more events on March 18
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1986
Buckingham Palace announces the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.
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1981
The United States discloses biological weapons tests in Texas in 1966.
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1977
Congo President Marien Ngouabi is killed by a suicide commando.
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1975
South Vietnam abandons most of the Central Highlands to North Vietnamese forces.
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1971
U.S. helicopters airlift 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.
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1970
The U.S. Postal Service is paralyzed by the first postal strike.
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1969
President Richard M. Nixon authorizes Operation Menue, the ‘secret’ bombing of Cambodia.
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1965
Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov becomes the first man to spacewalk when he exits his Voskhod 2 space capsule while in orbit around the Earth.
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1953
The Braves baseball team announces that they are moving from Boston to Milwaukee.
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1950
Nationalist troops land on the mainland of China and capture Communist-held Sungmen.
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1944
The Russians reach the Romanian border.
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1943
American forces take Gafsa in Tunisia.
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Adolf Hitler calls off the offensive in the Caucasus.
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1942
The third military draft begins in the United States.
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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.
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1936
Frederik W. deKlerk, President of the Republic of South Africa.
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1932
John Updike, American poet and novelist.
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1922
Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience in India.
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1917
The Germans sink the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without any type of warning.
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1916
On the Eastern Front, the Russians counter the Verdun assault with an attack at Lake Naroch. The Russians lose 100,000 men and the Germans lose 20,000.
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1913
Greek King George I is killed by an assassin. Constantine I is to succeed.
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1911
Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
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1893
Wilfred Owen, World War I poet.
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1881
Barnum and Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth opens in Madison Square Gardens.
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1874
Hawaii signs a treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the United States.
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1869
Neville Chamberlin, British Prime Minister (1937-40).
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1865
The Congress of the Confederate States of America adjourns for the last time.
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1863
Confederate women riot in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in the South.
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1858
Rudolf Diesel, German engineer who designed the compression-ignition engine.
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1842
Stephane Mallarme, French symbolist poet.
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1837
Stephen Grover Cleveland, 22nd and 24th President of the United States (1885-1889 and 1893-1897), the only U.S. president elected for two nonconsecutive terms.
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1782
John C. Calhoun, U.S. statesman.
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1692
William Penn is deprived of his governing powers.
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37
The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius’ will and proclaims Caligula emperor.