Today in History, July 18th
On July 18, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts stormed Fort Wagner in South Carolina. Plus Nadia Comaneci's perfect 10 and Detroit's bankruptcy.
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July 18 is best known for 1863, when the 54th Massachusetts, one of the best-known African American regiments of the Civil War, stormed Fort Wagner in South Carolina. The date also saw Nadia Comăneci score the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics in 1976 and Detroit file the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history in 2013.
The big story: The 54th Massachusetts storms Fort Wagner (1863)
Fort Wagner sat on Morris Island, guarding the way into Charleston harbor, and the only way to reach it on foot was a thin strip of beach squeezed between the ocean and a swamp. In July 1863, Union general Quincy Gillmore set out to take it. Union guns pounded the fort all day on July 18 and did little damage. At 7:45 p.m. the infantry went in, led by the 54th Massachusetts, an African American regiment under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the son of abolitionists. Its ranks included two sons of Frederick Douglass and a grandson of Sojourner Truth. The attackers ran about 1,200 yards of open beach under fire and got over the walls in two places, but there were not enough of them to hold on. Shaw was killed, and Union losses topped 1,500 killed, wounded or captured, against 222 for the Confederates. The assault failed, yet it showed doubters that Black soldiers could fight as well as anyone. The story later reached movie screens in the film Glory.
More events on July 18
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1195 | The Almohads defeated King Alfonso VIII of Castile at the Battle of Alarcos in Spain. |
| 1792 | Revolutionary War naval hero John Paul Jones died in his Paris apartment. |
| 1918 | French marshal Ferdinand Foch launched a counterattack in the Second Battle of the Marne that sent German forces into retreat. |
| 1921 | The trial of eight Chicago White Sox players accused of throwing the 1919 World Series began; a jury later acquitted them, but baseball banned all eight for life. |
| 1925 | The first volume of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf was published. |
| 1927 | Ty Cobb got the 4,000th hit of his career. |
| 1940 | Democrats nominated Franklin D. Roosevelt for an unprecedented third term as president. |
| 1947 | President Harry Truman signed a new Presidential Succession Act, revising the line of succession set in 1792. |
| 1966 | Gemini 10 launched with John Young and Michael Collins; the mission included the first spacewalk from one spacecraft to another. |
| 1976 | Romania’s Nadia Comăneci earned the first perfect 10 in Olympic gymnastics, on the uneven bars at the Montreal Games. |
| 1986 | Close-up videotapes of the Titanic wreck were released to the public. |
| 2013 | Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the largest such filing ever by a U.S. city. |
Born on July 18
- 1811: William Makepeace Thackeray, English novelist best known for Vanity Fair, born in Calcutta, India.
- 1918: Nelson Mandela, anti-apartheid leader, Nobel Peace Prize winner and president of South Africa, born in Transkei.
- 1921: John Glenn, American astronaut and U.S. senator, born in Cambridge, Ohio.
Sources
- Assault on Battery Wagner and death of Robert Gould Shaw, History.com
- This Day in History: July 18, History.com
- On This Day: July 18, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- William Makepeace Thackeray, Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Nelson Mandela: Biographical, The Nobel Prize
- John Glenn, Encyclopaedia Britannica
