Wednesday · November 11, 2026
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American history, reported as it happened
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20191776 Club

Two women step out together to fix the station's power grid

Jessica Meir and Christina Koch spend seven hours and 17 minutes outside the ISS; the president calls to say so.

For nine years, every NASA spacewalk had paired at least one man with a crewmate, the result of spacesuit sizing and crew rotation, not policy. On October 18, 2019, astronauts Jessica Meir and Christina Koch floated out of the International Space Station's airlock together, without a male crewmate, bound for the Port-6 truss to swap a failed battery charge-discharge unit. The job took seven hours and 17 minutes. Partway through, President Trump called to congratulate them and misspoke, saying it was the first time a woman had been outside the station. Meir corrected him on the spot…

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More from October 18
1775

Mowat's ships reduce Falmouth to ash after the town refuses to swear allegiance

Nine hours and 3,000 rounds later, more than 400 buildings are gone and winter is six weeks away.
1867

At Sitka, the eagle flag comes down and the stars and stripes go up over Alaska

Soldiers wrestle a snagged Russian flag off the spar as cannons fire from shore and ship.
1898

Spain's flag comes down in San Juan; the United States takes Puerto Rico

Four centuries of Spanish rule end quietly, ten weeks after the armistice that ended the war.
17791776 Club
Lincoln's Americans and d'Estaing's French break camp. The city stays in British hands for nearly three more years.
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Read the full October 18 edition →Everything that happened on October 18 →
More from Modern America
1997

A Titan IVB rises from Cape Canaveral, carrying Cassini toward Saturn

The seven-year voyage begins with 72 pounds of plutonium and a DVD of 616,400 signatures tucked aboard.
2001

Apple shows a white box the size of a deck of cards: 1,000 songs in your pocket

Steve Jobs introduces a 6.5-ounce music player built around a 5 GB hard drive hidden inside a Cupertino auditorium.
2007

Discovery lifts off with Pamela Melroy in command, only the second woman to lead a shuttle crew

The mission carries a new station module and a piece of ice too small, NASA says, to worry about.
2000

Shepherd, Krikalev and Gidzenko dock at the space station and float inside

Their Soyuz reaches the aft port of the Zvezda module at 09:21 UTC; ninety minutes later the hatch opens on a station that has never had a resident crew.
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