1918

Centuries: Year in Review 20th Century (19th century - 20th century - 21st century)

Decades: 1860s 1870s 1880s 1890s 1900s - 1910s - 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s

Years: 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 - 1918 - 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923

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Births

• July 18 - Nelson Mandela, South African prisoner of conscience and president.
• December 11 - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer
• Frederic Sanger (molecular biologist)
• [Ingemar Bergman]? Swedish film director

Deaths

Events

• World War I ends.
• Poland gains its independence.
• Iceland becomes an independent state, under the Danish crown, with foreign affairs handled by Denmark.
• [Finnish Civil War]? between the Reds and the Whites, January - April.
• March 6 - Finnish Airforce founded. The blue swastika is adopted as its symbol as a tribute to the Swedish explorer and aviator Eric von Rosen who donated the first plane. Von Rosen had painted the buddhist symbol on the plane as his personal lucky insignia.
• Russia adopts the Gregorian calendar, which has the bizarre consequence that the anniversary of the Russian Revolution, previously October, now falls in November.
• Change of emperor of the Ottoman Empire from [Mehmed V]? (Resad) (1909-1918) to [Mehmed VI]? (Vahdettin) (1918-1922)
• August - Influenza? pandemic begins, over twenty-five million people die in the following six months (three times as many as died during the war).
• December - New voting laws in Sweden. Votes no longer dependent on taxable assets. One person, one vote.

Nobel Prizes

• Physics - Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
• Chemistry - [Fritz Haber]?
• Medicine - not awarded
• Literature - - not awarded
• Peace - not awarded