18 May 1963

Cubana de Aviación Flight 0972 crashed near Santiago de las Vegas shortly after takeoff from José Martí International Airport, killing 112 of the 113 people on board.

The Sri Lanka Army killed Velupillai Prabhakaran, the leader and founder of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, to bring an end to the 26-year Sri Lankan civil war.

The Parliament of Nepal unanimously voted to strip King Gyanendra of many of his powers.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion publicly debuted at the Electronic Entertainment Expo.

Ireland won the Eurovision song contest for the seventh time, the highest number of wins for any country before Sweden tied it in 2023.

Mount St. Helens explosively erupted (pictured), killing approximately 57 people in southern Washington state, reducing hundreds of square miles to wasteland, and causing more than US$1 billion in damage.

Eli Cohen, a spy who is credited with gathering significant intelligence used by Israel during the Six-Day War, was publicly hanged in Syria.

Operation Passage to Freedom, the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War, ended.

First Indochina War: Viet Minh forces overran a French and Laotian garrison at Muong Khoua, leaving only four survivors.

The Soviet Union forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of Crimean Tatars to the Uzbek SSR and elsewhere in the country.

In a crime that captivated Japan, Sada Abe strangled her lover, cut off his genitals, and carried them around with her for several days until her arrest.

U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an act establishing the Tennessee Valley Authority to stimulate the economic development of the Tennessee Valley, a region particularly impacted by the Great Depression.

Disgruntled school board treasurer Andrew Kehoe set off explosives with timers and a rifle, causing the Bath School disaster in the Bath Consolidated School in Michigan, killing 44 people in the deadliest mass murder in a school in United States history.

American Civil War: General Ulysses S. Grant led his Army of the Tennessee across the Big Black River in preparation for the Siege of Vicksburg.

An earthquake measuring .mw-parser-output .tooltip-dotted{border-bottom:1px dotted;cursor:help}Ms 7.8 struck Shanxi Province in northern China, resulting in at least 52,600 deaths.

At the Battle of Buir Lake, a Ming Chinese army led by general Lan Yu defeated the forces of Tögüs Temür, the Mongol khan of Northern Yuan.

Armed insurrectionists massacred the occupying French garrison in Bruges, Flanders, killing approximately 2,000 people.

A shooting carried out by two gunmen at the Islamic Center of San Diego results in the deaths of five people, including the perpetrators.

United States presidential election: Joe Biden launches his presidential campaign.

Cubana de Aviación Flight 972 crashes in Santiago de las Vegas after takeoff from José Martí International Airport in Havana, Cuba, killing 112 of the 113 people on board.

At least 78 people die in a landslide caused by heavy rains in the Colombian town of Salgar.

The LTTE are defeated by the Sri Lankan government, ending almost 26 years of fighting between the two sides.

The post Loktantra Andolan government passes a landmark bill curtailing the power of the monarchy and making Nepal a secular country.

A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons, Nix and Hydra.