Today in History: March 18

Today is Tuesday, March 18, the 77th day of 2025. There are 288 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On March 18, 1925, nearly 700 people died when the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana; it remains the deadliest single tornado in U.S. history.

Also on this date:

In 1922, Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years’ imprisonment for civil disobedience. (He was released after serving two years.)

In 1937, in America’s worst school disaster, nearly 300 people — most of them children — were killed in a natural gas explosion at the New London Consolidated School in Rusk County, Texas.

In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II.

In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Gideon v. Wainwright, ruled unanimously that state courts were required to provide legal counsel to criminal defendants who could not afford to hire an attorney on their own.

In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.

In 1990, two thieves posing as police officers subdued security guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Art in Boston and stole 13 works of art valued at over $500 million in the biggest art heist in history.

In 2018, a self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle.

Today’s Birthdays: Composer John Kander is 98. Actor Brad Dourif is 75. Jazz musician Bill Frisell is 74. Filmmaker Luc Besson is 66. TV personality Mike Rowe is 63. Singer-actor Vanessa L. Williams is 62. Olympic speed skating gold medalist Bonnie Blair is 61. Rapper-actor Queen Latifah is 55. Actor-comedian Dane Cook is 53. Singer Adam Levine (Maroon 5) is 46. Actor Lily Collins is 36.