February 18
- Ramadan beginsIslamic
The first day of Ramadan, the month of dawn-to-sunset fasting, prayer, and reflection.
Follows the lunar Hijri calendar; the observed date can vary by a day with the moon sighting.
The Hebrew anniversary of a passing drifts against the civil calendar; these fall on February 18 this year.
- R. Shabtai HaKohen (the Shach)d. 1663 CE
Author of the Siftei Kohen (Shach) on the Shulchan Aruch
Trace this life →
- 1546 CEChristian · died
Martin Luther, the reformer whose writings launched the Protestant Reformation, died in Eisleben, the town of his birth.
- 1827 CEEgyptian · born
Heinrich Brugsch, a pioneer in deciphering the demotic script of later Egyptian writing, was born on this day in 1827.
- 1836 CEHindu · born
Sri Ramakrishna, the Bengali mystic and teacher of Vivekananda, was born in the village of Kamarpukur.
- 1875 CEMesopotamian · born
Walter Andrae, the German archaeologist and architect who directed the excavation of the Assyrian capital Assur, was born near Leipzig.
- 1984 CEEgyptian · died
Labib Habachi, the Egyptian Egyptologist known for decades of fieldwork across Egypt and Nubia, died on this day in 1984.
- 1745 CEScience · born
Alessandro Volta, the Italian physicist who built the first electric battery, the voltaic pile, and whose name lives on in the volt, was born in Como.
Trace this life → - 1930 CEScience · discovered
At Lowell Observatory, Clyde Tombaugh spotted a faint moving object while comparing photographic plates, a body beyond Neptune's orbit that was soon named Pluto.