On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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With a promise that lawmakers would soon take up immigration, Congress approved a short-term spending bill to reopen the government after a brief but heated shutdown.
Bringing together 1,500 artists across the internet, the global digital art festival known as The Wrong is a democratic alternative to the often elitist system of fairs. Here’s a quick tour through its treasures.
Turkish forces continued their attack on the Kurds, America’s closest ally in the war on the Islamic State, with the apparent blessing of Moscow.
Senate Democrats believe they are limiting damage from a political miscalculation by surrendering, but doing so has drawn a fierce backlash from the left.
The Competition and Markets Authority provisionally rejected 21st Century Fox’s proposed deal for the part of the satellite broadcaster it doesn’t already control.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of January 17, 2018, covering January 23, 2018.
Soundtrack
Ed Sheeran
G-Eazy
Bruno Mars
Post Malone
2018Hugh Masekela, South African trumpeter, composer and singer (born 1939)[†]
Hugh Ramapolo Masekela was a South African trumpeter, flugelhornist, cornetist, singer and composer who was described as "the father of South African jazz". Masekela was known for his jazz compositions and for writing well-known anti-apartheid songs such as "Soweto Blues" and "Bring Him Back Home". He also had a number-one US pop hit in 1968 with his version of "Grazing in the Grass".
2018Nicanor Parra, Chilean poet (born 1914)[†]
Nicanor Segundo Parra Sandoval was a Chilean physicist and poet. He has been considered one of the most influential Spanish-language Chilean poets of the 20th century.
2018Wyatt Tee Walker, American civil rights activist and pastor (born 1928)[†]
Wyatt Tee Walker was an African-American pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a chief of staff for Martin Luther King Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). He helped found a Congress for Racial Equality (CORE) chapter in 1958. As executive director of the SCLC from 1960 to 1964, Walker helped to bring the group to national prominence. Walker sat at the feet of his mentor, BG Crawley, who was a Baptist Minister in Brooklyn, NY and New York State Judge.
2018A 7.9 Mw earthquake occurs in the Gulf of Alaska. It is tied as the sixth-largest earthquake ever recorded in the United States, but there are no reports of significant damage or fatalities.[†]
On January 23, 2018, at 00:31 AKST, an earthquake occurred in the Gulf of Alaska near Kodiak Island. The earthquake, measured at 7.9 on the Mw scale, was approximately 280 kilometers (170 mi) southeast of Kodiak and happened at a depth of 25 kilometers (16 mi).
2018A double car bombing in Benghazi, Libya, kills at least 33 people and wounds "dozens" of others. The victims include both military personnel and civilians, according to local officials.[†]
Benghazi is the second-most-populous city in Libya as well as the largest city in Cyrenaica, with an estimated population of 859,000 in 2023. Located on the Gulf of Sidra in the Mediterranean, Benghazi is also a major seaport.
2018The China–United States trade war begins when President Donald Trump places tariffs on Chinese solar panels and washing machines.[†]
An economic conflict between China and the United States has been ongoing since January 2018, when U.S. president Donald Trump began imposing tariffs and other trade barriers on China with the aim of forcing it to make changes to what the U.S. has said are longstanding unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. The first Trump administration stated that these practices may contribute to the U.S.–China trade deficit, and that the Chinese government requires the transfer of American technology to China. In response to the trade measures, CCP general secretary Xi Jinping's administration accused the Trump administration of engaging in nationalist protectionism and took retaliatory action. Following the trade war's escalation through 2019, the two sides reached a tense phase-one agreement in January 2020; however, a temporary collapse in goods trade around the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic together with a short recession diminished the chance of meeting the target, China failed to buy the $200 billion worth of additional imports specified as part of it. By the end of Trump's first presidency, the trade war was widely characterized by American media outlets as a failure for the United States.
In 2018, the world population was approximately 7,729,902,781 people[†]