On This Day April 18

A gunman killed 22 people, including a female police officer, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia before being killed by police. It was the worst mass shooting in Canada’s history

A redacted version of the Mueller report found that the Russian government “interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion”

Miguel Diaz-Canel succeeded Raul Castro as President of Cuba, ending almost 60 years of Castro rule. Raul’s brother Fidel Castro toppled the government of Fulgencio Batista in 1959

King Mswati III of Swaziland, one of the smallest countries in Africa, announced the change of his country’s name to Eswatini

The deadliest avalanche ever recorded on Mount Everest killed 16 Nepalese Sherpa guides who were fixing ropes for climbers in the Khumbu Icefall, at an altitude of 19,000 feet

British and French diplomats informed the UN there was credible information that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons on multiple occasions in its ongoing civil war

France became the 14th nation to approve same-sex marriage, when the lower house in the National Assembly voted in favour by a margin of 331 to 225. Uruguay and New Zealand had also recently passed same-sex marriage legislation

Poland’s late president Lech Kaczynski was buried in Krakow’s historic Wawel Cathedral after a state funeral. He died in a plane crash in Russia on his way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre

George Washington, the first President of the United States, was found to owe $300,000 for overdue library books he borrowed from a New York library but never returned

The Indian Premier League tournament got underway in South Africa. The tournament had been relocated due to security concerns in India while the world’s biggest election was in progress

Some 175 people were killed in a string of attacks in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad. In the deadliest incident, over 120 people were killed in a suicide car bombing at a food market in the Shia-dominated Sadriya district, while an attack on a police checkpoint in Sadr City killed at least 33 people

In accordance with his pre-election pledge, Spain’s new Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero ordered all Spanish troops in Iraq to return home

Fijian politician Sir Kamisese Mara, considered the founding father of modern Fiji, died in the capital, Suva. He served as the nation’s first prime minster from 1970-1992, was vice-president from 1992-93 and president from 1994-2000

The U.S. Senate rejected President George W. Bush’s plan to allow drilling for oil in Alaska. The plan involved drilling across 2,000 acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to polar bears, caribou and other species

Former Afghan king Mohammed Zahir Shah returned to Kabul after 29 years in exile in Italy