Today in History: May 6, Hindenburg crash

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 6, 1937, the hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg caught fire and crashed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey; 35 of the 97 people on board were killed along with a crewman on the ground.

On this date:

In 1882, President Chester Alan Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the U.S. for 10 years (Arthur had opposed an earlier version with a 20-year ban).

In 1910, Britain’s Edwardian era ended with the death of King Edward VII; he was succeeded by George V.

In 1935, the Works Progress Administration began operating under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

In 1941, Josef Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav (VEE’-cheh-slav) M. Molotov. Comedian Bob Hope did his first USO show before an audience of servicemen as he broadcast his radio program from March Field in Riverside, California.

In 1942, during World War II, some 15,000 American and Filipino troops on Corregidor island surrendered to Japanese forces.

In 1954, medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.

In 1994, former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he’d sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.)

In 2004, President George W. Bush apologized for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, calling it “a stain on our country’s honor”; he rejected calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation.

In 2006, Lillian Gertrud Asplund, the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, at age 99.

In 2010, a computerized sell order triggered a “flash crash” on Wall Street, sending the Dow Jones industrials to a loss of nearly 1,000 points in less than half an hour.

In 2012, Vice President Joe Biden told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay couples who marry getting the same civil rights and liberties as heterosexual couples.

In 2013, kidnap-rape victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight, who went missing separately about a decade earlier while in their teens or early 20s, were rescued from a house just south of downtown Cleveland. (Their captor, Ariel Castro, hanged himself in prison in September 2013 at the beginning of a life sentence plus 1,000 years.)

In 2017, a Nigerian military official said 83 Chibok (chih-BAWK’) schoolgirls had been released more than three years after they were abducted from their boarding school by Boko Haram (BOH’-koh hah-RAHM’) extremists.

In 2020, New York City began shutting down its subway system overnight to allow for additional cleaning and disinfecting of cars and stations amid the pandemic. President Donald Trump reversed course on plans to wind down his COVID-19 task force; he said the force would shift its focus toward rebooting the economy and developing a vaccine.

In 2021, Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a 48-page elections bill that Republicans said would guard against fraud and vote harvesting; Democrats and voting rights advocates said it was an attempt to make it harder for some people to vote.