1900
May 18, Sarah Miriam Peale, US portrait painter (General Lafayette-1825), was born.

1955
May 18, Queen Juliana opened the E55 fair in Amsterdam.

1955
May 18, Mary McLeod Bethune (79), educator & civil rights leader, died.

1956
May 18, Queen Juliana opened the Rembrandt fairs in Amsterdam.

1976
May 18, In San Francisco Jenny Read (29), an artist and sculptor, was raped and killed at her Potrero Hill home. She was stabbed 13 times. In 2013 DNA evidence led to the conviction of James Mayfield (67) for her murder.

1990
May 18, Jill Ireland (54), actress (Carry on Nurse, Family), died of cancer.

1991
May 18, Helen Sharman became the first Briton to rocket into space as she flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts on an eight-day mission.

1991
May 18, Edwina Booth (86), actress (Trader Horn), died of heart failure.

1999
May 18, Georgette Smith, a Florida woman left paralyzed from the neck down after being shot by her elderly mother, won the right to be taken off life support. Smith died the next day, shortly after being taken off a ventilator; her mother, Shirley Egan, was later acquitted of attempted murder.

2000
May 18, Sante Kimes and Kenneth Kimes, mother-and-son grifters, were convicted in New York of murdering Irene Silverman in a plot to steal her elegant townhouse mansion. The body of the 82-year-old millionaire widow has never been found.

2004
May 18, Sonia Gandhi announced she would "humbly decline" to be the next prime minister of India. Manmohan Singh (71), a respected Oxford-educated economist, was reported to be Gandhi's choice to become PM.

2006
May 18, China reported a ban on Ao Mei Ding, a breast-enlarging liquid that was approved for general use in 2000. Some 300,000 women were injected with the liquid and some reported so much pain that they had their breasts removed.

2008
May 18, Kuwait's parliamentary elections showed strong gains for Muslim hardliners. Women candidates failed to win a single seat.

2008
May 18, An American woman (28) was among four people found dead in the Mexican beach town of Playas de Rosarito, near border with California.

2009
May 18, In Egypt a 4-year-old girl died of bird flu, making her the country's 27th death from the virus since 2006.

2010
May 18, A female American aid worker, Flavia Wagner (35), and two Sudanese colleagues were ambushed and abducted by gunmen in Abu Ajura, South Darfur state. On Aug 30 the foreign ministry said police had freed Wagner in the Abu Agora area south of Nyala.

2011
May 18, Missing journalist Dorothy Parvaz, who was held by Iranian authorities after being detained in Syria, arrived in her company's home base of Qatar after winning her freedom.

2012
May 18, In Michigan Sandra Layne (74) allegedly "hunted down" her teenage grandson (17) in her in her West Bloomfield Township home and shot at him 10 times over a six-minute span. In 2013 Layne testified that she was afraid of her grandson and acted in self-defense.

2012
May 18, In Afghanistan Lal Bibi (18) was abducted, chained to a wall, sexually assaulted and beaten for five days. She later said she was raped because her cousin offended a family linked to a local militia commander, who then had his men abduct her. A policeman said a mullah had married them just before intercourse.

2013
May 18, Opera singer Claramae Turner Hoffman (b.1920) died in Santa Rosa, Ca. She appeared in the 1956 movie Carousel in which she sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone."