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Today is Wednesday, March 18th
The 077th day of 2009.
There are 288 days left in the year.
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Today's Highlights in History
On March 18, 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov left his Voskhod 2 capsule and remained outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.
On March 18, 1837, Grover Cleveland, the only U.S. president who served two non-consecutive terms, was born.
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On this date in:
1766 - Britain repealed the Stamp Act.
1837 - Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president of the United States, was born in Caldwell, N.J.
1909 - Einar Dessau of Denmark used a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about six miles away in what's believed to have been the first broadcast by a "ham" operator.
1922 - Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced to prison in India for civil disobedience.
1925 - A tornado with a base nearly a mile wide tore a destructive path 219 miles from southeastern Missouri across Illinois and into southwestern Indiana. With 695 killed, it is the deadliest tornado in U.S. history.
1931 - Schick Inc. marketed the first electric razor.
1937 - A gas explosion at a school in New London, Texas, killed more than 400 people, most of them children.
1940 - Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini held a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agreed to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.
1959 - President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill.
1962 - France and Algerian rebels agreed to a truce.
1974 - Most of the Arab oil-producing nations ended their embargo against the United States.
2000 - Taiwan ended more than a half century of Nationalist Party rule by electing opposition leader Chen Shui-bian president.
2002 - Brittanie Cecil, 13, died two days after being hit in the head by a hockey puck during an NHL game between the hometown Columbus Blue Jackets and the Calgary Flames.
2005 - Doctors in Florida, acting on orders of a state judge, removed Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. (The brain-damaged woman died 13 days later.)
2005 - Former Connecticut Gov. John G. Rowland was sentenced to a year in prison and four months under house arrest for corruption.
2008 - Democrat Barack Obama confronted America's racial divide head-on with a speech in Philadelphia in which he urged the nation to break "a racial stalemate we've been stuck in for years."
2008 - Oscar-winning filmmaker Anthony Minghella ("The English Patient") died in London at age 54.