Template:Selected anniversaries/October 18
1640: Mathematician Pierre de Fermat announced his "little theorem" in a letter to Bernard Frenicle de Bessey.
1871: Polymath Charles Babbage dies. He constructed mechanical computers which anticipated the concept of programmable digital computers.
1919: Statistician and educator George E. P. Box born. He will be called "one of the great statistical minds of the 20th century".
1921: Niels Bohr introduced his quantum model of the atom.
1931: Inventor, engineer, and businessman Thomas Edison dies. He developed the light bulb and the phonograph, among other inventions.
1945: The USSR's nuclear program receives plans for the United States plutonium bomb from Klaus Fuchs at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.
2017: Publication of Bioautography of a Chlorophyll Molecule generates new interest in organic golems.