1918 in the United States

1918 in the United States
Decades:	1890s 1900s – 1910s – 1920s 1930s
Years:	1915 1916 1917 – 1918 – 1919 1920 1921
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48 stars (1912 – 1959)
Timeline of United States history History of the United States (1918–1945)

Events from the year 1918 in the United States.

Incumbents

• President: Woodrow Wilson (Democratic)
• Vice President: Thomas R. Marshall (Democratic)
• Chief Justice: Edward Douglass White
• Speaker of the House of Representatives: Champ Clark (D-Missouri)
• Congress: 65th

Events

January–March

• January 8 – Woodrow Wilson delivers his Fourteen Points speech.
• March 4 – A soldier at Camp Fuston, Kansas falls sick with the first confirmed case of the Spanish flu.
• March 19 – The U.S. Congress establishes time zones and approves daylight saving time (DST goes into effect on March 31).

April–June

• May 2 – General Motors acquires the Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware.
• May 15 – The United States Post Office Department (later renamed the United States Postal Service) begins the first regular airmail service in the world (between New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC).
• May 16 – The Sedition Act of 1918 is approved by the U.S. Congress.
• May 20 – The small town of Codell, Kansas is hit for the third year in a row by a tornado. Coincidentally, all three tornadoes hit on May 20, 1916, 1917, and 1918 respectively.
• June 22 – Suspects in the Chicago Restaurant Poisonings are arrested, and more than 100 waiters are taken into custody, for poisoning restaurant customers with a lethal powder called Mickey Finn.

July–September

1918 flu pandemic

• July 9 – Great train wreck of 1918: In Nashville, Tennessee, an inbound local train collides with an outbound express, killing 101.
• August – A deadly second wave of the Spanish flu starts in France, Sierra Leone, and the United States.^[1]
• September 11 – The Boston Red Sox defeat the Chicago Cubs for the 1918 World Series championship, their last World Series win until 2004.

October–December

• October 8 – World War I: In the Argonne Forest in France, U.S. Corporal Alvin C. York almost single-handedly kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132.
• October 11 – The city of Mayagüez, Puerto Rico and other adjacent towns are nearly destroyed by an 7.5 earthquake and a tsunami.
• October 12 – 1918 Cloquet Fire: The city of Cloquet, Minnesota and nearby areas are destroyed in a fire, killing 453.
• October 25 – The Princess Sophia sinks on Vanderbilt Reef near Juneau, Alaska; 353 people die in the greatest maritime disaster in the Pacific Northwest.
• November 1 – Malbone Street Wreck: The worst rapid transit accident in world history occurs under the intersection of Malbone Street and Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn, New York City, with at least 93 dead.
• December 4 – U.S. President Woodrow Wilson sails for the Paris Peace Conference, becoming the first U.S. president to travel to Europe while in office.

Undated

• The Native American Church is formally founded.
• The Association Against the Prohibition Amendment is founded to stop Prohibition in the U.S.
• The last captive Carolina Parakeet (the last breed of parrot native to North America) dies at the Cincinnati Zoo .

Ongoing

• Progressive Era (1890s–1920s)
• Lochner era (c. 1897–c. 1937)
• U.S. occupation of Haiti (1915–1934)
• World War I, U.S. involvement (1917–1918)
• First Red Scare (1917–1920)

Births

This section requires expansion.

• January 21 – Richard Winters, World War II soldier (died 2011)
• August 21 – Bruria Kaufman, American-born Israeli physicist (died 2010)

Deaths

This section is empty. You can help by adding to it.

References

External links

• Media related to 1918 in the United States at Wikimedia Commons