James McCune Smith was born on April 18, 1813. The first African-American
doctor, he was rejected from all American colleges and had to attend the University of Glasgow in Scotland, where he graduated at the top of his class in 1837. Smith returned to New York City in 1837 and established his practice in Lower Manhattan in general surgery and medicine, treating both black and white patients.
The writer
George Henry Lewes was born in London on April 18, 1817. He was the illegitimate son of the minor poet John Lee Lewes and Elizabeth Ashweek. Lewes was unattractive with a straggly mustache, pitted complexion and a head too large for his small body. In 1851 Lewes met the writer Marian Evans, later to be famous as
George Eliot. Within three years, with a scandalous disregard of the conventions of their time, had decided to live together.
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| George Henry Lewes |
For more April 18 anniversaries, including the first anti-slavery petition in the New World, Paul Revere's midnight ride to warn the colonial militia of the approach of British troops, and the debut of Superman, check out
OnThatDay.
