March 18 | The 77th Day of the Year

Today is March 18, the seventy-seventh day of the year.  If you weren't aware, the nation's capitol, Washington D.C., is located directly on the 77th Meridian West, which is also known as the "American Meridian".  In history, the 77th day of the year has been quite memorable for the United States, especially when it comes to Hawaii.  It is also the date of the greatest "art heist" in U.S. history, as well as the day the "Gold Standard" was dropped, March 18, 1968. 

Courtesy of Wikipedia, let us examine some memorable March 18 days from the past.

• 1644 – The Third Anglo-Powhatan War begins in the Colony of Virginia.
• 1673 – John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton sells his part of New Jersey to the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.
• 1741 – New York governor George Clarke's complex at Fort George is burned in an arson attack, starting the New York Conspiracy of 1741.
• 1766 – American Revolution: The British Parliament repeals the Stamp Act.
• 1793 – The first republic in Germany, the Republic of Mainz, is declared by Andreas Joseph Hofmann.
• 1834 – Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset, England are sentenced to be transported to Australia for forming a trade union.
• 1848 – March Revolution: in Berlin there is a struggle between citizens and military, costing about 300 lives.
• 1850 – American Express is founded by Henry Wells and William Fargo.
• 1865 – American Civil War: The Congress of the Confederate States adjourns for the last time.
• 1871 – Declaration of the Paris Commune; President of the French Republic, Adolphe Thiers, orders the evacuation of Paris.
• 1874 – Hawaii signs a treaty with the United States granting exclusive trade rights.
• 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.
• 1906 – Traian Vuia flies a heavier-than-air aircraft for 20 meters at an altitude of one meter.
• 1913 – King George I of Greece is assassinated in the recently liberated city of Thessaloniki.
• 1915 – World War I: During the Battle of Gallipoli, three battleships are sunk during a failed British and French naval attack on the Dardanelles.
• 1921 – The second Peace of Riga is signed between Poland and the Soviet Union.
• 1922 – In India, Mohandas Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison for civil disobedience. He serves only 2 years.
• 1925 – The Tri-State Tornado hits the Midwestern states of Missouri, Illinois, and Indiana, killing 695 people.
• 1937 – The New London School explosion in New London, Texas, kills 300 people, mostly children.
• 1937 – Spanish Civil War: Spanish Republican forces defeat the Italians at the Battle of Guadalajara.
• 1937 – The human-powered aircraft, Pedaliante, flies 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) outside Milan.
• 1938 – Mexico nationalizes all foreign-owned oil properties within its borders.
• 1940 – World War II: 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 – The War Relocation Authority is established in the United States to take Japanese Americans into custody.
• 1944 – The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Italy kills 26 people and causes thousands to flee their homes.
• 1945 – World War II: 1,250 American bombers attack Berlin.
• 1946 – Diplomatic relations between Switzerland and the Soviet Union are established.
• 1948 – Soviet consultants leave Yugoslavia in the first sign of the Tito-Stalin split.
• 1953 – An earthquake hits western Turkey, killing 250 people.
• 1959 – President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a bill into law allowing for Hawaiian statehood, which would become official on August 21.
• 1962 – The Evian Accords end the Algerian War of Independence, which had begun in 1954.
• 1965 – Cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov, leaving his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes, becomes the first person to walk in space.
• 1967 – The supertanker Torrey Canyon runs aground off the Cornish coast.
• 1968 – Gold standard: The U.S. Congress repeals the requirement for a gold reserve to back US currency.
• 1969 – 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.
• 1970 – The U.S. postal strike of 1970 begins, one of the largest wildcat strikes in U.S. history.
• 1971 – In Peru a landslide crashes into Lake Yanahuani, killing 200 people at the mining camp of Chungar.
• 1974 – Oil embargo crisis: Most OPEC nations end a five-month oil embargo against the United States, Europe and Japan.
• 1980 – At Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Russia, 50 people are killed by an explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket on its launch pad during a fueling operation.
• 1989 – In Egypt, a 4,400-year-old mummy is found near the Pyramid of Cheops.
• 1990 – Germans in the German Democratic Republic vote in the first democratic elections in the former communist dictatorship.
• 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, Massachusetts.
• 1992 – In a national referendum white South Africans vote overwhelmingly in favor of ending the racist policy of Apartheid.
• 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.