TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Monday, March 18, the 77th day of 2019. There are 288 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On March 18, 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.

On this date:

■ In 1925, the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana, resulting in 700 deaths.

■ 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 1938, Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas nationalized his country’s petroleum reserves and took control of foreign-owned oil facilities.

■ In 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.

■ In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which was put in charge of interning Japanese-Americans, with Milton S. Eisenhower (the younger brother of Dwight D. Eisenhower) as its director.

■ In 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Hawaii statehood bill. (Hawaii became a state on Aug. 21, 1959.)

■ 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 1980, Frank Gotti, the 12-year-old youngest son of mobster John Gotti, was struck and killed by a car driven by John Favara, a neighbor in Queens, New York. (The following July, Favara vanished, the apparent victim of a gang hit.)

■ In 2002, Brittanie Cecil died two days short of her 14th birthday after being hit in the head by a puck at a game between the host Columbus Blue Jackets and Calgary Flames; it was apparently the first such fan fatality in NHL history.

■ In 2005, Doctors in Florida, acting on orders of a state judge, removed Terri Schiavo’s feeding tube. (Despite the efforts of congressional Republicans to intervene and repeated court appeals by Schiavo’s parents, the brain-damaged woman died on March 31, 2005, at age 41.)

■ In 2017, Chuck Berry, rock ‘n’ roll’s founding guitar hero and storyteller who defined the music’s joy and rebellion in such classics as “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven,” died at his home west of St. Louis at age 90.

Ten years ago: Under intense pressure from the Obama administration and Congress, the head of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, Edward Liddy, told Congress that some of the firm’s executives had begun returning all or part of bonuses totaling $165 million.

Five years ago: With a sweep of his pen, President Vladimir Putin added Crimea to the map of Russia, provoking denunciations from the Western leaders who called Putin a threat to the world. Venture capitalist Bruce Rauner won the GOP primary in his bid for Illinois governor (he went on to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Pat Quinn). A KOMO-TV news helicopter crashed and burst into flames near Seattle’s Space Needle, killing both people on board.

One year ago: 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. Vladimir Putin rolled to a crushing re-election victory for six more years as Russia’s president. “Black Panther” became the first film since “Avatar” in 2009 to top the weekend box office for five weeks in a row.

Today’s Birthdays: Composer John Kander is 92. Country singer Charley Pride is 85. Nobel peace laureate and former South African president F.W. de Klerk is 83. Country singer Margie Bowes is 78. Actor Kevin Dobson is 76. Actor Brad Dourif is 69. Jazz musician Bill Frisell is 68. Singer Irene Cara is 60. Actor Geoffrey Owens is

58. Singer-actress Vanessa L. Williams is 56. Olympic gold medal speedskater Bonnie Blair is 55. Actor David Cubitt is 54. Rock singer-musician Miki Berenyi is 52. Actor Michael Bergin is 50. Rapper-actresstalk show host Queen Latifah is

49. Country singer Philip Sweet (Little Big Town) is 45. Olympic gold medal figure skater Alexei Yagudin is 39. Actor Adam Pally is 37. Actress Lily Collins is 30. Actress-dancer Julia Goldani Telles is 24. Actress Ciara Bravo is 22. Actor Blake Garrett Rosenthal is 15.

Thought for Today: “It’s easy to be independent when you’ve got money. But to be independent when you haven’t got a thing—that’s the Lord’s test.”— Mahalia Jackson, American gospel singer (1911-1972).