September 18
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1978
KISS makes a solo statement
On this day in 1978, KISS did something wonderfully excessive: all four members released solo albums simultaneously. Designed as a matched set, the records let Paul Stanley, Gene Simmons, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss pursue their own musical tastes amid growing tensions within the band. Frehley scored the experiment’s breakout hit with “New York Groove.”
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On this day in 1931, in the so-called Mukden Incident, the Japanese army in Manchuria used the pretext of an explosion along its railway to occupy Mukden and to increase its control, within three months, to all of Manchuria.
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© Universal History Archive—Universal Images Group/Getty Images
Samuel Johnson, born this day in 1709, was renowned for his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) and his critical edition of William Shakespeare’s works and is regarded as one of England’s greatest 18th-century figures.
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2020
American lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was the second woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court (1993–2020), died at age 87. [Why are there nine justices on the U.S. Supreme Court?]
Phil Degginger/Alamy
2019
A nest of northern giant hornets was destroyed on Vancouver Island in British Columbia. It was the first nest reported in North America, where the insects are an invasive species; they have since been extirpated from North America. [Learn how wasps, along with bees and ants, are part of one of the most ecologically important animal groups on Earth.]
© Sam Kovak/Alamy
2014
Scottish voters rejected a referendum that would have made Scotland an independent country. [Test your knowledge of U.K. geography.]
© Sovfoto—Universal Images Group/Shutterstock.com
1980
Cosmonaut Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez launched aboard Soyuz 38, becoming the first Latin American, the first Cuban, and the first person of African ancestry to travel into space.
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1970
American rock guitarist and singer Jimi Hendrix—who fused American traditions of blues, jazz, rock, and soul with techniques of British avant-garde rock to redefine the electric guitar in his own image—died of an overdose of barbiturates in London. [Is 27 an especially deadly age for musicians?]
Roger Lynds/NOAO/AURA/NSF
1965
Japanese astronomers Ikeya Kaoru and Seki Tsutomu discovered Comet Ikeya-Seki. [Sort fact from fiction in our quiz about space objects.]
JO/UN Photo
1961
UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash that generated much speculation; a 2017 investigation found that “it appears plausible that an external attack or threat may have been a cause of the crash.”
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1948
Hyderabad formally surrendered to the Indian army following its invasion during Operation Polo; the princely state was incorporated into India and later divided among several states.
Fred Mayer/Magnum Photos
1948
A local communist commander seized power in Madiun, Indonesia, as part of a rebellion effort against the Sukarno government in an incident known as the Madiun Affair. [Take our plots and revolutions quiz.]
Carl Van Vechten Estate/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-van-5a52142)
1937
African American author and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston published her masterpiece, Their Eyes Were Watching God, to mixed reviews. After falling out of print for nearly 30 years, the novel was rediscovered in the 1970s, becoming a classic of African American literature. [Learn more about the people, places, and events that shaped the 1930s.]
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1933
Canadian ice hockey coach Scotty Bowman, who won a record nine Stanley Cups as a head coach in the National Hockey League, was born. [Test your knowledge of cold weather games.]
Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.
1906
A devastating typhoon struck Hong Kong with little warning, killing about 10,000 people. [Read about the 10 deadliest typhoons in history.]
Culver Pictures
1905
Actress Greta Garbo—who was best known for her portrayals of strong-willed heroines, most of them as compellingly enigmatic as herself—was born in Stockholm. [Take our women in classic cinema quiz.]
BBC Hulton Picture Library
1898
British forces under Sir Horatio Herbert Kitchener confronted French forces commanded by Jean-Baptiste Marchand at the disputed fort of Fashoda in the Egyptian Sudan.
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-62933)
1895
Booker T. Washington declared the Atlanta Compromise—a classic statement on race relations—in a speech at the Atlanta (Georgia) Exposition. [Read about 10 milestones in U.S. civil rights history.]
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1885
Bulgarian nationalists in Eastern Rumelia mounted a coup and declared the province’s unification with Bulgaria, leading to the Serbo-Bulgarian War. [Take our quiz about the history of warfare.]
Giraudon/Art Resource, New York
1819
French physicist Jean-Bernard-Léon Foucault, who introduced and helped develop a technique of measuring with extreme accuracy the absolute velocity of light and provided experimental proof that Earth rotates on its axis, was born. [Sort fact from fiction in our physics quiz.]
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1799
German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt explored Venezuela’s Cueva del Guácharo, where his study of its unusual nocturnal oilbirds introduced the species to European science.