March 18
Today in America's Present Past
1673 | John Berkley sells his half of New Jersey to the Quakers John Fenwick and Edward Byllynge for 1,000 pounds.
1782 | Politician John C. Calhoun was born.
1818 | Congress: The first federal government pensions were approved (for veterans),
1837 | POTUS: President Cleveland was born.
1845 | Johnny Appleseed (John Chapman), pioneer nurseryman, died in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
1848 | Yachtsman Nathaniel Greene Herreshoff was born.
1850 | Henry Wells & William Fargo founded American Express.
1877 | Civil Rights: Republican President Hayes appointed Frederick Douglass marshal of Washington, D.C.
1881 | Barnum & Bailey’s “Greatest Show on Earth” debuted after a merger.
1882 | Outlaws in Tombstone, Arizona murder Morgan Earp, shooting him in the back while he was playing billiards at Hatch’s Saloon, triggering Wyatt Earp’s “Vendetta Ride.”
1892 | Poet P. T. Coffin was born.
1895 | 200 African Americans leave Savannah, Georgia for Liberia.
1906 | Admiral Roy Johnson was born.
1909 | Entrepreneur Ernest Gallo was born.
1915 | Novelist Richard Condon was born.
1922 | Activist Fred Shuttlesworth was born.
1925 | The “Tri-State Tornado” struck Missouri, Illinois and Indiana killing 695 people.
1932 | Novelist John Updike was born.
1937 | A school in New London Texas exploded, killing 300 students due to a gas leak, leading to a legal requirement of mixing odorants (rotten egg smell) into natural gas production.
1942 | POTUS: Democrat President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9102, creating the War Relocation Authority, charged with overseeing the internment of Japanese Americans.
1947 | Entrepreneur William C. Durant died.
1951 | Entrepreneur Ben Cohen was born.
1956 | Novelist Louis Bromfield died.
1979 | Entertainer Adam Levine was born.
1990 | Thiefs stole $500 million in art from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, Massachusetts.
2010 | Actor Fess Parker died.
2017 | Entertainer Chuck Berry died.