What happened on 18 October?

13 events from the Ever-When timeline, ranked by how much they mattered.

1. 1851 Moby-Dick Herman Melville's whaling novel, near-forgotten on publication and later canonised.
2. 1860 Burning of the Summer Palace Anglo-French forces destroy the Old Summer Palace in Beijing during the Second Opium War.
3. 1818 Reform Judaism emerges The Hamburg Temple opens with vernacular prayers, organ music and a shortened liturgy, the founding congregation of the Reform movement that would reshape modern Jewish practice.
4. 1997 Guggenheim Museum Bilbao Frank Gehry's titanium-clad museum that triggered the 'Bilbao effect'.
5. 1916 Trans-Siberian Railway completed World's longest railway links Moscow to the Pacific.
6. 1905 The Fauves at the Salon d'Automne Matisse's Woman with a Hat and his friends' violent colours scandalise Paris; a critic calls them 'fauves' — wild beasts.
7. 1926 Born: Chuck Berry American singer-guitarist often credited as a pioneer of rock and roll.
8. 1922 BBC founded The British Broadcasting Company begins, pioneering public-service broadcasting copied around the world.
9. 1962 Gromyko denies Soviet missiles are in Cuba Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko, unaware the missiles in Cuba have already been photographed, assures Kennedy in the Oval Office that Soviet aid to the island is purely defe
10. 1904 Mahler's Symphony No. 5 Opening with a funeral trumpet call and turning to the hushed Adagietto for strings — his love letter to Alma — Mahler's Fifth premieres in Cologne.
11. 1748 Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) The War of the Austrian Succession ends with Maria Theresa's throne secure but Silesia left in Frederick the Great's hands — a loss she spends the next war trying to reverse.
12. 1929 Persons Case The Famous Five win their appeal: women are 'persons' eligible for the Senate, the Judicial Committee ruling that the constitution is 'a living tree'.
13. 1016 Battle of Assandun Cnut's Danes defeat Edmund Ironside's English army in Essex after Eadric Streona deserts mid-battle; the two kings split England, and Edmund's death weeks later leaves Cnut king of