Check out This Day in History for Nov. 18, in MainStream’s daily look at significant progressive, intersectional historical events.
1477: William Caxton revolutionizes printing history, when he prints the first-ever English publication with a date and named publisher: “Dictes and Sayings of the Philosophers.”
1872: Suffragette Susan B. Anthony is arrested and charged with illegally voting along with 13 other women a few weeks earlier. Anthony is convicted the following year and sentenced to a fine instead of a jail sentence, which prevented her from appealing the ruling. She never paid the fine.
Cult leader Jim Jones receiving an award with a picture of Martin Luther King Jr., super-imposed behind him; the late supermodel Gia Carangi; LGBTQ+ STEM Day; Black Friday in 1910; and the World Day for Prevention of Child Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence
1910: Black Friday amps up the women’s suffragette movement worldwide, when 300 women with the Women’s Social and Political Union march on the British Parliament to push for voting rights. They’re harassed by male bystanders, and met at the Palace of Westminster by police who also attack the women. After six hours, two dozen women reported sexual assault that are never investigated because of a ruling by then Home Secretary Winston Churchill.
1977: Robert Chambliss is sentenced to life in prison for planting a bomb that killed four young Black girls at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. Chambliss was among four Ku Klux Klansmen accused of the killing of Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley.
1978: The largest intentional civilian death in American history short of 9-11 takes place when the Jonestown Massacre in Guyana leads to death by cyanide of 909 people, a third of which were thought to be children. The Rev. Jim Jones, leader of the cult the Peoples Church, had ordered the mass suicide among his followers at the encampment as part of his long-term plan for “revolutionary suicide.” He had also ordered his team to kill Cong. Leo Ryan and others a few hours before the mass suicide and killing.
1986: Supermodel Gia Carangi, whose androgynous style landed her in ads for Versace and Dior, dies of AIDS-related illnesses at age 26. Carangi, who struggled with drug addiction throughout her career, is thought to have contracted HIV through intravenous drug use. Among the first-ever high-profile women to die of AIDS, Carangi posthumously helped raise awareness of HIV prevention and treatment among women.
1980: The final joint Congressional report on the Iran-Contra Scandal is released, concluding that the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan exhibited “secrecy, deception, and disdain for the law” when some of its members funneled weapons from secret arms sales to Iran, to Contra fighters in Nicaragua.
2020: LGBTQ+ STEM Day, which honors LGBTQ+ people in science, technology, engineering and math, is moved from July to Nov. 18. The celebration was originally held in July but moved to November to honor the anniversary of Army lab worker Frank Kameny‘s battle against his firing from his job for being gay.
2021: Two men wrongfully convicted 55 years earlier of assassinating Malcolm X are officially exonerated. Khalil Islam and Muhammad Abdul Aziz were convicted of the killing in 1966 and sentenced to life in prison based on “highly contradictory and implausible eyewitness testimony” only, with no actual evidence against them.
2022: The United Nations declares Nov. 18 the annual World Day for Prevention and Healing from Child XExual Exploitation, Abuse and Violence. About one in five girls, and one in nine boys, worldwide experience sexual violence before their eighteenth birthday, reports Together for Girls.
Photos courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
