Nelson Mandela, who spent 28 years in prison between 1962 and 1990 for opposing South Africa’s apartheid system, was born on July 18, 1918, in Mvezo, South Africa, to chief Henry Mandela of the Madiba clan. He renounced his chieftainship to become a lawyer. Mandela faced harsh conditions in prison to break his resolve, but he continued to oppose South Africa’s apartheid laws.
He was released from prison in 1990, after which he helped negotiate an end to apartheid and went on to become the country’s first black president from 1994 to 1999. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1993 and in 2009 the UN declared his birthday as Nelson Mandela International Day to honour his legacy.
Here are some other historical events that happened on July 18.
1811 |
English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, known for his work Vanity Fair (1847-48) and The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. (1852), was born in Calcutta, India, to parents of Anglo-Indian descent.
1817 | English novelist Jane Austen, known for the classics Sense and Sensibility (1811) and Pride and Prejudice (1813), died on July 18, 1817, in Winchester, Hampshire, at the age of 41.
1914 | After successfully leading campaigns of passive resistance in South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi finally leaves the country from Cape Town by ship. He went to England from where he returned to India in January 1915.
1925 | Nazi leader Adolf Hitler published the first volume of his political manifesto, Mein Kampf, on July 18, 1925. The book, along with its second volume published two years later, became the bible of Nazism in Germany's Third Reich.
1947 | The Indian Independence Act, which was based on Lord Louis Mountbatten’s plan of June 3, 1947, was passed by the British Parliament on July 5. However, it was signed by King George VI on July 18.
1968 | The Intel Corporation is founded by Robert N. Noyce and Gordon E. Moore in Mountain View, California. The company planned to make semiconductor memory more practical and affordable.
1976 | Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci, aged just 14, was awarded a perfect score of 10 at the Olympic Games in Montreal. She became the first gymnast to win a perfect score in an Olympic gymnastic event.
1980 | Rohini 1, India’s first satellite, is launched into orbit. The satellite provided data on the fourth stage performance and ranging.
2013 | Sinking under billions of dollars in debt, the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in the federal court. This was the largest such filing for a US city ever. The following year, Detroit officially emerged from bankruptcy.
2018 | In one of the most aggressive regulatory actions against American technology giants, the European Union fined Google USD 5.1 billion for abusing its power in the mobile phone market.
(Edited by : Priyanka Deshpande)
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