◆ On this day

March 18

5 sourced moments from March 18 in history: American Express began life hauling freight, not charge cards (1850); Mendeleev's periodic table wasn't the first, but it won (1869); The day the West unveiled NATO's founding treaty (1949), plus 2 more.

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5 things happened on March 18

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1990 Society & Economy · Crime

The empty frames of the world's biggest art heist

In 1990 two men in police uniforms walked out of a Boston museum with 13 masterpieces - and three decades later, the frames still hang empty.

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1965 Space · Space Exploration

Alexei Leonov made the first spacewalk on March 18, 1965

Leonov's 12-minute float outside Voskhod 2 nearly stranded him outside — and the flight home ended with a night in a forest among wolves.

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1949 Society & Economy · Politics & Law

The day the West unveiled NATO's founding treaty

On March 18, 1949, the United States made the proposed North Atlantic Treaty public, letting the world read the alliance before anyone signed it.

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1869 Science · Chemistry

Mendeleev's periodic table wasn't the first, but it won

Mendeleev's table, read to the Russian Chemical Society in March 1869, had at least three rivals. Its gaps and bold predictions are why it survived.

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1850 Society & Economy · Business & Markets

American Express began life hauling freight, not charge cards

Long before the green card, American Express was a Buffalo express company racing parcels and gold across a fast-growing nation.

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