18 March 2025 (MIA)

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 the last 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 republic in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann.

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.

1906 – Traian Vuia flies a heavier-than-air aircraft for 11 meters at an altitude of one meter.

1909 – Kuzman Shapkarev, author of textbooks and ethnographic studies, dies in Sofia.

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.

1937 – A human-powered aircraft, Pedaliante, flies 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) outside Milan, Italy.

1938 – Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders.

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.

1946 – Diplomatic relations between Switzerland and the Soviet Union are established.

1948 – Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia in the first sign of the Tito–Stalin split.

1953 – An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 265 people.

1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law allowing for Hawaiian statehood, which would become official on August 21.

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 – In Peru a landslide crashes into Yanawayin Lake, killing 200 people at the mining camp of Chungar.

1974 – Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.

1980 – At Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, 50 people are killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket on its launch pad during a fueling operation.

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.

1992 – In a national referendum white South Africans vote overwhelmingly in favour of ending apartheid.

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 – The US Embassy in Skopje starts to issue visas to Macedonian citizens.

1996 – US President Bill Clinton appoints Christofer Hill to serve as an ambassador to North Macedonia.

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 and leading to the grounding of all An-24s.

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.