April 1918
April 21 – WWI: Manfred von Richthofen, "The Red Baron", the war's most successful fighter pilot, dies in combat at Morlancourt Ridge near the Somme River.
June 4 – RMS Kenilworth Castle, one of the Union-Castle Line steamships, collides with her escort destroyer HMS Rival while trying to avoid her other escort, the cruiser HMS Kent.
June 22 – Suspects in the Chicago Restaurant Poisonings are arrested, and more than 100 waiters are taken into custody for poisoning restaurant customers with a lethal powder called Mickey Finn.
July 13 – The National Czechoslovak Committee is established.
July 14 – The film The Glorious Adventure is released in the United States, featuring Mammy Lou, who becomes one of the oldest people ever to star in a film, at a claimed age of 114.
July 21 – WWI: Attack on Orleans – Imperial German submarine SM U-156 surfaces and fires on a small convoy of barges and defending flying boats off the Cape Cod town of Orleans, Massachusetts.[14]
August 8 – WWI: Battle of Amiens – British, Canadian and Australian troops begin a string of almost continuous victories, the 'Hundred Days Offensive', with an 8-mile push through the German front lines, taking 12,000 prisoners. German General Erich Ludendorff later calls this the "black day of the German Army".[17]
September – WWI: British armies and their Arab allies roll into Syria.
September 3 – The Bolshevik government of Russia publishes the first official announcement of the Red Terror, a period of repression against political opponents, as an "Appeal to the Working Class" in the newspaper Izvestia.[19]
October 8–10 – WWI: Second Battle of Cambrai: British and Canadian troops take Cambrai from the Germans and the First and Third British Armies break through the Hindenburg Line.
October 11 – The magnitude (Mw) 7.1 San Fermín earthquake shakes Puerto Rico with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent), killing 76–116 people. A destructive tsunami contributes to the damage and loss of life.
October 16 – Emperor Karl IV of Austria publishes the Völkermanifest manifesto, declaring the Cisleithanian part of the empire will be federalized on the basis of national councils
Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in world history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 93 dead.
German Revolution: Kiel mutiny by sailors in the German fleet at Kiel while throughout northern Germany soldiers and workers begin to establish revolutionary councils on the Russian soviet model.
Provisional National Council Minister-President Kurt Eisner declares Bavaria to be a republic.
British battleshipHMS Britannia is sunk by a German submarine off Trafalgar, with the loss of around fifty lives (the last major naval engagement of WWI).
The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which later becomes the Kingdom of Yugoslavia) is proclaimed, in particular ending Serbia's existence as a sovereign state for the next 87 years (it would not regain its sovereignty until 2006).[25]
^Lyandres, Semion (Autumn 1989). "The 1918 Attempt on the Life of Lenin: A New Look at the Evidence". Slavic Review. 48 (3). Cambridge University Press: 432–448. doi:10.2307/2498997. JSTOR2498997. S2CID155228899.
^Mandela, Nelson (2004) [1994]. Long Walk to Freedom Volume II: 1962–1994 (large print ed.). London: BBC AudioBooks and Time Warner Books Ltd. p. 3. ISBN978-0-7540-8724-3.
Chandra, Siddharth, Julia Christensen, and Shimon Likhtman. "Connectivity and seasonality: the 1918 influenza and COVID-19 pandemics in global perspective." Journal of Global History 15.3 (2020): 408–420.
Phillips, Howard. "’17,’18,’19: religion and science in three pandemics, 1817, 1918, and 2019." Journal of Global History 15.3 (2020): 434–443.
Williams, John. The Other Battleground The Home Fronts: Britain, France and Germany 1914-1918 (1972) pp 243–92.