1766: The British Parliament repealed the Stamp Act. It was a direct tax imposed by the British Parliament specifically on the colonies of British America and required many printed materials in the colonies to be produced on stamped paper produced in London. The purpose of the tax was to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years’ War.
1834: Six farm labourers from Tolpuddle, Dorset were sentenced to be transported to Australia for seven years for forming the first trade union and introducing collective bargaining for better wages. There was such an outcry that they were pardoned two years after sentencing and allowed to return to England.
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1892: Lord Stanley of Preston pledges to donate a challenge cup for the best ice hockey team in Canada. Today, the Stanley Cup is the world’s most prestigious ice hockey trophy.
1895: Seeking a new life in the land of their ancestors, 200 formerly enslaved African-Americans from the former U.S. state Georgia sail for Liberia. The trip is sponsored by the American Colonisation Society and is led by William Henry Heard, who will build the first African Methodist Episcopal Church in Monrovia, Liberia.
1911: Theodore Roosevelt opens the Roosevelt Dam in Phoenix, Ariz., the largest dam in the United States to date.
1922: Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi was jailed for six years by the British authorities for encouraging public disorder. He was released in February 1924 for an appendicitis operation, having served only 2 years of his sentence.
1937: The Pedaliante, a human-powered aircraft, successfully flew 0.62 miles (1 km) in Milan, Italy.
1945: US Army Air Force completes largest bombing raid on Berlin Germany: Over 1200 bombers drop 3,000 tons of explosives.
1947: The husband of Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip, (born in Corfu – Greece on 10th June 1921), became a naturalized Briton on this Day.
1965: Russian cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov becomes the first person to walk in space
During the tethered spacewalk, which lasted 12 minutes, Leonov ventured up to 10 meters from his spacecraft, Voskhod 2.
1975: Equatorial Guinea dictator Macias Nguema closes all private schools, declaring them subversive and their curriculum insufficiently worshipful of him. This includes all catholic schools. At the end of each church service, congregations are required to chant, “Forward with Macias. Always with Macias. Never without Macias.”
1977: Congo President Marien Ngouabi is killed by a suicide commando.
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1990: East Germany holds its first and only free parliamentary elections. The election was held between the peaceful revolution leading to the demise of the German Democratic Republic in 1989 and the German reunification in 1990.
1990: In what was considered the world’s biggest art heist, two men pretending to be police officers stole 13 works, including paintings by Rembrandt and Johannes Vermeer, from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and none of the pieces have been recovered. There is a $10 million reward for information leading to their return!
2003: The UK government recognized British Sign Language (BSL) as an official language.
Births on This Day, March 18
Sola Fosudo, 66 years
Sola Fosudo is a Nigerian prolific dramatist, scholar, critic, film actor, and director.
A graduate of the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile Ife, and the University of Ibadan where he obtained a Bachelor’s and Master of Arts degree in drama respectively. He has featured and directed several Nigerian films.
Queen Latifah, 54 years
Dana Elaine Owens better known by the stage name Queen Latifah, is an American rapper, actress, and singer. She has received various accolades, including a Grammy Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, and two NAACP Image Awards, in addition to a nomination for an Academy Award. In 2006, she became the first hip hop artist to receive a star on the Hollywood.
Sutton Foster, 49 years
Sutton Lenore Foster is an American actress, singer, and dancer. She is known for her work on the Broadway stage, for which she has won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical twice.
Neville Chamberlain (18 March 1869 – 9 November 1940 )
Arthur Neville Chamberlain FRS was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from May 1937 to May 1940 and Leader of the Conservative Party from May 1937 to October 1940. In 1938 he returned from Munich with the claim – of ‘peace in our time’ but in less than a year Britain was at war with Germany. His appeasement policy towards Hitler led to his downfall in 1940 when he handed over to Churchill. He died at the age of age 71.
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