1718

In this year, two settlements were founded that would later become important U.S. cities. The year also saw the death of Blackbeard, a notorious pirate who had terrorized ships off the Atlantic Coast and the Caribbean.

In the early 1700s, England, France, and Spain competed for control of North American. England’s colonies grew up along the Atlantic, while France claimed Canada and a vast central area called Louisisana. The Mississippi River provided access to the territory. So the French leader Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, founded a settlement at the mouth of the river in 1718. He named it La Nouvelle Orleans (New Orleans), after the Duke of Orleans, a French nobleman.

Farther west, in today’s Texas, Spain also founded a settlement, San Antonio. One of its first buildings was the Mission of San Antonio de Valero, later known as the Alamo.

In November, 1718, the pirate Blackbeard—an Englishman named Edward Teach—was cornered by two British ships near Ocracoke Island off North Carolina. Blackbeard wore his long, black beard in braids. To look fierce in battle, he stuck lighted matches on his hat, so that his face appeared to be ringed by fire. He was killed in a furious battle, and his head was displayed on a ship’s mast as a warning to other pirates.