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March 18

Yesterday
Tomorrow

1584

Russian czar Ivan IV, or Ivan “The Terrible,” died at age 53.

1766

After months of American protests, Britain repealed the Stamp Act.

1925

The most violent single tornado in U.S. history, the “Tri-State Tornado,” hit Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois, killing 689 people and injuring 13,000 others.

1963

The Supreme Court held in Gideon v. Wainwright that public defenders must be provided for indigent defendants in felony cases.

1965

Soviet cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov made the first spacewalk.

1967

The oil tanker Torrey Canyon was wrecked off the Cornish coast of England, spilling 919,000 barrels of oil into the sea.

1990

The biggest art theft in U.S. history occurs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The works, including pieces by Vermeer and Rembrandt, were never recovered.