March 18

Events[]

• AD 37 – The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius's will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
• 633 – Ridda wars: The Arabian Peninsula is united under the central authority of Caliph Abu Bakr.
• 1068 – An earthquake affects the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, leaving up to 20,000 dead.
• 1229 – Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, declares himself King of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade.
• 1241 – First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city.
• 1314 – Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and final Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
• 1438 – Albert II of Habsburg becomes Holy Roman Emperor.
• 1608 – Susenyos is formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia.
• 1644 – The Third Anglo-Powhatan War begins in the Colony of Virginia.
• 1741 – New York governor George Clarke's complex at Fort George is burned in an arson attack, starting the New York Conspiracy of 1741.
• 1766 – American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act.
• 1793 – The first modern republic in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann.
• 1793 – Flanders Campaign of the French Revolution, Battle of Neerwinden.
• 1834 – Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.
• 1848 – March Revolution: In Berlin there is a struggle between citizens and military, costing about 300 lives.
• 1850 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.
• 1865 – American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
• 1871 – Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders the evacuation of Paris.
• 1874 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trade rights.
• 1892 – Former Governor General Lord Stanley pledges to donate a silver challenge cup, later named after him, as an award for the best hockey team in Canada the Stanley Cup.
• 1913 – King George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki.
• 1915 – World War I: During the Battle of Gallipoli, three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.
• 1921 – The second Peace of Riga is signed between Poland and the Soviet Union.
• 1922 – In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience, of which he serves only two.
• 1925 – The Tri-State Tornado hits the Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people.
• 1937 – The New London School explosion in New London, Texas, kills 300 people, mostly children.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Spanish Republican forces defeat the Italians at the Battle of Guadalajara.
• 1938 – Mexico creates Pemex by expropriating all foreign-owned oil reserves and facilities.
• 1940 – World War II: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini meet at the Brenner Pass in the Alps and agree to form an alliance against France and the United Kingdom.
• 1942 – The War Relocation Authority is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody.
• 1944 – The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 people and causes thousands to flee their homes.
• 1948 – Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia in the first sign of the Tito–Stalin Split.
• 1953 – An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 265 people.
• 1959 – The Hawaii Admission Act is signed into law.
• 1962 – The Évian Accords end the Algerian War of Independence, which had begun in 1954.
• 1965 – Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
• 1967 – The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off the Cornish coast.
• 1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
• 1969 – The United States begins secretly bombing the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia, used by communist forces to infiltrate South Vietnam.
• 1970 – Lon Nol ousts Prince Norodom Sihanouk of Cambodia.
• 1971 – Peru: a landslide crashes into Yanawayin Lake, killing 200 people at the mining camp of Chungar.
• 1980 – A Vostok-2M rocket at Plesetsk Cosmodrome Site 43 explodes during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.
• 1990 – Germans in the German Democratic Republic vote in the first democratic elections in the former communist dictatorship.
• 1990 – In the largest art theft in US history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
• 1994 – Bosnia's Bosniaks and Croats sign the Washington Agreement, ending war between the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• 1996 – A nightclub fire in Quezon City, Philippines kills 162 people.
• 1997 – The tail of a Russian Antonov An-24 charter plane breaks off while en route to Turkey causing the plane to crash and killing all 50 people on board.
• 2014 – The parliaments of Russia and Crimea sign an accession treaty.
• 2015 – The Bardo National Museum in Tunisia is attacked by gunmen. 23 people, almost all tourists, are killed, and at least 50 other people are wounded.