WThe 53rd Golden Bell Awards was held on October 6, 2018 at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan. The ceremony was televised by Sanlih E-Television and Public Television Service. Mickey Huang and Patty Hou were the hosts for the night.
WThe 55th Golden Horse Awards took place on November 17, 2018 at the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan. Organized by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival Executive Committee, the awards honored the best in Chinese-language films of 2017 and 2018. The ceremony was hosted by Matilda Tao and televised by TTV.
WThe 29th Golden Melody Awards took place in Taipei, Taiwan in 2018. The award ceremony for the popular music categories was hosted by Jam Hsiao and broadcast on TTV on 23 June.
WAt 23:50 (UTC+8) on 6 February 2018, an earthquake of magnitude 6.4 on the moment magnitude scale hit Taiwan. The epicenter was on the coastline near Hualien, which was the most severely affected area, with a maximum felt intensity of VIII (severe) on the Mercalli intensity scale. At least 17 deaths were reported, with 285 injured. The maximum foreshock was recorded on 4 February 2018, at 21:56:40. The epicenter was located at Hualien County, Taiwan, reaching a scale of ML 5.8.
WTyphoon Mangkhut, known in the Philippines as Typhoon Ompong, was an extremely powerful and catastrophic tropical cyclone that caused extensive damage in Guam, the Philippines and South China in September 2018. It was the strongest typhoon to strike Luzon since Megi in 2010, and the strongest to make landfall anywhere in the Philippines since Haiyan in 2013. Mangkhut was also the strongest typhoon to affect Hong Kong since Ellen in 1983.
WAmber Poon Hiu-wing, a 20-year-old woman from Hong Kong, was murdered in Taipei on 17 February 2018 whilst on vacation with her boyfriend Chan Tong-kai, aged 19 at the time and also from Hong Kong. Chan admitted to Hong Kong authorities that he killed his girlfriend in a hotel room in Taipei, stole her belongings, left her body in the bushes, and flew back to Hong Kong. As the murder happened in Taiwan where they had no jurisdiction, the authorities in Hong Kong could not charge Chan with murder, and could only sentence him on money laundering charges resulting from the killing. Chan could not be extradited to Taiwan either since there is no extradition treaty between Hong Kong and Taiwan.
WOn 21 October 2018, a passenger train derailed in Yilan County, Taiwan, killing 18 people and injuring 187. It was Taiwan's worst rail accident since a collision near Miaoli in 1991 killed 30 people.