This Day in History

Today, Thursday, March 18, is the 77th day of 2010. There are 288 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

1965: The first spacewalk takes place as cosmonaut Aleksei Leonov leaves his Voskhod 2 capsule and remains outside the spacecraft for 20 minutes, secured by a tether.

Other Notable Events

1766: Great Britain repeals the Stamp Act, after Americans decried that taxation without representation was tyranny.

1909: Einar Dessau of Denmark uses a shortwave transmitter to converse with a government radio post about 10 kilometres (six miles) away in what is believed to have been the first broadcast by a "ham" operator.

1922: Mahatma Gandhi is sentenced to six years in prison in India for civil disobedience.

1931: Schick Inc markets the first electric razor in the US.

1940: Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini hold a meeting at the Brenner Pass during which the Italian dictator agrees to join in Germany's war against France and Britain.

1946: Status of Guadeloupe, Martinique and French Guyana changes from French West Indian territories to Overseas Departments, making them parts of France.

1949: The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is formed.

1959: US President Dwight Eisenhower signs the Hawaii statehood bill.

1962: French and Algerian rebel delegations in Evian-les-Bains, France, sign cease-fire agreement in Algerian War.

1969: US President Richard Nixon orders secret bombing of Cambodia; US and Soviet Union propose international treaty to ban nuclear weapons from ocean floor.

1970: Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk is deposed as chief of state while he is on a visit to Moscow.

1990: East German voters signal that they want unification with West Germany as soon as possible, giving the Conservative alliance 48 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections.

1991: More than 70,000 people mass in the streets of several east German cities demanding an end to economic woes.

1994: The Bosnian government and Croatia sign a federation accord.

2000: Aid arrives in Mozambique, where flooding left as many as 700 people dead and destroyed the homes or livelihood of another two million; Taiwan ends more than a half-century of Nationalist Party rule, electing an opposition leader, Chen Shui-bian.

2001: In Paris, Socialists win municipal elections, ending nearly a century of unbroken rule by the right.

2004: Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a key US ally in Iraq, says that Poland was "misled" about whether Saddam Hussein's regime had weapons of mass destruction and was considering withdrawing its troops from Iraq several months earlier than envisaged.

2006: Thousands of anti-war protesters take to the streets around the world, marking the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq with demands that coalition troops leave immediately.

2008: Three mortar rounds targeting the US embassy in Yemen crash into a high school for girls next door, wounding more than a dozen of them and killing a Yemeni security guard.

2009: Austrian incest father Josef Fritzl abruptly pleads guilty to all charges against him, a surprising twist amid disclosures that the daughter he imprisoned for 24 years in a dungeon bore him seven children. She secretly sat in on the trial.

Today's Birthdays:

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian composer (1844-1908); Rudolf Diesel, German engineer (1858-1913); Neville Chamberlain, British statesman (1869-1940); Peter Graves, US actor (1926-); John Updike, US writer (1932-2009); F W de Klerk, former South African president, co-winner of 1993 Nobel Peace Prize (1936-); Ingemar Stenmark, Swedish alpine skier (1956-); Irene Cara, US singer (1959-); Queen Latifah, US rapper/actress (1970-).

PIC Fritzl

Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man who fathered his daughter's seven children, is escorted to the fourth day of his trial in the provincial courthouse in St Poelten, Austria, in this March 19, 2009 file photo.

--AP