Today In History

May 31

Today in History

Today in History

Today is Monday, May 31, the 151st day of 2021. There are 214 days left in the year.
Survivors stand by homes destroyed when the South Fork Dam collapsed May 31 in Johnstown, Pa., in 1889. (AP Photo)
May 31

Today in History: May 31, the Johnstown Flood

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1977, the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making despite objections from environmentalists and Alaska Natives, was completed. (The first oil began flowing through the pipeline 20 days later.)

May 30

Today in History

Today in History

In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in a ceremony attended by President Warren G. Harding, Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Robert Todd Lincoln.

May 30

Today in History, May 30

Today is Wednesday, May 30, the 151st day of 2012. There are 215 days left in the year.

On May 30, 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in a ceremony attended by President Warren G.
An artistic projection showing Joan of Arc is seen at Orlean's cathedral during ceremonies marking the 600th anniversary of the birth of Joan of Arc, in Orleans, central France, Sunday April 29, 2012. The city of Orleans goes all out with celebrations marking the 600th birthday of Joan of Arc, a national icon and symbol of French resistance through the ages at a time when French identity and France's role in the world are a focus in the presidential campaign. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)
May 30

Today in History: May 30, Joan of Arc burned at the stake

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in a ceremony attended by President Warren G.
This cover image released by Knopf shows "The Butcher" by Joyce Carol Oates. (Knopf via AP)
May 29

Today in History

Today in History

On May 29, 2020, fired Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in the death of George Floyd. (He would be convicted in April 2021 on those charges as well as second-degree unintentional murder.)

Soviet Chairman Mikhail Gorbachev, right, greets U.S. President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan at the Kremlin in Moscow, May 29, 1988. The Reagans arrived in the Soviet Union Sunday where Reagan and Gorbachev began their fourth summit meeting. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
May 29

Today in History: May 29, Reagan and Gorbachev meet

1765: June 3 in what’s known as a House of Burgesses.
1790: Rhode Island became the 13th original colony to ratify the United States Constitution.

1848: Wisconsin became the 30th state of the union.
Elzire Dionne is shown with her five girls shortly after their birth in Corbeil, near Callander in northern Ontario, Canada, on May 28, 1934. The identical quintuplets, born at least two months premature, are the first known quintupletes to survive infancy. (AP Photo)
May 28

Today in History: May 28, Dionne quintuplets are born

1892: The Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco.
1937: Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain.
1940: During World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.
The mighty Queen Mary shown as she edged up lower New York Harbor, with the skyline of Manhattan in the background, toward her pier and the completion of her first voyage to the United States, June 1, 1936. (AP Photo)
May 27

Today in History: May 27, Queen Mary’s maiden voyage

1937: Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain.
1977: 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.
1987: To the embarrassment of Soviet officials, Mathias Rust (mah-TEE’-uhs rust)

U.S. President Richard Nixon and Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev shake hands after signing the Strategic Arms Limitation agreement in the Kremlin, May 26, 1972. Politburo member Dmitry Polyansky is at center. (AP Photo)
May 26

Today in History: May 26, ABM treaty signed

2009: President Barack Obama nominated federal appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. California’s Supreme Court upheld the Proposition 8 gay marriage ban but said the 18,000 same-sex weddings that had taken place before the prohibition passed were still valid.
2011: Ratko Mladic (RAHT’-koh MLAH’-dich), the brutal Bosnian Serb general suspected of leading the massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys, was arrested after a 16-year manhunt. (Mladic was extradited to face trial in The Hague, Netherlands; he was convicted in 2017 on genocide and war crimes charges and is serving a life sentence.)

2012: Gruesome video posted online showed rows of dead Syrian children lying in a mosque in Houla, haunting images of what activists called one of the deadliest regime attacks yet in Syria’s 14-month-old uprising. International space station astronauts floated into the Dragon, a day after its heralded arrival as the world’s first commercial supply ship.

Items are left in honor George Floyd during a protest Tuesday, May 26, 2020, in Minneapolis. Four Minneapolis officers involved in the arrest of Floyd, a black man who died in police custody, were fired Tuesday, hours after a bystander’s video showed an officer kneeling on the handcuffed man’s neck, even after he pleaded that he could not breathe and stopped moving. (Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP)
May 25

Today in History: May 25, death of George Floyd

1946: Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, Abdullah I.
1961: President John F. Kennedy told Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.”

1964: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, ordered the Virginia county to reopen its public schools, which officials had closed in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation ruling.

This is a general view of the first night game at Crosley Field in Cincinnati, marking the Cincinnati Reds' first night game, May 24, 1935. The Reds played the Phillies tonight. (AP Photo)
May 24

Today in History: May 24, first major league baseball night game

1980: Iran rejected a call by the World Court in The Hague to release the American hostages.
1994: Four Islamic fundamentalists convicted of bombing New York’s World Trade Center in 1993 were each sentenced to 240 years in prison.

1995: former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson died in London at age 79.

The bullet-riddled automobile in which the bandits, Clyde Barrow and Bonnie Parker, were trapped, shot and killed on a Louisiana road is seen May 24, 1934. Officers waited for the desperados near Arcadia, La., and pumped 167 bullets into the car. (AP Photo)
May 23

Today in History: May 23, Bonnie and Clyde shot to death

1533: the marriage of England’s King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon was declared null and void by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer.
President Lyndon B. Johnson delivers an address at the University of Michigan commencement exercises, May 22, 1964, after he received an honorary degree. At extreme right is Governor George Romney of Michigan. (AP Photo)
May 22

Today in History: May 22, Johnson’s ‘Great Society’

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1967, a fire at the L’Innovation department store in Brussels killed 322 people. Poet and playwright Langston Hughes died in New York at age 65.

Noted Aviatrix Amelia Earhart, is shown standing beside the red and gold monoplane which she brought down to become the first women to ever complete a solo flight across the Atlantic, May 21, 1932, Londonderry, Ireland. (AP Photo)
May 21

Today in History: May 21, Amelia Earhart crosses Atlantic

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis monoplane near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 33 1/2 hours.

FILE (AP) --WITH THE SPIRIT OF ST. LOUIS-- Charles A. Lindbergh is shown in this 1927 file photo with his plane, the Spirit of St. Louis, with which he made the first solo crossing of the atlantic from west to east, the same year. (AP-Photo/-1927-)
May 20

Today in History: May 20, Lindbergh takes off

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 20, 1927, Charles “Lucky Lindy” Lindbergh took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, aboard the Spirit of St.
May 19

Today in History: May 19, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis passes away

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1913, California Gov. Hiram Johnson signed the Webb-Hartley Law prohibiting “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from owning farm land, a measure targeting Asian immigrants, particularly Japanese.

Mount St. Helens in Washington state is shown in various stages of eruption, May 18, 1980. (AP Photo)
May 18

Today in History: May 18, Mount St. Helens erupts

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1896, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation, a concept renounced 58 years later by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

FILE - This May 17, 1954, file photo shows, from left, George E.C. Hayes, Thurgood Marshall, and James M. Nabrit joining hands as they pose outside the Supreme Court in Washington. The three lawyers led the fight for abolition of segregation in public schools before the Supreme Court, which ruled that segregation is unconstitutional. (AP Photo/File)
May 17

Today in History: May 17, Brown v. Board of Education ruling

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 17, 1954, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court handed down its Brown v.
People insect the the rubble of the Yazegi residential building that was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike, in Gaza City, Sunday, May 16, 2021. The 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation held an emergency virtual meeting Sunday over the situation in Gaza calling for an end to Israel’s military attacks on the Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
May 16

Today in History: May 16, Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ends

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1929, the first Academy Awards were presented. “Wings” won “best production,” while Emil Jannings (YAHN’-ings) and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best actress.
Egyptian volunteer soldiers, who entered southern Palestine in early May to join forces fighting against the Jews, are shown with guns during training maneuvers in May 1948. (AP Photo)
May 15

Today in History: May 15, new state of Israel attacked

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in its unanimous In re Gault decision, ruled that juveniles accused of crimes were entitled to the same due process afforded adults.

**FILE**A group of Freedom Riders from Tennessee stands at the door of a Greyhound bus in Birmingham,Ala., waiting for a bus to leave for Montgomery on May 19, 1961. The Tennessee Board of Regents has changed its decision to deny honorary degrees to 14 students, at what is now called Tennessee State University, who were expelled for participating in Freedom Rides of the 1960s civil rights movement. The board voted unanimously on Friday, April 25, 2008, to change its March vote, which brought criticism from civil rights activists. (AP Photo/The Tennessean file)
May 14

Today in History: May 14, Freedom Riders attacked

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1948, according to the current-era calendar, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, who became its first prime minister; U.S. President Harry S. Truman immediately recognized the new nation.

Scene in St. Peters Square on May 13. 1981, when Pope John Paul II was shot. A gun can be seen at far left above the head of a man wearing sunglasses (AP Photo)
May 13

Today in History: May 13, Pope John Paul II shot and wounded

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 13, 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot and seriously wounded in St.
Image shows the the first truck arriving in Berlin after the blockade of the city was lifted today, May 12, 1949. The truck coming from Helmstedt, was decorated with two wreaths demonstrating the victory over the Soviet embargo. (AP Photo/Hans von Nolde)
May 12

Today in History: May 12, Soviets lift Berlin Blockade

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. The two-week Trident Conference, headed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, opened in Washington.

Britain's new Prime Minister David Cameron and his wife Samantha wave to the media outside 10 Downing Street in London,Tuesday, May, 11 2010. (AP Photo/Tim Hales)
May 11

Today in History: May 11, David Cameron becomes British Prime Minister

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

Reconnaissance squads head the German advance into Luxembourg, on May 10, 1940. (AP Photo)
May 10

Today in History: May 10, German forces begin invasions

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 10, 1940, during World War II, German forces began invading the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium and France.
May 09

Today in History: May 9, Mandela chosen to lead South Africa

Today in History

In 1860, writer J.M.
A smiling Nelson Mandela, South Africa's President-elect, waves to the large crowd gathered on the Grand Parade in Central Cape Town Monday May 9, 1994. Mr. Mandela, who is to be formally inaugurated on Tuesday, earlier pledged his allegiance in parliament. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)
May 09

Today in History: May 9, Mandela chosen to lead South Africa

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1860, writer J.M.
May 08

Today in History: May 8, Truman announces Nazi surrender

Today in History

Today is Monday, May 8, the 128th day of 2023. There are 237 days left in the year.

In 1846, the first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; U.S. forces led by Gen. Zachary Taylor were able to beat back Mexican forces.
May 08

Today in History: May 18, Mount St. Helens erupts

Today in History

On May 18, 1980, the Mount St.
President Truman sits before a microphone, holding his speech, at the White House, Washington, DC, May 8, 1945, after he had finished reading his announcement to the nation that Allied Armies have won unconditional surrender from the German forces on all fronts. (AP Photo/stf)
May 08

Today in History: May 8, Truman announces Nazi surrender

Today’s Highlight in History:

In 1846, the first major battle of the Mexican-American War was fought at Palo Alto, Texas; U.S. forces led by Gen. Zachary Taylor were able to beat back Mexican forces.