📜 This Day in History

March 18

• 363A fire began in Rome that resulted in the destruction of the Temple of Apollo Palatinus.
• 1793Andreas Joseph Hofmann proclaimed the Republic of Mainz, becoming the first republican state in Germany.
• 1915First World War: In one of the largest naval battles of the Gallipoli campaign, Ottoman forces sank three Allied battleships and severely damaged three others.
• 1965Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov ventured outside the Soviet spacecraft Voskhod 2, becoming the first person to walk in space.
• 1990Unidentified thieves stole thirteen works of art collectively valued at $500 million from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
• 2019Syrian civil war: The U.S. Air Force carried out an airstrike in al-Baghuz Fawqani, killing as many as 80, a disputed number of whom were civilians.

Born on this day

• 1837Grover Cleveland, American lawyer and politician, 22nd and 24th President of the United States (died 1908)
• 1844Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer and academic (died 1908)
• 1858Rudolf Diesel, German engineer, invented the Diesel engine (died 1913)
• 1869Neville Chamberlain, English businessman and politician, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (died 1940)