WEDNESDAY, March 18, 2026

1123-First Council of the Lateran (9th ecumenical council) opens in Rome, agreements of the Concordat of Worms are ratified

1314-Jacques de Molay, the 23rd and last Grand Master of the Knights Templar, is burned at the stake by King Philip IV of France

1325-According to legend, Tenochtitlan is founded on this date on an island in what was then Lake Texcoco in the Valley of Mexico

1890-German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck resigns after 19 years after a disagreement with German Emperor Wilhelm II

1922-British magistrates in India sentence Mahatma Gandhi to six years imprisonment for disobedience

1940-Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler meet at Brenner Pass, where the Italian dictator agrees to join Germany's impending war effort in the west

1965-Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov leaves his spacecraft Voskhod 2 for 12 minutes and becomes the first person to conduct a spacewalk

1990-In the largest art heist in U.S. history, 13 works of art worth over $500 million are stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston