Today in History - March 18
Return to home
37 Mar 18, The
Roman Senate annulled Tiberius’ will and proclaims Caligula emperor.
(HN, 3/18/99)
235 Mar 18, Marcus Aurelius
Severus Alexander (b.208), Syrian emperor of Rome (222-235), was
murdered.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Severus)
978 Mar 18, Edward the Martyr
(15), King of Anglo-Saxons (975-78), was murdered.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1190 Mar 18, Crusaders killed
57 Jews in Bury St. Edmonds, England.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1229 Mar 18, German emperor
Frederick II crowned himself king of Jerusalem.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1314 Mar 18, In France Jacques
de Molay (b.1244), Grand Master of the Templars, was burned at the
stake along with his aides. Surviving monks fled, with some absorbed
by other orders.
(AP,
10/12/07)(www.templarhistory.com/demolay.html)
1455 Mar 18, Fra Angelico,
Italian monk and Renaissance painter born around 1387 as Guido di
Pietro, died. Fra Angelico gained a reputation as a painter under
that name before joining the Dominicans in the 1420s. However, much
of the influence found in his work is thought to come from Dominican
teachings. He stayed at Dominican monasteries in Florence for most
of his life doing a variety of religious painting until being called
to Rome in 1445 by Pope Eugene IV, where he completed several chapel
frescoes. Returning to Florence in the early 1450s, he died on a
return visit to Rome in 1455 and is entombed at the church of Santa
Maria della Minerva. In 1984 Fra Angelico was beatified by Pope John
Paul II.
(HNQ,
3/6/01)(http://gallery.euroweb.hu/bio/a/angelico/biograph.html)(WSJ,
11/9/05, p.D16)
1532 Mar 18, English parliament
banned payments by English church to Rome.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1584 Mar 18, Ivan IV (53), the
terrible, Russian tsar (1547-84), died. He was succeeded by his
weak-minded son, Fyodor I. Boris Godunov, Fyodor’s brother-in-law,
assumed general control. During his rule Ivan replaced the sale of
beer and mead with vodka at state-run taverns.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.23)(MC, 3/18/02)(SFC, 9/5/03,
p.A8)
1692 Mar 18, William Penn was
deprived of his governing powers.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1745 Mar 18, Robert Walpole
(68), 1st British premier (1721-42), died.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Walpole)
1765 Mar 18, David H. Chass,
Dutch baron, general (fought Napoleon at Waterloo), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1766 Mar 18, Britain repealed
the Stamp Act of 1765.
(AP, 3/18/97)(PCh, 1992, p.311)
1782 Mar 18, John C. Calhoun
(d.1850), U.S. statesman, was born. He served as US
vice-president from 1825-1832 under Adams and Jackson.
(HN, 3/18/99)(WUD, 1994, p.210)
1793 Mar 18, The 2nd Battle at
Neerwinden: Austria army beat France.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1835 Mar 18, Charles Darwin
departed Santiago, Chile, on his way to Portillo Pass.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1837 Mar 18, Stephen Grover
Cleveland was born in Caldwell, N.J. He was the 22nd (1885-1889) and
24th (1893-1897) president of the United States, the only President
elected for two nonconsecutive terms.
(AP, 3/18/97)(HN, 3/18/02)
1838 Mar 18, Randal Cremer,
British trade unionist, pacifist (Nobel 1903), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1842 Mar 18, Stephane Mallarme
(d.1898), French essayist and symbolist poet, was born. "Every soul
is a melody which needs renewing."
(AP, 7/17/98)(HN, 3/18/01)
1850 Mar 18, Henry Wells &
William Fargo formed American Express in Buffalo. [see Mar 18, 1852]
(HN, 3/18/98)(MC, 3/18/02)
1852 Mar 18, Henry C. Wells
founded Wells, Fargo & Co. with William C. Fargo in San
Francisco as a Western equivalent to their east coast American
Express. It evolved into Wells Fargo Bank, headquartered in San
Francisco and now one of the largest financial institutions in the
U.S. In 2002 Philip L. Fradkin authored "Stagecoach: Wells Fargo and
the American West" for the company’s 150th anniversary. [see Mar 18,
1850]
(SFEC, 1/4/98, Z1p.4)(SFC, 6/9/98, p.A10)(HNQ,
11/20/98)(SFC, 2/6/02, p.D1)
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.B1,4)
1858 Mar 18, Rudolf Diesel,
German mechanical engineer, was born in Paris. He designed the
compression-ignition engine (1893).
(HN, 3/18/99)(AP, 3/18/08)
1863 Mar 18, Confederate women
rioted in Salisbury, N.C. to protest the lack of flour and salt in
the South.
(HN, 3/18/00)
1864 Mar 18, The Dale Dike on
Humber River, England, crumbled drowning some 240.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1865 Mar 18, The Congress of
the Confederate States of America adjourned for the last time.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1865 Mar 18, Battle of Wilson's
raid to Selma, AL.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1869 Mar 18, Neville
Chamberlin, British Prime Minister (1937-40), was born. He tried to
make peace "in our time" with German Chancellor Adolf Hitler, but
instead made it easier for Hitler to take over continental Europe.
(HN, 3/18/99)
1870 Mar 18, The 1st US
National Wildlife Preserve was Lake Meritt in Oakland, Calif. Lake
Merritt, actually a tidal lagoon, was named after Samuel Merritt, a
physician and one of the 1st mayors of Oakland.
(SFEC, 3/8/98, p.W31)(SFC, 1/5/01, WBb p.8)(MC,
3/18/02)(SFCM, 8/17/03, p.3)
1874 Mar 18, Hawaii signed a
treaty giving exclusive trading rights with the islands to the
United States.
(HN, 3/18/99)
1877 Mar 18, Edgar Cayce
(d.1945), self-proclaimed psychic, was born in Hopkinsville, Ky. In
2000 Sidney D. Kirkpatrick authored “Edgar Cayce, An American
Prophet.”
(SFEC, 7/26/98, BR p.3)(SSFC, 1/14/01, BR
p.12)(SFC, 8/7/08, p.E1)
1881 Mar 18, Barnum and
Bailey’s Greatest Show on Earth opened in Madison Square Gardens.
[see Mar 16]
(HN, 3/18/98)
1890 Mar 18, The 1st US state
naval militia was organized in Massachusetts.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1893 Mar 18, Wilfred Owen
(d.1918), World War I English poet, was born. He was killed one week
before Armistice Day of WW I. His fellow poet Siegfried Sassoon
published Owen’s single slim volume of poetry.
(NH, 10/98, p.18)(HN, 3/18/01)
1895 Mar 18, Some 200 blacks
left Savannah, Ga., for Liberia.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1897 Mar 18, Fr. Anthony
Maraschi (b.1820), founder of the University of San Francisco and
Saint Ignatius College Preparatory as well as the first pastor of
Saint Ignatius Church in San Francisco, California., died.
(GenIV, Winter
04/05)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Maraschi)
1899 Mar 18, Lavrenti Beria
(d.1953), chief of Soviet secret police under Stalin, was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1899 Mar 18, Phoebe, a moon of
Saturn, was discovered by Pickering.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1906 Mar 18, Roy L. Johnson, US
admiral (WW II-Pacific Ocean), was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1909 Mar 18, Einar Dessau of
Denmark used a short-wave transmitter to converse with a government
radio post about six miles away in what is believed to have been the
first broadcast by a "ham" operator.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1911 Mar 18, Theodore Roosevelt
opened the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the
U.S. to date.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1911 Mar 18, A vote was held
for the incorporation of Daly City, Ca. The voting place was the
upstairs backroom of Jack Letlos’ Restaurant on Mission Rd. The vote
was for 132, against 130. Also passed in the vote was the new
official name of Daly City in honor of John Daly.
(GTP, 1973, p.84)(LaPen, 12/86, p.4)
1913 Mar 18, Greek King George
I was killed by an assassin. Constantine I was to succeed.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1916 Mar 18, On the Eastern
Front, the Russians countered the Verdun assault with an attack at
Lake Naroch. The Russians lost 100,000 men and the Germans lost
20,000.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1917 Mar 18, The Germans sank
the U.S. ships, City of Memphis, Vigilante and the Illinois, without
any type of warning.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1921 Mar 18, Steamer "Hong Koh"
ran aground off Swatow China killing 1,000.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1922 Mar 18, Mohandas K. Gandhi
was sentenced in India to six years' imprisonment for civil
disobedience. He was released after serving two years. [see Mar 22]
(AP, 3/18/97)(HN, 3/18/98)
1925 Mar 18, The great
Tri-State Tornado killed 695 people in Illinois, Indiana and
Missouri and injured some 13,000 people, and causing $17 million in
property damage. Several other destructive tornadoes in Tennessee,
Kentucky, and Indiana, as well as tornadoes in Alabama and Kansas
brought the total to at least 747 dead.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tri-State_Tornado)(SSFC, 5/11/03, Par
p.A11)(AP, 5/24/11)
1931
Mar 18, Jackie Mitchell became the 2nd female in professional
baseball as she signed with the Chattanooga Lookouts, a Tennessee
Class AA minor league team. In 1898, Lizzie Arlington played one
game, pitching for Reading (PA) against Allentown.
(www.exploratorium.edu/baseball/mitchell.html)
1931 Mar 18, Schick Inc.
marketed the first electric razor.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1932 Mar 18, John Updike,
American poet, novelist, was born. He wrote "Witches of Eastwick."
(HN, 3/18/99)
1933 Mar 18, Unita Blackwell,
1st black mayor in Mississippi, was born.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1936 Mar 18, Frederik Willem de
Klerk, president of the Republic of South Africa, was born in
Johannesburg. He initiated the abolition of apartheid.
(Hem. 1/95, p. 19)(HN, 3/18/99)
1937 Mar 18, Some 300 people,
mostly children, were killed in a gas explosion at a school in New
London, Texas.
(AP, 3/18/08)
1937 Mar 18, In Missouri Jim
the Wonder Dog died at age 12 at the Lake of the Ozarks. The dog had
uncanny abilities that were verified but never explained.
(SFC, 3/29/99, p.A3)
1938 Mar 18, NY 1st required
serological blood tests of pregnant women.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1938 Mar 18, Mexican President
Lazaro Cardenas nationalized his country's petroleum reserves and
took control of foreign-owned oil facilities.
(WSJ, 3/20/96, p.A-1)(WSJ, 6/14/96, p.A15)(AP,
3/18/08)
1939 Mar 18, The U.S. raised
the duties on German imports by 25 percent.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1939 Mar 18, Georgia finally
ratified the Bill of Rights, 150 years after the birth of the
federal government. Connecticut and Massachusetts, the only other
states to hold out, also accepted the Bill of Rights in this year.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1940 Mar 18, Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass across the Alps
during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war
against France and Britain.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1942 Mar 18, The third military
draft began in the U.S. because of World War II.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1942 Mar 18, Black players,
Jackie Robinson and Nate Moreland, requested a tryout with the
Chicago White Sox. They were allowed to work out.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1943 Mar 18, American forces
took Gafsa in Tunisia. In the crucible of Operation Torch, the men
of Sub-Task Force Goalpost received their baptism of fire capturing
the Moroccan town of Port Lyautey.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1943 Mar 18, The ships James
Oglethorpe (US) and Terkolei (Neth.), were torpedoed and sank.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1943 Mar 18, The Reich called
off its offensive in Caucasus.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1943 Mar 18, Red Army evacuated
Belgorod.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1944 Mar 18, Nazi Germany
occupied Hungary.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1944 Mar 18, The Russians
reached the Rumanian border in the Balkans.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1945 Mar 18, 1,250 US bombers
attacked Berlin.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1945 Mar 18, US Task Force 58
attacked targets on Kyushu.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1945 Mar 18, Suicide bombs were
introduced.
(HFA, '96, p.26)
1948 Mar 18, France, Great
Britain and Benelux signed the Treaty of Brussels.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1948 Mar 18, Philips began
experimental TV broadcasting.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1950 Mar 18, Nationalist troops
landed on the mainland of China and captured Communist held Sungmen.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1952 Mar 18, The 1st plastic
lens for cataract patients was fitted in Phila.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1952 Mar 18, There was a
Communist offensive in Korea.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1953 Mar 18, Margaret L.
Augustine, project manager for Biosphere 2, was born in Buffalo, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1953 Mar 18, The Braves
baseball team announced that they were moving from Boston to
Milwaukee.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1954 Mar 18, Howard Hughes paid
$23.5 million for the RKO motion picture company.
(SFC, 4/18/98, p.C3)
1959 Mar 18, President
Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill. Hawaii became a state
on Aug. 21, 1959.
(AP, 3/18/07)
1959 Mar 18, The publisher of
Big Table Magazine deposited at the Chicago Post Office several
hundred copies of its first issue of Big Table Magazine. The
contents consisted of a novel by Jack Kerouac, "Old Angel Midnight,"
two poems by Edward Dahlberg, "Ten Episodes from Naked Lunch" by
William S. Burroughs and three poems by Gregory Corso. The Post
Office General Counsel later alleged that the first and third
articles were obscene and filthy. The magazine was published by
Roland Pitschel (1942-2009) and his sister.
(Fremontia, 7/09,
p.24)(www.usps.com/judicial/1959deci/1-150d.htm)
1961 Mar 18, The "Poppin'
Fresh" Pillsbury Dough Boy was introduced.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1962 Mar 18, France and
Algerian rebels agreed to a truce, which took effect the next day.
(HN, 3/18/98)(AP, 3/18/08)
1963 Mar 18, Vanessa L.
Williams, 1st black Miss America (1983), singer, was born in
Millwood, NY.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1963 Mar 18, The US Supreme
Court made its Gideon v Wainwright ruling which said poor defendants
have a constitutional right to an attorney. Gideon had been forced
to defend himself in Florida in Jan 1962, and petitioned the Supreme
Court to hear his complaint.
(SFC, 11/21/03, p.D4)(SSFC, 11/30/03,
p.A31)(Econ, 4/4/09, p.39)
1965 Mar 18, The first
spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov (30) left
his Voskhod 2 capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20
minutes, secured by a tether.
(SFC, 5/27/00, p.A26)(AP, 3/18/97)
1966 Mar 18, Hedda Hopper,
American gossip columnist (1890-1966). died. "Having only friends
would be dull anyway -- like eating eggs without salt."
(AP, 3/18/97)
1968 Mar 18, Pres. Johnson
signed Public Law 90-269 removing gold backing from US paper money.
(www.peterdavidbeter.com/docs/txt/dbal33.txt)
1969 Mar 18, President Richard
M. Nixon authorized Operation Menu, the 'secret' bombing of Cambodia
[see Feb 23].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Menu)
1970 Mar 18, The US Postal
Service was paralyzed by the first postal strike. A walkout of
letter carriers in Brooklyn and Manhattan set off a strike that
involved 210,000 of the nation’s 750,000 postal employees. Pres.
Nixon declared a state of national emergency and assigned military
units to NYC post offices.
(HN, 3/18/98)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1970 Mar 18, In Cambodia Prince
Sihanouk was overthrown by Gen’l. Lon Nol. The next 8 years are
covered in the 1988 book "Goodnight Cambodia, Forbidden History" by
Vibol Ouk, who lived through the horrors of Pol Pot.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.3)
1971 Mar 18, U.S. helicopters
airlifted 1,000 South Vietnamese soldiers out of Laos.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1975 Mar 18, Mulla Mustafa gave
the order to the Kurdish army to abandon the struggle. This time
round, Mulla Mustafa obtained refuge in the United States.
(www.tamilnation.org/intframe/india/kurds.htm#a1)
1975 Mar 18, South Vietnam
abandoned most of the Central Highlands of Vietnam to Hanoi.
(HN, 3/18/02)
1977 Mar 18, In SF Paul Gaer
transformed Al’s Transbay Tavern on Fourth St. into the Hotel Utah
Saloon. The structure dated back to 1908 and in 2007 marked its 30th
anniversary.
(SFC, 3/15/07, 96H p.4)
1977 Mar 18, Marien Ngouabi,
the military president of the Republic of the Congo
(Congo-Brazzaville), was assassinated.
(AP, 3/18/07)
1977 Mar 18, The Vietnamese
"discovered" and returned to the US the remains of Bruce C. Ducat.
For eleven years, Ducat, alive or dead, was a prisoner of war.
(www.pownetwork.org/bios/b/b107.htm)
1978 Mar 18, In Pakistan the
Punjab High Court condemned former pres. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to
death on charges of a political murder.
(WUD, 1994, p.1691)
1979 Mar 18, Iranian
authorities detained American feminist Kate Millett, a day before
deporting her and a companion for what were termed "provocations."
(AP, 3/18/99)
1980 Mar 18, John Favara struck
a killed Frank Gotti (12), the son of mobster John Gotti, as the boy
darted in front of his car on a minibike in Brooklyn. Favara
disappeared on July 28. In 2009 it was reported that mobster Charles
Carneglia (62) had killed Favara and dissolved his body in acid.
(SFC, 1/9/09, p.A2)
1981 Mar 18, The TV series
“Greatest American Hero” began with Robert Culp as an FBI agent. He
played in 44 episodes until 1986.
(SFC, 3/25/10,
p.C3)(http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0081871/)
1981 Mar 18, The U.S. disclosed
that there were biological weapons tested in Texas in 1966.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1983 Mar 18, Mexico's financial
crisis was causing a surge of illegal aliens over the border into
Texas.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1985 Mar 18, Baseball
commissioner Peter Ueberroth reinstated Willie Mays and Mickey
Mantle.
(http://tinyurl.com/y34t69)
1985 Mar 18, The 1st remote
location for ABC’s "Nightline" news was in South Africa.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1985-3/1985-03-18-ABC-19.html)
1986 Mar 18, Buckingham Palace
announced the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson.
(HN, 3/18/98)
1986 Mar 18, Bernard Malamud
(b.1914), writer, died. His work included "Talking Horse: Bernard
Malamud on Life and Work," edited by Alan Cheuse and Nicholas
Delbanco (1997). In 2006 his daughter authored “My Father Is a Book:
A Memoir of Bernard Malamud.” In 2007 Philip Davis authored “Bernard
Malamud: A Writer’s Life.”
(www.nagasaki-gaigo.ac.jp/ishikawa/amlit/m/malamud21.htm)(SSFC,
3/19/06, p.M3)(WSJ, 1/15/08, p.D5)
1987 Mar 18, Susan Butcher won
her second consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, covering the
distance from Anchorage to Nome, Alaska, in 11 days, 2 hours, 5
minutes and 13 seconds.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1988 Mar 18, In Alabama
Elizabeth Dorleen Sennett (45), the wife of a preacher, died after
she was brutally beaten and stabbed in a contract killing. A week
after becoming a suspect in the case, the victim's husband, Charles
Sennett, shot and killed himself in his son's backyard. Sennett had
contracted Bill Gray Williams to kill his wife for $3,000. According
to court documents, Williams paid Kenneth Eugene Smith and John
Forrest Parker $1,000 each to commit the murder. Parker was
convicted in 1989 and executed for the murder in 2010.
(http://tinyurl.com/2696ump)(SFC, 6/11/10, p.A6)
1988 Mar 18, The government of
Panama, controlled by Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, declared a "state
of urgency" in a move apparently aimed at forcing the reopening of
banks and other businesses that closed during Panama's economic and
political crisis.
(AP, 3/18/98)
1989 Mar 18, The space shuttle
Discovery landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, completing
a five-day mission.
(AP, 3/18/99)
1990 Mar 18, There was a theft
of art work from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. 2
men dressed as policemen made off with masterworks that included
Rembrandt’s "The Storm on the Sea of Galilee," Vermeer’s "The
Concert," Manet’s "Chez Tortoni," and 5 paintings and drawings by
Edgar Degas and a 1200 BC Chinese bronze beaker valued at $300
million. The theft led Sen. Edward Kennedy to sponsor the museum
theft provision of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Act. In 2009 Ulrich Boser
authored “The Gardner Heist.”
(WSJ, 8/9/96, p.A8)(WSJ, 5/13/97, p.A21)(SFC,
8/26/97, p.A3)(SFC,12/15/97, p.A3)(WSJ, 2/20/09, p.W10)
1990 Mar 18, An alliance of
conservative parties won a surprising victory over the Communists in
East Germany's first free elections.
(AP, 3/18/00)
1992 Mar 18, US National
Football League owners voted to drop the use of instant videotape
replays to settle disputed calls during games. Instant replay was
brought back in 1999.
(AP, 3/18/02)
1992 Mar 18, Leona Helmsley was
sentenced to 4 years for tax evasion.
(http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10611F63B580C718EDDAA0894DA494D81)
1992 Mar 18, South African
President F.W. de Klerk claimed victory for his reforms a day after
a whites-only referendum on whether to end apartheid.
(AP, 3/18/97)
1993 Mar 18, On Capitol Hill,
the House approved President Clinton's deficit-reduction blueprint
on a virtual party-line 243-183 vote.
(AP, 3/18/98)
1993 Mar 18, In Pennsylvania
Amish man Edward Gingerich outraged his normally peaceful religious
community of Rockdale Township, where he crushed his wife's skull
and used a kitchen knife to remove her stomach organs from her dead
body. Gingerich was diagnosed with schizophrenia and convicted of
manslaughter in 1994. After serving his maximum sentence of four
years in prison for the killing, moved to a mental institution in
Michigan before going to Indiana and eventually returning to
Pennsylvania and the Brown Hill Amish community in 2007. In 2011
Gingerich (44) committed suicide in a barn in Cambridge Springs, Pa.
(www.bellaonline.com/articles/art68724.asp)(Reuters, 1/16/11)
1994 Mar 18, The space shuttle
Columbia returned from a two-week mission.
(AP, 3/18/99)
1994 Mar 18, Published reports
said first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had made nearly $100,000 from
the commodities market in the late 1970's on an initial investment
of only $1,000.
(AP, 3/18/99)
1994 Mar 18, Zsa Zsa Gabor,
Hungarian-born actress, filed for bankruptcy.
(www.nndb.com/people/530/000025455/)
1994 Mar 18, Muslim and Croat
leaders signed agreements to create a Bosnian federation.
(AP, 3/18/04)
1994 Mar 18, Lithuania
and Poland signed an agreement in Warsaw on friendship and
neighborly cooperation.
(LHC, 3/18/03)
1994 Mar 18, The South Africa
Goldstone Commission published a report which finally confirmed that
senior South African Police (SAP) officials had been involved in
supplying Inkatha with weapons and financial support.
(www.hrw.org/reports/1995/WR95/AFRICA-09.htm)
1994 Mar 18, The U.N. Security
Council unanimously condemned the Hebron mosque massacre.
(AP, 3/18/04)
1995 Mar 18, The United States
Catholic Conference's administrative board criticized a Republican
welfare reform plan, saying it would hurt poor children and could
push women to have abortions.
(AP, 3/18/00)
1995 Mar 18, Michael Jordan
announced that he was ending his 17 month NBA retirement.
(www.cnn.com/EVENTS/year_in_review/sports/mar.html)
1995 Mar 18, Spain's Princess
Elena married a banker, Jaime de Marichalar y Saenz de Tejada, in
Seville; it was Spain's first royal wedding in 89 years.
(AP, 3/18/00)
1996 Mar 18, Rejecting an
insanity defense, a jury in Dedham, Mass., convicted John C. Salvi
III of murdering two women in a pair of attacks at two Boston-area
abortion clinics in December 1994. Salvi later committed suicide in
his cell.
(AP, 3/18/01)
1996 Mar 18, Jacquetta Hawkes
(85), British archaeologist, died.
(www.britarch.ac.uk/ba/ba14/ba14obit.html)
1996 Mar 18, Some 2,000 Chinese
made assault guns were illegally shipped through the port of Oakland
in the US.
(SFC, 5/23/96, p.A17)
1996 Mar 18, Odysseus Elytis,
Greek poet and Nobel Prize winner (1979), died in Athens at age 84.
(WSJ, 3/19/96,
p.A-1)(http://dpsinfo.com/dps/mnames.html)
1997 Mar 18, Labor
Secretary-designate Alexis Herman got a generally favorable
reception from Democrats and Republicans alike at her Senate
confirmation hearing.
(AP, 3/18/98)
1997 Mar 18, Bulldozers began
clearing away rocks and earth for a Jewish housing project in
disputed east Jerusalem, triggering Palestinian protests.
(WSJ, 3/19/97, p.A1)(AP, 3/18/98)
1998 Mar 18, Julie Hiatt
Steele, a former friend of Kathleen Willey's, released a sworn
affidavit undercutting Willey's claim that President Clinton had
made an unwanted sexual advance toward her in 1993. According to
Steele, Willey instructed her to tell Newsweek that Willey had
confided the alleged episode to her immediately after it supposedly
happened; Steele said she first heard about the accusation in 1997.
(AP, 3/18/09)
1998 Mar 18, The NYC Board of
Education voted to require its schoolchildren to wear uniforms. The
dress code would begin in 1999.
(SFC, 3/19/98, p.A5)
1998 Mar 18, A study of Finnish
smokers reported in the Journal of the national Cancer Institute
indicated that vitamin E reduced the risk of prostate cancer.
(WSJ, 3/18/98, p.A1)
1998 Mar 18, In India the
Bharatiya Janata Party agenda was outlined. It included plans to
protect domestic industry from foreign competition and to develop
nuclear weapons for protection against China and Pakistan.
(SFC, 3/19/98, p.A11)
1999 Mar 18, A US federal judge
ordered US telephone companies to pay $6.2 million owed to Cuba to
the families of 3 Cuban Americans killed in 1996.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A12)
1999 Mar 18, In Afghanistan
fighting continued for a 2nd day and 12 people were reported killed
by Taliban bombing in Parwan province.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 18, In China the Grand
Hyatt Shanghai opened on the top 35 stories of the new $540 million
Jin Mao Tower, the 3rd tallest in the world.
(WSJ, 3/17/99, p.B1)
1999 Mar 18, In Ecuador Pres.
Mahuad revoked the decree doubling gas prices under protests from
taxi drivers.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 18, In Paris the
ethnic Albanians signed the peace proposal, which the Serbian
delegation rejected. The Kosovar Albanian delegation signed a
U.S.-sponsored peace accord following talks in Paris; the Clinton
administration warned NATO would act against Serb targets if
Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic didn't accept the agreement.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A12)(AP, 3/18/00)
1999 Mar 18, In India 35
upper-caste villagers of Senari in Bihar state were killed by
members of the Maoist Communist Center.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 18, In Indonesia at
least 59 people were killed on Borneo as ethnic groups clashed for a
3rd day.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A14)
1999 Mar 18, In Malaysia an
outbreak of encephalitis caused a order for the extermination of
64,000 pigs and the evacuation of 11,000 people.
(SFC, 3/19/99, p.A14)
2000 Mar 18, In Kenya it was
reported that some 10,000 cattle, 25,000 camels and 20,000 goats had
starved to death over the last 3 months. 2 million people faced
famine and 20 died in the last 2 weeks in the Wajir district.
(SFC, 3/18/00, p.C16)
2000 Mar 18, In Taiwan Chen
Shui-bian was elected as president ending 51 years of Nationalist
Party rule. He won with 39% of the vote over James Soong with 37%.
Annette Lu (55) was elected as vice-president. Chen Shui-bian’s
party favored Taiwan’s formal independence from the rest of China.
(SFEC, 3/19/00, p.A1,23)(AP, 3/18/01)
2001 Mar 18, John Phillips, who
co-founded the Mamas and the Papas and wrote its biggest hits,
including "California Dreamin" and "Monday," died in Los Angeles at
age 65.
(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A19)(AP, 3/18/02)
2001 Mar 18, It was reported
that the Bush administration planned to sidestep the American Bar
Association in the screening of federal judges, an "indication that
they want to pick judges of the hard right."
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A5)
2001 Mar 18, It was reported
that the US National Reconnaissance Office was planning a $25
billion project for some 12 satellites to be deployed by 2005.
(SSFC, 3/18/01, p.A3)
2001 Mar 18, An Amtrak train
bound for the Bay Area derailed in Iowa and 1 person was killed with
96 injured.
(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 18, In Algeria weekend
attacks by suspected Islamic militants left 5 people dead and 23
injured.
(SFC, 3/20/01, p.A11)
2001 Mar 18, Chechen rebels
killed at least 21 Russian troops.
(WSJ, 3/19/01, p.A1)
2001 Mar 18, In France mayoral
elections were held in Paris. Bertrand Delanoe, candidate of the
Socialist, Communists and 2-other left-wing parties, won over
Philippe Seguin. Socialists also won in Lyon. This ended a century
of nearly unbroken rule by the right.
(SFC, 3/8/01, p.A12)(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A8)(AP,
3/18/02)
2001 Mar 18, In Iran the
judiciary banned the nation’s only real opposition group and closed
down 4 pro-reform newspapers.
(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A9)
2001 Mar 18, In Macedonia the
government ordered a general mobilization to counter the guerrilla
assault.
(SFC, 3/19/01, p.A8)
2002 Mar 18, The FBI "Operation
Candyman" snared over 90 people following a 14-month investigation
of child pornography over the Internet.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar 18, A US federal grand
jury unsealed a Mar 7 indictment against 7 men that included 3
Colombian guerrillas for smuggling planeloads of cocaine. These
included Tomas Molina Caracas, commander of the FARC 16th Front.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A6)
2002 Mar 18, Flooding hit
Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia following a 2nd day of heavy rains.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A3)
2002 Mar 18, In Ohio Brittanie
Cecil (13) died 2 days after being hit by a hockey puck while
watching an NHL game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary
Flames. It was apparently the first such fan fatality in NHL
history.
(SFC, 3/20/02, p.A2)(AP, 3/18/07)
2002 Mar 18, Angola’s army and
Unita rebels began cease-fire talks.
(WSJ, 3/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 18, Britain planned to
send 1,700 troops to Afghanistan to join the 6,300 US forces.
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 18, Britain’s House of
Commons again voted to ban fox hunting along with the hunting of
stags and hares with packs of hounds.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A7)
2002 Mar 18, Van Leo (80),
Armenian-born Egyptian photographer (Leon Boyadjian), died. His
portraits gave Egypt’s beggars, strippers and the elite the look of
Hollywood film stars.
(SFC, 3/22/02,
p.A27)(http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/579/cu6.htm)
2002 Mar 18, In India police
shot and killed 4 people while trying to disperse mobs and stop
looting in 2 towns, Bharuch and Modasa, in Gujarat state.
(SFC, 3/20/02, p.A10)
2002 Mar 18, Israel withdrew
some forces from Palestinian-ruled territory as VP Cheney arrived to
help with peace talks.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 18, A UN conference on
aid opened in Mexico.
(WSJ, 3/18/02, p.A1)
2002 Mar 18, In Spain police
discovered at least 19 corpses at the home and car of an ex-funeral
parlor employee in Malaga.
(SFC, 3/20/02, p.A10)
2002 Mar 18, In Zimbabwe Terry
Ford became the 10th white farmer killed by militants in the last 2
years.
(SFC, 3/19/02, p.A8)
2003 Mar 18, The US mounted
"Operation Liberty Shield" to detain asylum seekers from suspect
countries.
(WSJ, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 18, A jury in Corpus
Christi, Texas, cleared Bayer Corp. of liability in a $560 million
lawsuit that accused the pharmaceutical giant of ignoring research
linking the cholesterol-lowering drug Baycol to dozens of deaths.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2003 Mar 18, In Salt Lake City,
Brian Mitchell and Wanda Barzee were charged with aggravated
kidnapping, sexual assault and burglary in the abduction of
Elizabeth Ann Smart, who was found with them six days earlier.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2003 Mar 18, Olympic gold medal
figure skater Sarah Hughes won the Sullivan Award as the nation's
top amateur athlete.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2003 Mar 18, A major snowstorm
hit Colorado and Wyoming with over 3-6 feet of snow. The Denver
Airport closed under the worst storm in 90 years.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A3)(WSJ, 3/20/03, p.A1)(SSFC,
3/23/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 18, In Australia
PM John Howard said his government would commit 2,000 military
personnel to any U.S.-led strike aimed at disarming Iraq.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2003 Mar 18, In Colombia gunmen
killed Luis Eduardo Alfonso Parada (27), print and radio journalist,
outside his office in the eastern state of Arauca. Alfonso had
reported on alleged corruption in Arauca and said he was receiving
death threats. On Dec 30, 2009, prosecutors ordered the preventative
detention of Jose Ruben Pena Tobon, a paramilitary commander of the
right-wing paramilitary bloc that killed Alfonso.
(AP, 3/19/03)(AP, 12/30/09)
2003 Mar 18, Congo leaders
signed a cease-fire with tribal militias and local chiefs in
northeastern Congo.
(AP, 3/18/03)
2003 Mar 18, Some $900 million
in US bills and as much as 100 million in euros was taken from
Iraq's Central Bank by Saddam Hussein and his family. The New York
Times reported on May 5 that Saddam ordered the money taken from the
Central Bank and sent his son Qusai in the middle of the night. This
became the largest cash theft in recent history.
(AP, 5/6/03)(AP, 2/28/06)
2003 Mar 18, Israeli forces
killed 2 Hamas militants in West Bank clashes. One Israeli solder
was killed.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A6)(WSJ, 3/19/03, p.A1)
2003 Mar 18, The Palestinian
parliament established the post of prime minister. It gave Mahmoud
Abbas (Abu Mazen), the new PM, control of domestic affairs and
internal security issues.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A3)
2003 Mar 18, In Serbia the
parliament elected Zoran Zivkovic to replace assassinated PM Zoran
Djindjic. Zivkovic promised to continue reforms, fight crime and
bring war crimes suspects to justice.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A7)
2003 Mar 18, In Yemen a man
shot 4 Hunt Oil company workers. He killed 3 and shot himself dead.
(SFC, 3/19/03, p.A5)
2003 Mar 18-19, In Zimbabwe a
2-day national strike, called to protest the increasingly
authoritarian government, shut down businesses and disrupted
transportation services across the country.
(AP, 3/19/03)
2004 Mar 18, Addressing
thousands of soldiers at Fort Campbell, Ky., President Bush warned
that terrorists could never be appeased and said there was no safety
for any nation that "lives at the mercy of gangsters and mass
murderers."
(AP, 3/18/05)
2004 Mar 18, Overruling its
staff, the FCC declared that an expletive (the "F-word") uttered by
rock star Bono on NBC the previous year was indecent and profane.
(AP, 3/18/05)
2004 Mar 18, New Jersey
officials arrested 11 people in a pharmaceutical theft ring and
charged them with stealing some $3 million in drugs for resale.
(WSJ, 3/19/04, p.A1)
2004 Mar 18, A 100-foot
diameter asteroid passed within 26,500 miles of Earth, the
closest-ever brush on record by a space rock.
(AP, 3/18/04)
2004 Mar 18, A rebel group in
Chad captured Amari Saifi, one of North Africa's most notorious
terrorists, along with 9 others. Saifi is and an Algerian extremist
suspected in the hostage-taking of 32 European tourists last year.
(AP, 5/14/04)
2004 Mar 18, Georgia's
President Mikhail Saakashvili met with Aslan Abashidze in Batumi,
Ajaria, to settle misunderstandings.
(Econ, 3/20/04, p.54)
2004 Mar 18, In northeast
Guatemala a bus collided with a tractor-trailer, killing at least 14
people.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 18, Jordan's King
Abdullah and PM Ariel Sharon held a secret meeting at the Israeli
leader's ranch to discuss Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally
from Palestinian areas.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2004 Mar 18, In Iraq a car bomb
exploded at a hotel in the southern city of Basra as a British
military patrol passed by, killing five Iraqi bystanders. US Army
soldiers shot 2 al-Arabiya television network employees. [see Mar
19]
(AP, 3/18/04)(SFC, 3/30/04, p.A3)
2004 Mar 18, Albanians set fire
to Serb Orthodox churches in Kosovo as NATO scrambled to deploy up
to 1,000 more troops to stifle an explosion of ethnic violence. The
death toll reached 31 with hundreds injured in fighting between
Serbs and ethnic Albanians as violence continued for a 2nd day.
(SFC, 3/19/04, p.A13)(Econ, 3/20/04, p.52)
2004 Mar 18, In northwestern
Uganda unidentified gunmen raided and looted a college and killed
two American missionaries and a Ugandan student.
(AP, 3/19/04)
2005 Mar 18, The US State
Department said it had denied a diplomatic visa to the Hindu
nationalist chief minister of Gujarat state, Narendra Modi, and
revoked his existing tourist/business visa under the U.S.
Immigration and Nationality Act due to his role in religious riots
in 2002.
(AP, 3/19/05)
2005 Mar 18, Standard &
Poor’s said the public debt in America, Germany and France was about
65% of GDP.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.75)
2005 Mar 18, Former Connecticut
3-term Gov. John G. Rowland was sentenced to a year in prison after
pleading guilty to a single federal corruption charge.
(SFC, 3/19/05, p.A4)
2005 Mar 18, Doctors in Florida
removed the feeding tube of Terri Schiavo (41) despite efforts by
congressional Republicans to halt the process. The brain-damaged
woman died on March 31, 2005, at age 41.
(SFC, 3/19/05, p.A1)(AP, 3/18/06)
2005 Mar 18, The S&P 500
index was revised after the market close to change the weightings of
many of its shares. The SmallCap 600 and MidCap 400 made the same
changes.
(SFC, 3/18/05, p.C3)
2005 Mar 18, Wal-Mart agreed to
pay a record $11 million to settle a civil immigration case for
using illegal immigrants to clean floors at stores in 21 states.
(SFC, 3/19/05, p.C1)
2005 Mar 18, Sol Linowitz (91),
US diplomat, died. In 1977 he negotiated the 1999 transfer of the
Panama Canal to Panama.
(WSJ, 3/21/05, p.A1)
2005 Mar 18, A
Cambodian-Japanese joint venture, JC Royal, was awarded a 30-year
management lease to oversee and upgrade the Choeung Ek memorial,
site of the killing fields (1975-1979). Profits were marked for the
unregistered Sun Fund charity.
(Econ, 5/14/05, p.45)(http://tinyurl.com/dlpm7)
2005 Mar 18, World donors
approved $1 billion in aid projects for Haiti, promising to repair
its roads and rebuild its battered power grid, in an effort to help
the Western Hemisphere's poorest nation as it prepares for fall
elections.
(AP, 3/19/05)
2005 Mar 18, Israel welcomed a
temporary truce declared by Palestinian militants and promised to
hold its fire in return, but demanded that the Palestinian Authority
eventually dismantle the armed groups.
(AP, 3/18/05)
2005 Mar 18, King Abdullah II
of Jordan proposed a new peace strategy that drops traditional Arab
demands that Israel give up all land seized in the 1967 war and
offers the Jewish state normalized relations with Arab countries.
(AP, 3/19/05)
2005 Mar 18, In Kiev
prosecutors said Ukrainian weapons dealers smuggled 18
nuclear-capable cruise missiles to Iran and China in 2001 during
former President Leonid Kuchma's administration.
(AP, 3/18/05)
2005 Mar 18, In Pakistan’s
Baluchistan province bombs exploded in two trains killing two people
and wounding nine.
(AP, 3/18/05)
2005 Mar 18, Former Solomon
Islands warlord Harold Keke and two other men were sentenced to life
in prison for the 2002 murder of a Catholic priest.
(AFP, 3/18/05)
2006 Mar 18, Anti-war
protesters marched in Australia, Asia, Turkey and Europe in
demonstrations that marked the third anniversary of the US-led
invasion of Iraq with a demand that coalition troops pull out.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Bill Beutel (75),
the longtime television news anchor and host of the show that became
ABC's "Good Morning America" (1975-2001), died in Pinehurst, NC.
(AP, 3/19/06)
2006 Mar 18, In Afghanistan at
least nine policemen, a former governor, his four companions and a
security guard were killed in separate attacks in Afghanistan blamed
on the Taliban.
(AFP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, In Algeria Farouk
Ksentini, the head of the government human rights body said up to
200,000 Algerians have died in a 15-year Islamic insurgency.
(AFP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, A mudslide swept
down on a scouting expedition in central Colombia, killing nine
young hikers and leaving two others missing. The scouts had just
been bathing and practicing knots when they were carried away.
(AP, 3/19/06)
2006 Mar 18, In Cuba the wives
and mothers of about two dozen political prisoners marched along
several of the city's main avenues, singing hymns and carrying signs
reading "amnesty" to commemorate the third anniversary of the
crackdown that put their husbands behind bars.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Egypt's health
ministry said a 30-year-old Egyptian woman has died of bird flu, the
country's first human victim of the virus.
(Reuters, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, As many as 1.5
million people took to the streets of French cities in a show of
strength over a contested new labor law, the government's First
Employment Contract (CPE), as police deployed in force in Paris to
head off the risk of violence. An open-ended contract for under
26-year-olds that can be terminated within the first two years
without explanation, the CPE is supposed to encourage employers to
take on young staff by removing some of the financial risks
involved. Police made 170 arrests.
(AP, 3/18/06)(Econ, 3/25/06, p.53)
2006 Mar 18, Indonesian
authorities said they have detained another 11 people in Papua
province after three policemen and a soldier died in clashes with
protesters demanding closure of a giant mine run by US-based
Freeport-McMoran Cooper & Gold Inc. 57 people had already been
detained after the March 16 violence in the provincial capital,
Jayapura, on the northeastern shore of Papua. Shooting into the air,
the security forces pulled people out of their cars, kicking and
beating them.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Iraq’s Interior
Ministry said 16 men were found dead with their hands tied and
bullets in their heads.
(SSFC, 3/19/06, p.A14)
2006 Mar 18, The US military
released more than 350 detainees in Iraq. The releases were
recommended by a review committee consisting of US officers and
Iraqi officials from the ministries of human rights, justice and
interior, which found no reason to hold them.
(AP, 3/20/06)
2006 Mar 18, A Maoist-dictated
strike hobbled Nepal for a fifth day.
(AFP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Hamas said it has
formed a government two weeks before a deadline but apparently
without coalition partners that might have softened the Islamic
militant group's image.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Slobodan Milosevic
was laid to rest in a makeshift grave dug in the backyard of the
family estate in Pozarevac, eastern Serbia. About 80,000 people
attended the farewell ceremony in Belgrade, while some 20,000
mourned the former leader in Pozarevac.
(AP, 3/19/06)
2006 Mar 18, Tens of thousands
of slogan-chanting Taiwanese took to the streets to protest rival
China's military threats against the island.
(AFP, 3/18/06)
2006 Mar 18, Two US Navy
warships exchanged gunfire with suspected pirates off the coast of
Somalia, and one suspect was killed and five others were wounded.
(AP, 3/18/06)
2007 Mar 18, An estimated 3,000
protesters marched in SF to mark the 4th anniversary of the US
invasion of Iraq and demanding an end to the war there.
(SFC, 3/19/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 18, Scientists said
that after four years of intensive collaboration, 18 top
mathematicians and computer scientists from the United States and
Europe have successfully mapped E8, one of the largest and most
complicated structures in mathematics. E8 was discovered over a
century ago, in 1887, and until now, no one thought the structure
could ever be understood.
(AFP, 3/19/07)
2007 Mar 18, Afghanistan's
Taliban said it had handed an Italian journalist, whom it captured
two weeks ago and threatened to kill, to tribal elders pending a
final deal for his release.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Bangladeshi police
filed extortion charges against Tarique Rahman, a former prime
minister's son, who had been a powerful political leader in a
country that ranks among the world's most corrupt.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Bangladesh
Cholesh Ritchil, an activist of the Garos people, was tortured to
death while in army custody. Father Eugene Homrich (79), a native of
Muskegon, Mich., made the news public. Homrich began working with
the Garos in 1956 when they numbered about 25,000 in the Modhupur
forest. By 2007 illegal logging had reduced the forest to a tenth of
its size to 23,000 square miles.
(WSJ, 6/13/07,
p.A1)(www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2007/s1945435.htm)
2007 Mar 18, In northern China
a coal mine explosion killed 19 with two miners still missing and
presumed dead in a mine in the suburbs of Shanxi province's Jincheng
City.
(AP, 3/21/07)
2007 Mar 18, Officials said
Cesare Battisti, a former Italian communist revolutionary who went
into hiding in France two and a half years ago, was arrested in
Brazil. In 1993 the former revolutionary was given a life sentence
by an Italian court for his role in four murders committed in 1978
and 1979.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Eurostar trains
ran on a normal schedule following a trackside fire the fire, near
the London terminus at Waterloo station, that brought chaos to the
service over the previous two days.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Egypt over 100
mainly Islamist lawmakers walked out of parliament to protest
government moves to push through constitutional laws that opponents
fear will entrench the ruling party's grip on power.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Finns voted in a
parliamentary election in a tight race between PM Matti Vanhanen's
Center Party, its left-leaning coalition partner and the
Conservative opposition. The ruling centrist party of PM Matti
Vanhanen retained power. The Center Party won 23.1% of the vote
while the Conservatives had 22.3% and the Social Democrats 21.4%,
according to provisional results.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Iran's justice
ministry said Shahram Jazayeri, a fugitive Iranian businessman, was
arrested outside the country after escaping from authorities last
month. Jazayeri had been sentenced in 2002 to 27 years in prison for
embezzlement in a high-profile conviction.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Iraq gunmen
opened fire on a minibus carrying civilians, killing seven men and
wounding four others in Hibhib, just east of Baqouba. A car bomb
killed seven Iraqis in a predominantly Shiite district of Baghdad. A
roadside bomb hit an Iraqi police convoy in eastern Baghdad, killing
two policemen and wounding five. In Shorja market, Baghdad's most
popular central shopping district, a man tossed a grenade into a
group of workers. One worker was killed and another was wounded.
Eleven bodies were found, six in Baqouba, in Diwaniyah and four in
Mosul, many with signs of torture and all apparently victims of
sectarian killings. US troops captured 12 suspected militants in
raids across Iraq.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Jamaica Bob
Woolmer (58), Pakistan cricket coach, was found dead in his hotel
room, hours after Pakistan was upset by Ireland and eliminated from
advancing at the Cricket World Cup. A pathologist report found
Woolmer's death was due to "asphyxia as a result of manual
strangulation." An inquest into Woolmer's death ended with the
Jamaican jury unable to reach a ruling.
(AP, 3/21/07)(AP, 3/23/07)(AP, 3/18/08)
2007 Mar 18, In Japan 3 masked
men stole 220-pound block of gold worth more than $2 million from
the Ohashi Collection Kan museum in Takayama. 26 railways and 75 bus
companies in the greater Tokyo area were scheduled to begin sharing
a new stored value system called Pasmo.
(AP, 3/19/07)(Econ, 2/17/07, p.72)
2007 Mar 18, In Nigeria a
senior veterinary official said the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus is
spreading among poultry farms around Kano, northern Nigeria's
largest city.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Pakistan the
lawyer for a man convicted of killing Wall Street Journal reporter
Daniel Pearl said he will file an appeal using an al-Qaida
lieutenant's recent confession that he beheaded the reporter.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, Panamanian police
working with agents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency seized
a boat off the nation's Pacific coast carrying 21.4 tons of cocaine
in one of the biggest maritime cocaine busts anywhere on record.
(AP, 3/19/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Somalia
insurgents struck the Mogadishu's seaport and former intelligence
quarters, killing two people and injuring at least 16 who were
caught in fighting that drew in Ethiopian and government troops.
(AP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, The UN said a
first group of Congolese refugees, who escaped a 2004 massacre at a
camp in Burundi, left for the US to start a program to resettle more
than 500 people.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2007 Mar 18, In Zimbabwe Nelson
Chamisa, a spokesman for the opposition Movement for Democratic
Change (MDC), was prevented from leaving the country and suffered
serious injuries after being beaten up at Harare International
Airport.
(AFP, 3/18/07)
2008 Mar 18, The US Federal
Reserve approved a .75% cut in the federal funds rate to 2.25%. This
was aimed at shoring up the US financial system shaken by huge
losses in the housing market. The DJIA responded with a gain of
420.41 to close at 12,392.66.
(SFC, 3/19/08, p.C1)
2008 Mar 18, Barack Obama
addressed his problem with pastor Jeremiah Wright in a speech in
Philadelphia and turned to a broad discussion of race, hitherto
untouched in his campaign.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.31)
2008 Mar 18, The US FCC ended
261 rounds of bidding in the auction of airwaves and raised almost
$20 billion.
(WSJ, 3/19/08, p.B6)
2008 Mar 18, Protesters in
Australia burned Chinese flags, demanding freedom for Tibet,
following similar demonstrations in Europe and the US against
Beijing's crackdown on anti-government riots in the Himalayan
region.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, Five Belgian
parties sealed a deal for a coalition government under Christian
Democrat Yves Leterme, ending a political limbo which threatened to
split the linguistically divided country.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, In Botswana De
Beers and the government set up a Diamond Trading Company (DTC) as a
joint venture.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.74)
2008 Mar 18, Anthony Minghella
(54), Oscar winning British director, died. He turned such literary
works as "The English Patient," "The Talented Mr. Ripley" and "Cold
Mountain" into acclaimed movies.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, A British judge
ruled against Exxon Mobil Corp., tossing out an order to freeze $12
billion in assets belonging to Venezuela's state oil company in a
case that stemmed from the nationalization of a project last year.
(AP, 3/19/08)
2008 Mar 18, The world's
biggest passenger plane, Airbus's A380, touched down in London on
its first commercial flight to Europe facing questions from green
groups over its eco-friendly billing.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, The World Food
Program (WFP) made a six million dollar appeal to feed some 90,000
Burundian refugees in Tanzania who expect to return to the central
African country in 2008.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, Canada formally
recognized the breakaway republic of Kosovo, a decision Serbia said
was a major mistake that could encourage separatists in the province
of Quebec.
(Reuters, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, Egypt's President
Hosni Mubarak, amid rising public discontent at sky-rocketing food
prices, said in the official Al-Ahram daily that uncontrolled
population explosion is draining the state's budget. A baby is born
every 23 seconds in Egypt, which is the Arab world's most populous
nation with a population of 78 million.
(AFP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, Egyptian police
fatally shot a Sudanese woman and arrested a second one who was with
an infant as they tried to cross into Israel.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, In India 4 migrant
workers were shot and killed in two separate shootings on the
outskirts of Impala, the capital of Manipur state.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, In India the Dalai
Lama vowed he would resign as leader of Tibet's exiles if violence
back home worsened, just hours before his aides said 19 people were
killed in new demonstrations.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, Iraq's main Sunni
bloc boycotted a conference aimed at reconciling the nation's
sectarian groups. A roadside bomb near a gas station in northern
Baghdad killed three people, including two police officers. Vice
President Dick Cheney, delving into internal Iraqi politics, pushed
a Kurdish leader to play a helpful role in passing legislation to
foster national reconciliation and forge a new agreement for US-Iraq
relations in years to come.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, In Israel Angela
Merkel, chancellor of Germany, addressed Israel’s parliament and
condemned the rocket attacks from Gaza.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.59)
2008 Mar 18, Kenya's President
Mwai Kibaki signed into law two bills passed by parliament that put
in place a power-sharing deal which halted post-election unrest.
(AFP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 22, The population of
Kosovo was about 2 million, with about 90% ethnic Albanian.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.60)
2008 Mar 18, In Sri Lanka
battles, roadside bombings and artillery attacks across the front
lines of Sri Lanka's civil war killed 35 ethnic Tamil rebels and two
soldiers. The combatants were killed in at least 17 different
confrontations.
(AP, 3/19/08)
2008 Mar 18, Darfur rebels said
they had fought off a major assault from Sudanese government forces
in the troubled region, inflicting casualties and pushing troops
back to West Darfur's capital.
(Reuters, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, In the UAR South
Asian workers, striking over pay in the Emirate of Sharjah, torched
offices and vehicles.
(AP, 3/18/08)
2008 Mar 18, An appeals court
in Ho Chi Minh City sentenced an Australian woman to death for
heroin trafficking. Vietnam-born Jasmine Luong (34), of Sydney, was
convicted during a one-day trial of trafficking 3 pounds of heroin.
(AP, 3/19/08)
2008 Mar 18, In Yemen a mortar
shell exploded by a high school next to the American embassy,
killing one Yemeni guard and wounding 13 students and three other
guards. Five suspects were later arrested in the attack, which the
US said targeted its embassy. An Interior Ministry official later
said al-Qaida militant Hamza al-Dayan launched three mortars at the
embassy before fleeing the scene in a vehicle with three
accomplices. In 2009 four Al-Qaida militants were convicted for the
attack and sentenced to death.
(AP, 3/18/08)(WSJ, 3/21/08, p.A1)(AP,
3/22/08)(AP, 7/11/10)
2009 Mar 18, US Pres. Barack
Obama named retired Air Force general Scott Gration as his special
envoy to Sudan to confront what Washington sees as a "horrendous"
situation in Darfur.
(AFP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, The White House
endorsed a bill to triple the size of the AmeriCorps program and
expand service opportunities for students and seniors.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, The US central
bank said it would pump more than $1 trillion into the economy with
plans to buy up to $300 billion long-term government bonds and some
$750 billion in mortgage-backed securities, which would help revive
the country's sagging housing market.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, The US government
sued Union Pacific in San Diego and Houston saying the rail company
had failed to prevent smuggling of illegal drugs by rail into the US
from Mexico. The government cited at least 58 occasions of illegal
drug transport, mostly marijuana, since 2001. At least one case
involved cocaine.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.A7)
2009 Mar 18, New Mexico Gov.
Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, decided to
sign legislation to repeal the state’s death penalty. The repeal
takes effect on July 1, and applies only to crimes committed after
that date.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, Felipe E. Sixto
(29) of Miami, a former White House aide, was sentenced to 2½
years in federal prison for stealing nearly $600,000 from a
federally funded nonprofit group that promotes democracy in Cuba.
(SFC, 3/19/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 18, In Alaska lance
Mackey won his 3rd consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.A6)
2009 Mar 18, IBM announced that
it was in talks to acquire Sun Microsystems for at least $6.5
billion in cash. The deal soon faltered as the companies failed to
agree on terms.
(Econ, 3/21/09, p.69)(SFC, 4/6/09, p.A5)
2009 Mar 18, Natasha Richardson
(45). British actress, died in NYC from a severe brain injury in a
skiing accident in Canada earlier this week.
(Reuters, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, The Australian
government said it plans to crack down on excessive executive pay
packages. It will amend the Corporations Act to require shareholder
approval for any termination payments that exceed average annual
base salary, which excludes additional compensation such as shares
or stock options.
(WSJ, 3/19/09, p.C2)
2009 Mar 18, Azerbaijan
citizens overwhelmingly voted to scrap presidential term limits in
the oil-rich country courted by Russia and the West. Opposition
leaders claimed the constitutional referendum was rigged and vowed
to dispute the outcome in court. A small European observer mission
said, however, that the vote was transparent and it had seen no
violations.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, Sean Hodgson (57),
a British man who spent 27 years in prison, walked free after his
murder conviction was overturned because of new DNA evidence in a
case that may help others who have been wrongly convicted.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, The prime
ministers of China and North Korea discussed the nuclear situation
on the Korean peninsula as they met in Beijing amid rising tensions
over Pyongyang's atomic and missile programs.
(AFP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Colombia
extradited former Maj. Julio Cesar Parga Rivas to the US on drug
trafficking charges.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Costa Rica said it
will re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba, and El Salvador's new
president-elect, Mauricio Funes, promised to do the same after he
takes office.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, Egypt opened its
border crossing with the Gaza Strip for the second time in two
months to allow medical aid and Palestinians to enter the coastal
territory.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Amnesty
international said authorities in Gambia have rounded up about 1,000
people and forced them to drink hallucinogens in a witch-hunting
campaign. Authorities began inviting "witch doctors," who combat
witches, to come from nearby Guinea soon after the death earlier
this year of President Yahya Jammeh’s aunt. The concoctions left six
people dead.
(AP, 3/18/09)(AFP, 7/18/11)
2009 Mar 18, Mumbai police
arrested an Indian businessman (49) for allegedly raping his
daughter for more than eight years, apparently on the advice of a
Hindu mystic who .said it would make him wealthy. Tantrik Hansmukh
Bhai Rathode (54) was arrested the next day.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, In Iran Omid
Mirsayafi (29), a blogger convicted of insulting the country’s
ruling clerics, died in Tehran’s main prison.
(SFC, 3/20/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 18, In Iraq a bomb
killed a farming couple in Diyala province. A suicide car bomber
struck a patrol, killing a policeman and wounding two others
in Mosul.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Gianni Giansanti
(52), an award-winning Italian photographer, died in Rome after
battling bone cancer. He shot the 1978 image that for many captured
the horror of that era — the bullet-riddled body of Aldo Moro, the
kidnapped former Italian Christian Democrat premier, in the truck of
a parked car. He also had snapped candid portraits of Pope John Paul
II during his pilgrimages.
(AP, 3/19/09)
2009 Mar 18, Kuwait's emir,
Sheikh Sabah al Ahmad al Jaber al Sabah, dissolved the 50-member
parliament, to avert parliamentary questioning of his nephew, the
prime minister. He called for new elections within two months,
saying some lawmakers had abused democracy and become a threat to
stability.
(AP, 3/18/09)(WSJ, 4/9/09, p.A1)
2009 Mar 18, Kyrgyzstan police
detained several prominent activists as they held a ceremony to mark
the seventh anniversary of shootings that left six protesters dead.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Madagascar's
highest court endorsed the army's move to replace the toppled
president with his rival, but the African Union was considering
whether it constituted a coup.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, In Mexico Vicente
"El Vicentillo" Zambada, top figure in the Sinaloa drug cartel, was
arrested before dawn at a home in an elite Mexico City neighborhood.
(AP, 3/20/09)
2009 Mar 18, Mozambique’s
interior ministry said 12 prisoners arrested during a riot over a
cholera epidemic have died in their cell in unclear circumstances.
They were among 29 people arrested when riots broke out last month
when Red Cross volunteers were blamed for causing a cholera epidemic
plaguing the country.
(AFP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Russian news
agencies cited a top defense official as confirming that a contract
to sell powerful air-defense missiles to Iran was signed two years
ago, but saying no such weapons have yet been delivered.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, Russia said it was
banning the hunting of baby harp seals, weeks after PM Putin
reportedly called the hunt a bloody industry.
(SFC, 3/19/09, p.A2)
2009 Mar 18, Defiant Sudanese
Pres. Omar al-Bashir rallied Arab supporters in Darfur by saying no
war crimes court or the UN Security Council can touch even "an
eyelash" on him despite an international order for his arrest.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2009 Mar 18, In Yemen a suicide
bomber struck a convoy carrying South Korean officials sent to Yemen
to investigate a bombing earlier in the week that killed four South
Korean tourists. No one was hurt.
(AP, 3/18/09)
2010 Mar 18, Pres. Obama signed
a $17.6 billion job-creation measure a day after it was passed by
Congress.
(SFC, 3/18/10, p.A6)
2010 Mar 18, David Coleman
Headley (b.1960), Chicago-based Pakistani American, pleaded guilty
to 12 counts of terrorism for his role as a scout for the 2008
coordinated assault in Mumbai that left 173 people dead.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Headley)(SFC,
3/19/10, p.A8)
2010 Mar 18, US federal and
state agents swept across the El Paso area to round up and question
members of the Barrio Azteca gang, which is believed to be behind
the recent murder of US consular workers in neighboring Ciudad
Juarez. Seven people were arrested.
(AFP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 18, Fess Parker,
former film and TV star, died at his home in Santa Ynez, Ca. He was
best know for his role as Davy Crocket on the Disneyland TV show. He
later played Daniel Boone in the 1964-1970 TV series “Daniel Boone.”
(SFC, 3/19/10, p.C6)
2010 Mar 18, Astronauts from
the US and Russia landed safely in northern Kazakhstan's chilly
steppes after spending almost six months on the International Space
Station.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, Afghan President
Hamid Karzai boosted the power of an anti-corruption body that had
faced fierce accusations of being toothless and half-hearted in its
battle to wipe out official graft. US military officials said
operations to push the Taliban out of their Afghan stronghold of
Kandahar are under way and will steadily build in the months ahead.
(AFP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, Michael Daly (49),
a former detective with Scotland Yard's drug squad, was sentenced to
22 years in prison for his role in a plot to smuggle hundreds of
millions of dollars worth of cocaine into Ireland. Daly's plan was
foiled when his boat ran out of fuel in rough seas and was
shipwrecked off the Irish coast on July 2, 2007. Daly his
co-conspirator Alan Wells, a former firefighter (57), have both
admitted conspiring to supply to the drug. Wells was sentenced to 15
years.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, China’s state
media reported that parts of southern China are suffering from the
worst drought in decades, leaving millions of people with inadequate
water and huge areas of farmland too dry to plant.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, In the Dominican
Rep. Jorge Puello (32), a fugitive who once acted as the lawyer for
a group of US Baptist missionaries accused of kidnapping 33 Haitian
children, was arrested on human-trafficking charges at the request
of the United States.
(AP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 18, Israeli copycat
drugs giant Teva made a major stride into Europe with the
five-billion-dollar purchase of Ratiopharm, formerly owned by a
German billionaire who killed himself.
(AFP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, In Mexico gunmen
in a convoy of six vehicles opened fire on a navy helicopter on a
reconnaissance patrol in Fresnillo, outside of Monterrey. Marines
aboard the chopper returned fire, killing one of the gunmen as
suspected gang members blocked roads in the city.
(AP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 18, A rocket fired by
Palestinian militants from the Gaza Strip killed a Thai worker
inside Israel, in the first death from such an attack since Israel's
Gaza offensive last year. Israeli missiles hit smuggling tunnels and
a metal workshop in Gaza.
(AP, 3/18/10)(AP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 18, A Polish court
convicted three men of the theft of the notorious "Arbeit Macht
Frei" (Work Sets You Free) sign from the Auschwitz memorial site in
December. The men, two of whom are brothers, were given prison
sentences ranging from 18 months to 2 1/2 years.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, In Qatar the CITES
convention said consumer appetite for caviar is pushing sturgeon to
the brink of extinction. Fishing nations led by Japan rejected a US
backed proposal to ban export of the Atlantic bluefin tuna. A
proposal to ban the int’l. sale of polar bear skins also failed to
pass.
(SFC, 3/19/10, p.A2,5)
2010 Mar 18, Sudan's government
and a collection of Darfur rebel groups signed a cease-fire, opening
the way for political negotiations ahead of a full peace agreement.
Government representative Ghazi Salah Eddin Atabani and rebel leader
Al-Tijani Al-Sissi signed the truce in Doha, Qatar. Al-Sissi's
Liberation and Justice Movement is an umbrella organization that
includes several small Darfur rebel groups that recently united to
negotiate with the government.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, UN Secretary
General Ban Ki-moon signed a cooperation agreement with Nikolai
Bordyuzha, the head of the Collective Treaty Organization, a
Moscow-dominated alliance that includes Russia and six other former
Soviet republics.
(AP, 3/18/10)
2010 Mar 18, Zimbabwe's rival
leaders faced fresh pressure to mend their differences and push
toward new elections, as South African President Jacob Zuma led
talks on the fragile unity government.
(AP, 3/18/10)
Go to
http://www.timelinesdb.com
Go to March 19