TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON – MARCH 18
0037 The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius’ will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
1190 Crusaders kill 57 Jews in Bury St Edmonds England
1314 Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France
1325 According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico
1813 David Melville, Newport RI, patents apparatus for making coal gas
1850 Henry Wells & William Fargo forms American Express in Buffalo
1863 Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.
1874 Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
1892 Lord Stanley of Preston pledges to donate a challenge cup for the best ice hockey team in Canada
1911 Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
1922 Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.
1939 Georgia finally ratifies the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other states to hold out, also ratify the Bill of Rights in this year.
1953 The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
1961 Poppin’ Fresh Pillsbury Dough Boy introduced
1963 The Supreme Court held in Gideon v. Wainwright that public defenders must be provided for indigent defendants in felony cases.
1965 Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.
1969 President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia.
1977 US restricts citizens from visiting Cuba, Vietnam, N Korea & Cambodia
1981 The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.
2004 A small asteroid made the closest approach to Earth ever recorded, only about 26,500 miles away.
2005 After a long legal battle, Terry Schiavo’s feeding tube was removed. She died 13 days later.
** history.net, onthisday.com, infoplease.com, timeanddate.com, thepeoplehistory.com, on-this-day.com **
