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“I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him”
~ Booker T. Washington
Wikiquote (Booker T. Washington (April 5, 1856 – November 14, 1915) an African-American educator, author, orator, and advisor to Republican presidents.)
March 18th, 37
Roman Empire:
37 - The Roman Senate annuls Tiberius's will and proclaims Caligula.
235 - Emperor Alexander Severus and his mother Julia Mamaea are murdered by legionaries near Moguntiacum (modern Mainz). The Severan dynasty ends.
Wikipedia Image: Relief from a 3rd-century sarcophagus depicting a battle between Romans and Germanic warriors; the central figure is perhaps the emperor Hostilian / Depiction of the Menorah on the Arch of Titus in Rome.
March 18th, 1229
Crusades:
1229 - Sixth Crusade; Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor declares himself King of Jerusalem.
Wikipedia Image: The Siege of Antioch, from a 15th-century miniature; After the successful siege of Jerusalem in 1099, Godfrey of Bouillon, leader of the First Crusade, became the first ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem; Baldwin I of Jerusalem; Medieval image of Peter the Hermit, leading knights, soldiers and women toward Jerusalem during the First Crusade; The Battle of Ager Sanguinis, 1337 miniature; Pope Innocent III excommunicating the Albigensians, Massacre against the Albigensians by the crusaders; The capture of Jerusalem marked the First Crusade's success.
March 18th, 1241
Mongol Empire:
1241 - Battle of Chmielnik; Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków and plunder the city.
Wikipedia Image: Map of Mongol Empire at its height; Genghis Khan, credit The Field Museum in Chicago; Genghis Khan various Mongolian tribes joined together in 1206; Mongol warriors was created for an Islamic history book, Rashid al-Din's History of the World of 1307, courtesy of the Edinburgh University Library, Scotland.
March 18th, 1314
Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
Wikipedia Image: Philip the Fair portrait; Templar Knights being Burned at the Stake in France.; Philip IV of France – effigy at St. Denis.
March 18th, 1608
Ethiopia:
1608 - Susenyos is formally crowned Emperor of Ethiopia.
Wikipedia Photo: Blue Nile Falls; Ethiopia a magical and timeless land; credit Oklahoma State University, University of California - San Diego School of Medicine, National Geographics.
March 18th, 1766
American Revolutionary War:
1766 - The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act. (The Americans rejected that as unconstitutional--crying "No Taxation without Representation" - and it was a major grievance that led to the American Revolution.)
Wikipedia Paintings: Washington Crossing the Delaware, by Emanuel Leutz; Battle of the Chesapeake, French (left) and British (right) lines; Battle of Bunker Hill, The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill by John Trumbull; The Defeat of the Floating Batteries at Gibraltar, September 13, 1782, by John Singleton Copley; Washington and the Comte de Rochambeau at Yorktown, 1781; "The surrender at Saratoga" shows General Daniel Morgan in front of a French de Vallière 4-pounder; Surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown by (John Trumbull, 1797).
Grand Union - Stars and Stripes Flag
March 18th, 1793
1793 - The first republican state in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann.
1990 - The Germans in the German Democratic Republic are called to the first democratic elections in this former communist dictaturship.
Wikipedia Photo: Germany; Cologne Cathedral And Hohenzollern Bridge, Cologne, Germany ● Neuschwanstein castle Bavaria Germany ● Berlin, Germany © Btrenkel, Stockphoto.com ● Frankfurt Germany ● German vineyard
March 18th, 1850
American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.
Wikipedia Painting: Portrait of Henry Wells and William Fargo.
March 18th, 1865
American Civil War:
1865 - Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
Wikipedia Image: ● Lincoln Memorial; an American national monument built to honor the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln - located on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. across from the Washington Monument.
● The northern army led by George McClellan and the southern army led by Robert E. Lee met at Antietam Creek, Maryland in September, 1862. It was a bloody battle where 13,000 Confederates and 12,000 Union troops died in just one day. McClellan had hesitated to attack before the battle thus letting the southern troops regroup. Also, he had saved reserves and refused to use them at the end of the battle thinking that Lee was holding reserves for a counterattack, even though those reserves didn't exist. The Union victory stopped Lee's northward advance and was a turning point in the war.
● Battle of Antietam / Stone Bridge at Antietam Battlefield - Sharpsburg, Maryland
● First Battle Between Ironclads: CSS Virginia/Merrimac (left) vs. USS Monitor, in 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads.
● Although photography was still in its infancy, war correspondents produced thousands of images, bringing the harsh realities of the frontlines to those on the home front in a new and visceral way. The Atlantic.
March 18th, 1874
1874 - Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trading rights.
1959 - United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law allowing for Hawaiian statehood, which would become official on August 21.
Wikipedia Hawaiian Islands, NOAA Satellite; Na Pali Coast, Kaua'i, by Diane Cook and Len Jenshel, National Geographic; Volcanic Coast, Haleakala National Park, by Paul Chesley, National Geographic; Living Earth - Pu'u 'O'o crater, by Frans Lanting; Volcano erupting on the Big Island in Hawaii in July by Alain Barbezat for National Geographic; The blue ocean line of Honolulu - an aerial view.
Hawaiian Islands (Hawaiian: Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometres) from the island of Hawaiʻi in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll (the northwesternmost island in Hawaii is Green Island, which is joined to the Kure Atoll).
March 18th, 1893
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; originally presented to amateur champions, the Stanley Cuphas been awarded to the top pro team since 1910, and since 1926, only to National Hockey League teams.
Wikipedia Photo: National Hockey League Logos; The Pittsburgh Penguins' Sidney Crosby hoists the Stanley Cup after the Penguins beat the Detroit Red Wings 2-1 to win Game 7 of the NHL hockey Stanley Cup Finals in Detroit June 12. (AP Photo: Gunn, The Canadian PressFrank).
March 18th, 1913
Pre World War I:
1913 - George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki.
World War I:
1915 - Battle of Gallipoli; Three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.
Post World War I:
1921 - Peace of Riga; between Poland and the Soviet Union.
Wikipedia Photo: Trenches on the Western Front; a British Mark IV Tank crossing a trench; Royal Navy battleship HMS Irresistible sinking after striking a mine at the Battle of the Dardanelles; a Vickers machine gun crew with gas masks, and German Albatros D.III biplanes. National Archives and Records Administration.
March 18th, 1922
Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. (He would serve 2 years.)
Wikipedia Photo: Mohandas Gandhi, Gandhi (1906), Mohandas K. Gandhi arrived in South Africa as a young British-trained lawyer (1893) - The New York Times; Gandhi in South Africa (1895); Mahatma Gandhi spinning yarn, (1920); Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.
March 18th, 1925
Tornadoes:
1925 - Tri-State Tornado: Tornadoes break out across the Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois and Indiana, killing 695 people.
Wikipedia Photo: Weather Front System; Tornado near Anadarko, Oklahoma; North Dakota Tornado; F3 Category Tornado Swirls Across A South Dakota Prairie by Carsten Peter; A waterspout parallels a lightning strike over Lake Okeechobee in Florida, by Fred K. Smith, National Geographics, Extream Instability.
March 18th, 1937
The New London School explosion kills three hundred, mostly children. (An elementary school in Texas explodes in 1937, killing hundreds of children and teachers. Survivors recount the horror of the world's worst disaster involving children 
)
Wikipedia Image: New London School explosion.
March 18th, 1937
World War II:
1937 - Spanish Civil War; Battle of Guadalajara - Spanish Republican forces defeat the Italians.
1938 - Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders.
1940 - Axis Powers; 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 - War Relocation Authority; is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody.
1945 - 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin.
Post World War II:
1948 - Tito-Stalin split: Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia sign the Treaty of Brussels, a precursor to the North Atlantic Treaty establishing NATO.
Wikipedia Photo: Bombing of Dresden in World War II; August Schreitmüller's sculpture 'Goodness' surveys Dresden after a firestorm started by Allied bombers in 1945.
USS Bunker Hill was hit by kamikazes piloted by Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa and another airman on 11 May 1945. 389 personnel were killed or missing from a crew of 2,600; Ensign Kiyoshi Ogawa, who flew his aircraft into the USS Bunker Hill during a Kamikaze mission on 11 May 1945; Kamikaze Missions - Lt Yoshinori Yamaguchi's Yokosuka D4Y3 (Type 33 Suisei) "Judy" in a suicide dive against USS Essex. The dive brakes are extended and the non-self-sealing port wing tank is trailing fuel vapor and/or smoke 25 November 1944.
German V1 flying-bomb and V2 Rockets - Preparations for a Salvo Launch of V-2 Rockets in the Heidelager near Blizna (Poland) (1944), credit German History in Documents and Images GHDI.
Eastern Front (World War II); Germans race towards Stalingrad. August 1942; Soviet children during a German air raid in the first days of the war, June 1941, by RIA Novosti archive; Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 400,000 Soviet women served in front-line duty units Caucasus Mountains, winter 1942/43; Finnish ski patrol: the invisible enemy of the Soviet Army with an unlimited supply of skis; Men of the German Engineers Corps cross a river which is swollen after the first autumn rains, to strengthen bridges linking the German positions on the central front in Russia. by Keystone / Getty Images. October 1942; Russian snipers fighting on the Leningrad front during a blizzard. Photo by Hulton Archive / Getty Images, 1943; German soldiers surrendering to the Russians in Stalingrad, the soldier holding the white flag of surrender is dressed in white so that there could be no doubt of his intentions, a Russian soldier is on the right of the photograph. by Keystone / Getty Images, January 1943.
March 18th, 1944
Earthquake:
1944 - The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 and causes thousands to flee their homes.
1953 - An earthquake hits western Turkey killing 250.
1971 - In Peru a landslide crashes into Lake Yanahuani killing 200 at the mining camp of Chungar.
Wikipedia Image: Preliminary Determination of Epicenters / Aleppo Syria; Anchorage, Alaska - March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound USA earthquake and tsunami; 8.9 Mega Earthquake Strikes Japan; Tsunami Swirls Japan's Ibaraki Prefecture March 12 2011. credit NOAA / NGDC, NOAA National Geophysical Data Center, USGS, National Geographics.
March 18th, 1965
Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
Wikipedia Photo: Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov walk in space.
March 18th, 1968
The Gold Standard The United States Congress repeals the requirement for a Gold reserve to back United States currency.
Wikipedia Photo: The Gold Standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is a fixed weight of gold.
March 18th, 1969
Vietnam War:
1969 - Operation Menu; 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Vietnam_War; Side view of an HH-53 helicopter of the 40th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron as seen from the gunner's position on an A-1 of the 21st Specialist Operations Squadron. (USAF Photo by Ken Hackman), Boston Globe;
Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, credit Free Republic;
Vietnam War: The Big Picture / Boston Globe.
March 18th, 1974
Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.
Wikipedia Photo: Oil embargo crisis; The 1973 oil crisis started in October 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries or the OAPEC (consisting of the Arab members of OPEC, plus Egypt, Syria and Tunisia) proclaimed an oil embargo.
March 18th, 1980
Plesetsk Cosmodrome: in Russia, 50 people are killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket on its launch pad during a fueling operation.
Wikipedia Photo: Baikonur Cosmodrome's "Gagarin's Start" Soyuz launch pad prior to the rollout of Soyuz TMA-13, October 10, 2008.
March 18th, 1989
In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found nearby the Pyramid of Giza.
Wikipedia Photo: Egypt; ● Giza Pyramids ● Great Sphinx ● Abu Simbel Temples Egypt, credit National Geographic ● Egyptian King Tutankhamun, credit National Geographic ● Beautiful images of Egyptian gods and goddesses adorn tomb walls in the Valley of the Kings - The god Ptah, a creator deity, in the tomb of Ramesses III. Abu Simbel Egypt
March 18th, 1990
In the largest art theft U.S. history, 12 paintings, collectively worth around $300 million, are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
Wikipedia Painting: Jean-Baptiste Oudry's The White Duck, which was stolen in 1990.
March 18th, 1994
Bosnia's Bosniaks and Croats sign the Washington Agreement, ending warring between the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Wikipedia Map: Kingdom of Yugoslavia; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; A twilight moon rises above the Kamniske mountains and Slovenia’s Sava River Valley, Slovenia, credit National Geographic; Yugoslavia, November 1977, credit National Geographic.
March 18th, 1997
Aviation accidents and incidents:
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 on board and leading to the grounding of all An-24s.
Wikipedia Photo: ● Pan AM 747 ● U.S. Airways flight 1549 also known as the "Miracle on the Hudson" navigates an exit ramp near Burlington, New Jersey, June 5, 2011 ● Passengers stand on the wings of a U.S. Airways plane as a ferry pulls up to it after it landed in the Hudson River in New York, Reuters ● U.S. Airways plane crashes into New York Hudson River, Photo: AP
March 18th, 2014
Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation: The parliaments of Russia and Crimea sign an accession treaty.
Wikipedia Photo: Pro-Russian people celebrate in Lenin Square, in Simferopol, Ukraine, Sunday, March 16, 2014. (Associated Press / Vadim Ghirda)
March 18th, 2016
Modern conflicts in the Middle East, social unrest and terrorist attacks:
2016 - Bardo National Museum attack; 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.
Wikipedia Photo: Middle East satellite image, NASA. ● Camels are seen early morning on a beach in the Marina area of Dubai October 16, 2008. (Steve Crisp, Reuters) ● A portrait of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad burns during clashes between rebels and Syrian troops in Selehattin, near Aleppo, on July 23, 2012. (Bulent Kilic, AFP / GettyImages) ● Egyptians gather in their thousands in Tahrir Square to mark the one year anniversary of the revolution on Jan. 25, 2012 in Cairo Egypt. Tens of thousands have gathered in the square on the first anniversary of the Arab uprising which toppled President Hosni Mubarak. (Jeff J Mitchell, Getty Images) ● Black smoke rises above the Tehran skyline as supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi burn tires and other material in the streets as they fight running battles with police to protest the declared results of the Iranian presidential election in Tehran, Iran, Saturday, June 13, 2009. (Ben Curtis, AP) ● The Iron Dome defense system fires to interecpt incoming missiles from Gaza in the port town of Ashdod, Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012. (Tsafrir Abayov, AP)