01010618 This Day In History, June 18

618: Li Yuan was proclaimed Emperor Gaozu of Tang, beginning three centuries of the Tang Dynasty in China (see also Gog and Magog).

1053: The Battle of Civitate. 3,000 cavalry of Norman Count Humphrey routed the forces of Pope Leo IX.

1155: Frederick I Barbarossa (known as "Red Beard"), a Hohenstaufen, was crowned "Holy Roman Emperor" (see The Holy Roman Empire Of The German Nation) by Pope Adrian IV.

1178: Five Canterbury monks reported seeing an explosion on the moon, the only such observation known. It is believed to have been the result of a collision with a piece of space rock that formed another of the moon's many impact craters (see also The Blood Moon Prophecy).

1264: The Parliament of Ireland met at Castledermot in County Kildare, the first known session of the Irish legislature.

1633: Charles I was crowned King of Scots at St Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh (see also 1 Kings 16: The Election Of Kings).

1667: The Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames and threatened London.

1757: During the Seven Years' War, the Battle of KolĂ­n was fought between Prussian forces under Frederick the Great and an Austrian army under Field Marshal Count Leopold Joseph von Daun.

1767: Samuel Wallis, an English explorer who sailed around the world, sighted Tahiti. He and his crew are considered to be the first Europeans to encounter the island.

1784: King George III authorized the division of Nova Scotia (which means New Scotland), establishing the new section as New Brunswick.

1812: U.S. President James Madison signed a declaration of war that began the War of 1812 (1812-1814) against Britain, with the primary publicly-stated objective of annexing Canada and subjecting its people to U.S. military occupation and rule, with the proclamation "surrender or be annihilated" (as an independent nation, the U.S. very quickly became what it claims to have been founded against). At the end of the war, Canada was still Canada, and the borders remained unmoved. It was the last invasion of Canada by any nation.
The War of 1812 was actually a relatively minor war for Britain, with only a small fraction of its army and navy involved (the U.S. threw everything it had in its repelled invasions of Canada, while having the White House burned to the ground by British Marines in retaliation for the U.S. burning of the Parliament Building in Toronto a few months earlier), compared to the wars that Britain fought against Napoleon Bonaparte and the French Empire, all across Europe, at the same time - which ended at the famous Battle of Waterloo in 1815 (see the entry below).

1815: Napoleon Bonaparte's attempt to regain control of France ended when he was defeated at The Battle of Waterloo in Belgium by British and Prussian forces. After escaping from exile in Elba, Napoleon marched north through France for 100 days, gathering men and arms. The Duke of Wellington met him with a mixed allied army in a day-long battle. Napoleon's army suffered massive casualties, losing 40,000 of its 72,000 men.

1953: Egypt was proclaimed a republic.

1975: Prince Faisal Ibn Musaed was publicly beheaded for the murder of his uncle, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia.

1981: A disease that was later to be known as AIDS, was identified by researchers in San Francisco, California.

1983: Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman in space - 20 years after the first woman in space, Russian cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.