Six Surprising Events of August 18

When I take a break from selling houses in San Jose, Cupertino and Santa Clara, Calif., I love learning new facts. Here are six surprising events from this date in history, August 18, courtesy of Wikipedia.

•          1587 – Virginia Dare, granddaughter of Governor John White of the Colony of Roanoke, becomes the first English child born in the Americas.  
•          1590 – John White, the governor of the Roanoke Colony, returns from a supply trip to England and finds his settlement deserted. This mystery remains unsolved to this date.
•          1868 – French astronomer Pierre Janssen discovers helium.
•          1920 – The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified, guaranteeing women's suffrage and right to vote. Noted suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton drafted the amendment and first introduced it in 1878. It took forty-one years before the U.S. Congress submitted the amendment to the states for ratification. Finally, a year later in 1920, it was ratified.
•          1958 – Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita about an older man's unhealthy fascination with an underage girl is published in the United States.
•          1963 – American civil rights movement: James Meredith becomes the first black person to graduate from the University of Mississippi.  

Thank you for reading “Six Surprising Events of August 18”.