Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/February 18

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 * 1268 – The Battle of Wesenberg took place between Novgorodian and Pskovian forces against the Livonian Order and its allies, ending with Russian forces retreating from Danish Estonia.
 * 1637 – Eighty Years' War: Off the coast of Cornwall, a Spanish fleet intercepted an Anglo-Dutch merchant convoy of forty-four vessels escorted by six men-of-war, destroying or capturing twenty ships.
 * 1766 – Enslaved Malagasy captives on the Dutch East India Company slave ship Meermin began a mutiny that led to the ship's destruction on Cape Agulhas in present-day South Africa and the recapture of the instigators.
 * 1781 – Fourth Anglo-Dutch War: A British expedition against Dutch colonial outposts on the Gold Coast of Africa landed in Elmina in present-day Ghana.
 * 1873 – Vasil Levski, a national hero of Bulgaria, was executed in Sofia by the Ottoman authorities for his efforts to establish an independent Bulgarian republic.
 * 1878 – Competition between two American merchants in Lincoln County, New Mexico Territory, turned into a range war when a member of one faction was murdered by the other.
 * 1943 – Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, delivered a speech calling for a "total war" to motivate the German people as the tide of World War II turned against Germany.


 * 1943 – The core members of the White Rose, an anti-Nazi resistance group, were arrested by the Gestapo.
 * 1946 – President Harry S. Truman signed the Rescission Act, annulling benefits payable to Filipino troops who fought for the U.S. during World War II.
 * 1977 – NASA's first Space Shuttle, Enterprise, made its first test flight on top of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (both pictured).
 * 2001 – American FBI agent Robert Hanssen (pictured) was arrested for having spied for the KGB and GRU over a 22-year period.
 * 2001 – Inter-ethnic violence between the Dayak and the Madurese broke out in Sampit, Indonesia, ultimately causing more than 500 deaths and the displacement of 100,000 Madurese from their homes.
 * 2010 – In a coup d'état, military rebels attacked the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger, and replaced President Mamadou Tandja with a ruling junta, the Supreme Council for the Restoration of Democracy.
 * 2010 – WikiLeaks published the first of hundreds of thousands of classified documents disclosed by Chelsea Manning.
 * 2013 – Eight gunmen stole US$50,000,000 worth of diamonds from a Swiss-bound aircraft at Brussels Airport.
 * 2019 – Seven members of Parliament in the United Kingdom resigned from the Labour Party to form a new political party called The Independent Group.
 * Born/died this day: | Michelangelo |d|1564| Michelangelo Cerquozzi |b|1602| Francesco Redi |b|1626| William Phips |d|1695| Anna Maria Luisa de' Medici |d|1743| Joseph Marie Terray |d|1778| Kristijonas Donelaitis |d|1780| George Henschel |b|1850| Ho Yuen Hoe |b|1908| Swraj Paul, Baron Paul |b|1931| Toni Morrison |b|1931| Bobby Robson |b|1933|  Sergo Ordzhonikidze |d|1937| Bidzina Ivanishvili |b|1956