On this day, March 18

1816 Pittsburgh was incorporated as a city under an act providing for a mayor, one select and one common council, 12 aldermen and a recorder.

1925 The Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, resulting in some 700 deaths.

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.

1940 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini met at the Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agreed to join Germany’s war against France and Britain.

1959 John J. Wright was installed as Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh in St. Paul’s Cathedral.

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.

1981 Because of a wildcat strike, 12 Southwestern Pennsylvania coal mines were closed.

2018 A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in suburban Phoenix in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle; Uber suspended its autonomous vehicle testing program in Arizona, California, Pittsburgh and Toronto after the crash.

Some items are from Stefan Lorant’s “Pittsburgh: The Story of an American City” (digital.library.pitt.edu/chronology).