Today in history—May 18

1268: The city of Antioch, which has been in Christian hands since 1098, falls to Sultan Baybars, whose massacre and destruction is so thorough it will never again be a city of importance.

1631: John Winthrop, a Gray’s Inn lawyer, takes the oath of office as the first Governor of Massachusetts.

1783: The first United Empire Loyalists, emigrating from the new United States, reach Parrtown (later St. John), New Brunswick.

1808: Entrepreneur and Baptist minister Elijah Craig dies at Georgetown, Kentucky. Craig’s distillery at Georgetown, in what is then Bourbon County, is credited as the first to age corn whiskey in charred oak barrels—thus creating bourbon whiskey.

1872: Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, the controversial philosopher who might have amounted to something if the protections of tenure had allowed him to give free vent to his views, is born at Trelleck, Wales.

1891: German-American philosopher Rudolf Carnap is born at Ronsdorf, Germany.

1896: The U.S. Supreme Court decides Plessy v. Ferguson.

1917: Congress passes the Selective Service Act, under which 2.8 million Americans will be drafted for the First World War.

1933: President Roosevelt signs the bill creating the Tennessee Valley Authority, which will dam up many scenic rivers to supply electric power to aluminum plants.

1974: Work is completed on the world’s tallest structure, the 2,120-foot broadcast tower used by Warsaw Radio-Television.  It will collapse in 1991.

1980: Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington State. Total property loss will reach $3 billion.