Today’s Highlights

On March 18, 1925, nearly 700 people died when the Tri-State Tornado struck southeastern Missouri, southern Illinois and southwestern Indiana; it remains the deadliest single tornado in U.S. history.

On this date

1922: Mohandas K. Gandhi was sentenced in India to six years’ imprisonment for civil disobedience. (He was released after serving two years.)

1942: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order authorizing the War Relocation Authority, which forced Japanese-Americans into internment camps during World War II.

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.

1965: The first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.

1990: Two thieves posing as police officers subdued security guards at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum of Art in Boston and stole 13 works of art valued at over $500 million.

2018: A self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Arizona, in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle.

Today’s birthdays

Composer John Kander is 98. Actor Brad Dourif is 75. Jazz musician Bill Frisell is 74. Filmmaker Luc Besson is 66. TV personality Mike Rowe is 63. Singer-actor Vanessa L. Williams is 62.