1918

To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt, Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918.

Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?

US Marine Dan Daly to his men during the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 4, 1918.

In the year 1918...

• The "Spanish Flu" influenza epidemic sweeps the world, killing an estimated 25 million people in six months from late 1918 through early 1919.
• World War I lurches to a bloody end. Germany launches the "Spring Offensive" in a last ditch effort to turn the tide, but growing numbers of American reinforcements prove decisive in the successful Allied counterattack, and Germany officialy surrenders on "Armistice Day," November 11. Armenia, Austria, Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Estonia, Latvia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland and Yugoslavia declare independence.
• In a January speech, American president Woodrow Wilson propounds his "Fourteen Points," laying out his vision for a new world order based on peaceful cooperation following World War I.
• The Russian Civil War continues between the "Red" Bolsheviks and the "White" Royalists. As the tide begins to turn in favor of the Bolsheviks, the Allied powers intervene in Siberia on behalf of the Whites. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks consolidate their power, withdrawing from the war in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, moving the capital from Saint Petersberg to Moscow, adopting the Gregorian Calendar as a sign of breaking with the past, and executing Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family.
• Rice Riots sweep Japan, forcing the Meiji Oligarchs to acquiesce to Japan's first true party government.
• The Sedition Act of 1918 passes the US Congress, forbidding Americans from using "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the United States government, flag, or armed forces.
• The US Postal Service innaugurates the world's first airmail service.
• Arthur Scherbius invents the Enigma coding machine.
• The carolina parakeet which once ranged across the southern United States with a population in the billions, becomes extinct when the last one dies in the Cincinnati Zoo.
• The word "motherfucker" appears in print for the first time ever, in the Journal of American History, oddly enough.

These people were born in 1918:

• South African civil rights activist and president Nelson Mandela.
• American physicist Richard Feynman.
• American baseball great Ted Williams.
• Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
• Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman.
• Communist dictator of Romania Nicolae Ceausescu.
• Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.
• American televangelist Billy Graham.
• American advice columnist Esther Friedman, better known by her pen name Ann Landers.
• American advice columnist Pauline Friedman, better known by her pen name Abigail Van Buren.
• American sports broadcaster Howard Cosell.
• American television journalist Mike Wallace.
• American radio personality Paul Harvey.
• American entrepreneur Sam Walton, founder of Walmart.
• American baseball great Bob Feller.
• American composer Leonard Bernstein.
• American science fiction author Philip José Farmer.
• American-born Soviet spy Julius Rosenberg.
• Scottish author Muriel Spark.
• American baseball broadcaster Ernie Harwell.

These people died in 1918:

• Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family, executed by the Bolsheviks.
• French impressionist composer Claude Debussy.
• Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt.
• American historian Henry Adams.
• World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen, better known by his nickname, "The Red Baron," apparently shot down by Canadian pilot Roy Brown.
• English poet and soldier Wilfred Owen, killed in action one week before the end of World War I.
• French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, of the Spanish flu.
• Ottoman sultan Mehmed V, succeeded by his brother Mehmed VI, who would be the last.

1917 - 1918 - 1919

20th century