On May 18

On this day in ...
... 1904 (105 years ago today), in Paris, France, diplomats from that country as well as Britain, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Sweden and Norway, and Switzerland, signed the International Agreement for the Suppression of the "White Slave Traffic", the quotes indicating the then-in-use term for the trafficking of women and girls across national borders for purposes of the sex trade. The agreement entered into force on July 18, 1905.
... 1991, upon the collapse of centralized government in Somalia, leaders in the country's northwesternmost territory (depicted in salmon at right, bordering Ethiopia, Djibouti, and the Gulf of Aden, comprising, much of the former protectorate of British Somaliland), proclaimed the independent Republic of Somaliland. The region has operated with considerable autonomy since that date, and maintains some "political contacts" with a handful of countries, but has never received international recognition as an independent state.

(Prior May 18 posts are here and here.)

On October 7

On this day in ...

... 1935, 4 days after troops from Benito Mussolini-led Italy "swept into Ethiopia from Eritrea and Italian Somaliland and overwhelmed the Ethiopian army," the Council of the League of Nations "declared that Italy was the aggressor nation in the Ethiopian affair and made preparations to apply sanctions against the Italians." In fact League members did nothing, however, and within a year Ethiopia (known then as Abyssinia) accepted Italian rule. "This incident was not a minor one and has been regarded by history to be one of the thorns that led to the outbreak of World War II." (map credit)

... 1955, at the Six Gallery in San Francisco's Fillmore district, a 29-year-old "unknown poet from the East Coast," Allen Ginsberg, gave the 1st public reading of "Howl." He began:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness

and then continued with a poetic rant (full text here) that, in the words of an NPR retrospective, "gave voice to an undercurrent of dissatisfaction and alienation in Eisenhower's America." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights press would publish the poem amid controversy, described the impact of this literary icon of the Beat Generation with more punch: "'Howl' knocked the sides out of things."