Events on March 18 49
Year 633
Ridda wars: The Arabian Peninsula is united under the central authority of Caliph Abu Bakr.
Year 1068
An earthquake affects the Levant and the Arabian Peninsula, leaving up to 20,000 dead.
Year 1229
Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, declares himself King of Jerusalem in the Sixth Crusade.
Year 1241
First Mongol invasion of Poland: Mongols overwhelm Polish armies in Kraków in the Battle of Chmielnik and plunder the city.
Year 1314
Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and final Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake.
Year 1741
New York governor George Clarke's complex at Fort George is burned in an arson attack, starting the New York Conspiracy of 1741.
Year 1793
The first modern republic in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann.
Year 1834
Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.
Year 1848
March Revolution: In Berlin there is a struggle between citizens and military, costing about 300 lives.
Year 1865
American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
Year 1871
Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders the evacuation of Paris.
Year 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.
Year 1913
King George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki.
Year 1915
World War I: During the Battle of Gallipoli, three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.
Year 1922
In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience, of which he serves only two.
Year 1925
The Tri-State Tornado hits the Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people.
Year 1937
The New London School explosion in New London, Texas, kills 300 people, mostly children.
Year 1937
Spanish Civil War: Spanish Republican forces defeat the Italians at the Battle of Guadalajara.
Year 1938
Mexico creates Pemex by expropriating all foreign-owned oil reserves and facilities.
Year 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.
Year 1942
The War Relocation Authority is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody.
Year 1944
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 people and causes thousands to flee their homes.
Year 1962
The Évian Accords end the Algerian War of Independence, which had begun in 1954.
Year 1965
Cosmonaut Alexey Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
Year 1968
Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
Year 1969
The United States begins secretly bombing the Sihanouk Trail in Cambodia, used by communist forces to infiltrate South Vietnam.
Year 1971
Peru: a landslide crashes into Yanawayin Lake, killing 200 people at the mining camp of Chungar.
Year 1980
A Vostok-2M rocket at Plesetsk Cosmodrome Site 43 explodes during a fueling operation, killing 48 people.
Year 1990
Germans in the German Democratic Republic vote in the first democratic elections in the former communist dictatorship.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 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.
Year 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.