Template:On this day - October 18

Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón

• 646 – In Toledo (Visigothic Hispania), the Seventh Council of Toledo is held.
• 1035 – Death of Sancho III, King of Navarre (b. c. 992/996).
• 1519 – In Cholula (New Spain), the forces of the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés and their Tlaxcalan allies execute the Cholultec leaders and their followers, who had been plotting an ambush since two days earlier.
• 1526 – Death of Lucas Vázquez de Ayllón, Spanish explorer (b. c. 1478).
• 1540 – Troops of Hernando de Soto destroy the fortified town of Mabila in present-day Alabama (United States), after battling the warriors of the cacique Tuskaloosa, who died after the fight.
• 1766 – The ship of the line San Juan Nepomuceno is launched at Guarnizo, Cantabria, Spain.
• 1801 – Birth of Justo José de Urquiza, Argentine military officer and politician, first constitutional president of the Argentine Confederation.
• 1809 – At Tamames (Salamanca), the Battle of Tamames is fought during the Napoleonic Invasion of Spain.
• 1820 – Portoviejo (Ecuador) declares its independence from the Spanish Empire.
• 1891 – In Asunción (Paraguay), the Liberal Revolution breaks out against the abuses of the government of President Juan Gualberto González.
• 1898 – The United States annexes the island of Puerto Rico.
• 1939 – In Spain, the capital is moved from Burgos to Madrid.
• 1945 – In Venezuela, a group of military officers led by Marcos Pérez Jiménez, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud and Mario Vargas carries out a coup d'état against the constitutional President Isaías Medina Angarita.
• 1948 – In Chile, the government of Gabriel González Videla publishes in the Diario Oficial the Law of Permanent Defense of Democracy, which outlaws the Communist Party.
• 1955 – Death of José Ortega y Gasset, Spanish philosopher and essayist (b. 1883).
• 1977 – In Ecuador, the Aztra massacre takes place, leaving more than a hundred dead after the police opened fire on the workers of a sugar mill who were on strike.
• 2003 – Death of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Spanish writer (b. 1939).
• 2019 – In Chile, protests break out, sparked by the rise in public transport fares in the country's capital.