Template:On this day - February 18

Hernán Cortés

• 633 – Death of Helladius of Toledo, churchman and statesman of Visigothic Hispania (b. c. 566).
• 1519 – After setting out from Havana (Cuba), Hernán Cortés, with a fleet of eleven ships and a thousand men, reaches the island of Cozumel, the first step in the conquest of present-day Mexico.
• 1637 – During the Battle of Lizard Point off the coast of Cornwall, England, a Spanish fleet commanded by Miguel de Horna intercepts and destroys an important Anglo-Dutch convoy.
• 1701 – Philip of Anjou arrives in Madrid and is warmly received by part of the people, who wish to crown him King of Spain.
• 1797 – The Spanish island of Trinidad, off the coast of Venezuela, is invaded by a British fleet.
• 1819 – On the Tercero River, the Unitarian forces commanded by Colonel Juan Bautista Bustos fight the Battle of La Herradura against the Federal forces of Estanislao López.
• 1838 – Death of Felipe Santiago Salaverry, Peruvian military officer and politician (b. 1806).
• 1838 – Death of Francisco Xavier Venegas, Viceroy of New Spain from 1810 to 1813 (b. 1754).
• 1841 – In San Salvador, capital city of El Salvador, a Constituent Assembly approves the first Constitution of El Salvador as a State sovereign and independent of the Federal Republic of Central America.
• 1881 – In Washington, D.C. (United States), the Cuban physician Carlos Juan Finlay (1833–1915) makes public his discovery of the transmission of yellow fever by the Aedes aegypti mosquito.
• 1906 – A hot-air balloon crewed by three men and a woman makes the journey Madrid – Illescas (Toledo) in three and a quarter hours.
• 1915 – Death of Francisco Giner de los Ríos, Spanish educator, philosopher and essayist (b. 1839).
• 1927 – Juan Campisteguy is proclaimed President of the Republic of Uruguay.
• 1960 – In Uruguay, the Treaty of Montevideo is signed, creating the Latin American Free Trade Association.
• 1977 – At the military airport of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the dictator Jorge Rafael Videla escapes unharmed from an attack when a bomb explodes next to his plane as it takes off.
• 1983 – In Venezuela, the famous "Black Friday" takes place, when the currency (the bolívar) fell from 0.23 to 0.06 dollars.
• 1992 – In Seville (Spain), an accidental fire devastates the Pavilion of Discoveries, flagship of Expo '92.
• 2020 – Death of Clementina Díaz y de Ovando, Mexican writer, historian, researcher and academic (b. 1916).
• 2013 – In Caracas (Venezuela), President Hugo Chávez returns to the country after two months and seven days in Cuba, recovering from an operation for the cancer he suffered from.
• 2020 – Death of José Fernando Bonaparte, Argentine paleontologist (b. 1928).
• 2022 – In the Province of Corrientes (Argentina), Governor Gustavo Valdes declares the province an "Ecological and Environmental Disaster Zone" after unprecedented forest fires that burned more than 10% of the provincial area.