Today in History: March 18, deadliest U.S. tornado strikes Midwest states
In 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 US history.
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In 1937, in America's worst school disaster, nearly 300 people — most of them children — were killed in a natural gas explosion at the New London Consolidated School in Rusk County, Texas.
In 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.
In 1963, the US 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.
In 1965, the first spacewalk took place as Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov went outside his Voskhod 2 capsule, secured by a tether.
In 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 in the biggest art heist in history.
In 1996, rejecting an insanity defense, a jury in Dedham convicted John C. Salvi III of murdering two women in attacks at two Boston-area abortion clinics in December 1994. (Salvi later died by suicide in his prison cell.)
In 2018, a self-driving Uber SUV struck and killed a pedestrian in Tempe, Ariz., in the first death involving a fully autonomous test vehicle.
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Protesters throw rocks, jump on moving ICE vehicle after Omaha workplace raid
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One widely circulated photo—showing a masked protester standing in front of a burning car, waving a Mexican flag—has been embraced by Trump supporters as a distillation of the conflict: a president unafraid to use force to defend an American city from those he deems foreign invaders. 'We couldn't have scripted this better,' said a senior White House aide granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations. 'It's like the 2024 election never ended: Trump is strong while Democrats are weak and defending the indefensible.' Democrats, of course, take a different view, and say the administration's actions have only risked triggering further violence. Retired officers who study how the armed forces have been used in democracies told us they share those concerns. They point to the damage that Trump's orders could do to the military's relationship with the citizens it serves. 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Guardsman in 2020 crystallized his views about the divide between military personnel and what he saw as the degenerate protesters who were lobbing bricks and bottles of urine at the citizen soldiers. When the D.C. Guard was again summoned seven months later, to help secure the 2021 inauguration following the January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol, Hegseth was told to stand down because fellow Guardsmen suspected that one of his tattoos was a sign of extremism. (Hegseth has maintained it is part of his Christian faith.) Hegseth was angered by his exclusion and resigned from the Guard. That experience remains with him as he attempts to reshape the military, and its role in society, in line with Trump's worldview. As he has written: 'My trust for this Army is irrevocably broken.' Article originally published at The Atlantic
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