18 August 1342
A scratch English fleet of converted merchant vessels under the Earl of Northampton surprised and overwhelmed a squadron of large Genoese war galleys off Brest.
18 August 1587: The first baby is born to English settlers in the Americas
Virginia Dare is welcomed to the ill-fated Roanoke colony
In the summer of 1587, an English fleet sailed towards Roanoke Island, just off the coast of what’s now North Carolina. It was led by John White, a gentleman artist and friend of the Elizabethan explorer Sir Walter Ralegh, who had been sent to establish a colony in the New World. Some 114 potential settlers accompanied him, among them his daughter, Eleanor, and her husband, Ananias Dare, a bricklayer from London.
On 18 August, in what must have been basic conditions, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter. The girl was christened Virginia, after the English settlement in North America – itself named after Elizabeth I’s sobriquet: the ‘virgin queen’. Virginia was the first child born to white English-speaking parents anywhere in the Americas.
If her grandfather was delighted, his joy did not last. Only nine days after her birth, White sailed for England, hoping to secure supplies and support for his struggling venture. Delayed by storms and Spanish ships, he did not return for three years, landing – with a grim twist – on the date of Virginia’s third birthday. To his horror he found the settlement deserted, with no sign of life. The settlers, including his daughter and granddaughter, had simply disappeared.
What happened to the settlers will surely never be known. Yet little Virginia has become a near-legendary figure in the US, celebrated with stamps, coins, bridges and parks. A popular folk myth holds that Virginia was adopted by Native Americans, magically turned into a white doe and then accidentally killed by a hunter. So whenever a white doe is spotted near Roanoke Island, locals maintain that it is the spirit of Virginia Dare. | Written by Dominic Sandbrook
18 August 1559
Englishman Thomas Wilson and Scotsman John Craig escaped from the Inquisition’s prison in Rome when it was sacked by a mob following the death of Pope Paul IV. Both had been due to be burned for heresy on the following day. Craig, whose father had been killed at Flodden, returned to Scotland and became a Protestant minister. Wilson became a privy councillor and ambassador under Queen Elizabeth I and was appointed dean of Durham as a reward for his political service. He never visited the city and carried out all his duties by letter.
18 August 1612: Pendle ‘witches’ take the stand
Sensational trial sees villagers sent to their deaths
On 18 August 1612, one of the most extraordinary trials in British history opened at Lancaster Assizes. Earlier that year, 16 or 17 people, all of whom lived in or near Pendle Hill in Lancashire, had been accused of murder by witchcraft. Many of them belonged to two families, the Demdikes and the Chattoxes, who were believed to have been rival witch clans.
In the suspicious, even paranoid atmosphere of Jacobean England, the trial was a sensation. The Wonderfull Discoverie of Witches in the Countie of Lancaster read the title of an account by Thomas Potts, the clerk to the assizes – which turned the case into perhaps the best-known witch trial of the century.
- Read more | History explorer: the Pendle witches
The trial’s first day opened with the examination of Anne Whittle, alias Chattox, “a very old withered spent and decrepit creature, her sight almost gone,” who had reputedly sold her soul to the Devil some years earlier. According to Potts, “the Devil then further commanded her, to call him by the name of Fancy; and when she wanted any thing, or would be revenged of any, call on Fancy, and he would be ready”.
The interrogation of Anne Whittle – who had, it transpired, sent Fancy to kill four men – set the scene for what was to follow. For the next two days the trial heard a bizarre series of confessions and accusations, with the rival Demdike and Chattox families each claiming that the other was a den of witchcraft.
Eleven of the accused were found guilty under the Witchcraft Act: 10 were sentenced to death by hanging, one died in prison, while another was imprisoned for a year. The remaining members of the group were all acquitted. | Written by Dominic Sandbrook
18 August 1870
During the Franco-Prussian War Bazaine’s French army inflicted over 20,000 casualties on Von Moltke’s Prussians at the battle of Gravelotte but then retreated to Metz where it was besieged and forced to surrender two months later.
18 August 1991
Soviet hardliners launched a coup against President Mikhail Gorbachev, who was placed under house arrest. popular resistance ensured the coup collapsed after just three days. gorbachev resigned in December that year.”
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