What happened on September 18
All 5 specimens from this file, spanning 324 to 1975, with the story behind each photograph.
Reveal the full answer key
-
An emperor defeats his last rival and rules Rome alone
Constantine beat Licinius at Chrysopolis on 18 September 324 and became sole ruler of the Roman world. Within months he began rebuilding Byzantium as his new capital. He had already legalised Christianity; from here he made it the religion of the court.
-
The head of the United Nations dies in a plane crash on a peace mission
Dag Hammarskjold, the UN secretary-general, was killed on 18 September 1961 when his aircraft came down near Ndola in what is now Zambia, on his way to ceasefire talks over Katanga. He remains the only person awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after their death. Three inquiries have never fully settled what brought the plane down.
-
A guitarist dies in London at twenty-seven
Jimi Hendrix died in a Notting Hill hotel on 18 September 1970, aged twenty-seven, after taking sleeping pills. His recording career had lasted barely four years. He was left-handed and played a right-handed Stratocaster upside down, restringing it himself.
-
A kidnapped heiress who joined her kidnappers is finally arrested
Patty Hearst, granddaughter of the newspaper magnate, was taken from her flat in February 1974 by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Two months later a bank camera filmed her holding a carbine during one of their raids. The FBI caught up with her on 18 September 1975; she gave her occupation on the booking form as "urban guerrilla".
-
A bank failure sets off a panic that shuts the stock exchange for ten days
Jay Cooke and Company, the biggest bank in America, closed its doors on 18 September 1873, having tied up its money in an unfinished railway. The New York Stock Exchange shut for ten days, the first time it had ever closed. The depression that followed lasted the rest of the decade and was called the Great Depression until a worse one came along.