A few of the great historical events that happened today in history, January 18th!
| 1486 | Henry VII marries Elizabeth of York. |
| 1701 | Frederick III, the elector of Brandenburg, becomes king of Prussia. |
| 1778 | Captain James Cook discovers the Hawaiian Islands, naming them the ‘Sandwich Islands’ after the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Sandwich.
 Captain James Cook |
| 1782 | Lawyer and statesman Daniel Webster was born in Salisbury, N.H. |
| 1788 | The first English settlers arrived in Australia’s Botany Bay to establish a penal colony. |
| 1836 | Jim Bowie arrives at the Alamo to assist its Texas defenders. |
| 1862 | John Tyler, the 10th president of the United States, died in Richmond, Va., at age 71. |
| 1871 | William I of Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in Versailles, France. |
| 1892 | Oliver Hardy of the comedy team Laurel and Hardy was born Norvell Hardy in Harlem, Ga. |
| 1902 | The Isthmus Canal Commission in Washington shifts its support from Nicaragua to Panama as a favored canal site. |
| 1904 | Actor Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach in Bristol, England. |
| 1910 | Aviator Eugene Ely performs his first successful take off and landing from a ship in San Francisco.
 Eugene Ely |
| 1911 | The first landing of an aircraft on a ship took place as pilot Eugene B. Ely flew onto the deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco harbor. |
| 1916 | The Russians force the Turkish 3rd Army back to Erzurum. |
| 1942 | General MacArthur repels the Japanese in Bataan. The United States took the lead in theFar East war criminal trials. |
| 1943 | The Soviets announced that they had broken the long Nazi siege of Leningrad. |
| 1945 | The German Army launches its second attempt to relieve the besieged city of Budapest from the advancing Red Army. |
| 1948 | Ghandi breaks a 121-hour fast after halting Muslem-Hindu riots. |
| 1962 | The United States begins spraying foliage with herbicides in South Vietnam, in order to reveal the whereabouts of Vietcong guerrillas. |
| 1964 | Plans are disclosed for the World Trade Center in New York. |
| 1978 | The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) isolate the cause of Legionnaire’s disease. |
| 1990 | Washington, D.C., Mayor Marion Barry was arrested for drug possession in an FBI sting.
 Mayor Marion Barry |
| 1991 | Iraq starts firing Scud missiles at Israeli cities. |
| 1991 | Financially strapped Eastern Airlines shut down after more than six decades in business. |
| 1993 | The Martin Luther King Jr. holiday was observed in all 50 states for the first time. |
| 2005 | The world’s largest commercial jet, an Airbus A380 that can carry 800 passengers, was unveiled in Toulouse, France. |
| 2011 | The first director of the Peace Corps, R. Sargent Shriver, died at age 95. |
Today in history facts are from various sites including, but not limited too: the History Channel, The New York Times, WHG Historynet.com, and HistoryOrb.com.
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