Today in History
By Associated Press
May 31
In 1790, President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright act.
In 1859, the Big Ben clock tower in London went into operation, chiming for the first time.
In 1921, a race riot erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as white mobs began looting and leveling the affluent Black district of Greenwood over reports a Black man had assaulted a white woman in an elevator; hundreds are believed to have died.
In 1949, former State Department official and accused spy Alger Hiss went on trial in New York, charged with perjury (the jury deadlocked, but Hiss was convicted in a second trial).
In 1962, former Nazi official Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel a few minutes before midnight for his role in the Holocaust.
In 1970, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake in Peru claimed an estimated 67,000 lives.
In 1977, the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making despite objections from environmentalists and Alaska Natives, was completed.
In 1989, House Speaker Jim Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign.
In 2009, Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Southampton, England at 97.
In 2013, a tornado in the Oklahoma City metro area claimed eight lives, including those of storm chasers Tim Samaras, his son, Paul, and Carl Young.
In 2014, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan, was freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Bergdahl, who’d gone missing in June 2009, later pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by walking away from his post in Afghanistan; his sentence included a dishonorable discharge, a reduction in rank and a fine, but no prison time.)
In 2018, President Donald Trump pardoned conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza, who had pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud; Trump said D’Souza had been “treated very unfairly by our government.”
In 2019, a longtime city employee opened fire in a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, killing 12 people on three floors before police shot and killed him; officials said DeWayne Craddock had resigned by email hours before the shooting.
In 2020, tens of thousands of people protesting in the wake of the killing of George Floyd again took to the streets across America, with peaceful demonstrations against police killings overshadowed by unrest; officials deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and enacted strict curfews in major cities.
In 2021, China’s ruling Communist Party announced that all couples would be allowed to have three children instead of two.
In 2023, jurors found “That ‘70s Show” star Danny Masterson guilty of two counts of rape in a Los Angeles court.
June 1
In 1533, Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII, was crowned as Queen Consort of England.
In 1792, Kentucky became the 15th state.
In 1796, Tennessee became the 16th state.
In 1812, President James Madison, in a message to Congress, recounted what he called Britain’s “series of acts hostile to the United States as an independent and neutral nation”; Congress ended up declaring war.
In 1813, the mortally wounded commander of the USS Chesapeake, Capt. James Lawrence, gave the order, “Don’t give up the ship” during a losing battle with the British frigate HMS Shannon in the War of 1812.
In 1916, Louis Brandeis took his seat as an associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the first Jewish American to serve on the nation’s highest bench.
In 1943, a civilian flight from Portugal to England was shot down by Germany during World War II, killing all 17 people aboard, including actor Leslie Howard.
In 1957, Don Bowden, a student at the University of California at Berkeley, became the first American to break the four-minute mile during a meet in Stockton, California, in a time of 3:58.7.
In 1958, Charles de Gaulle became premier of France, marking the beginning of the end of the Fourth Republic.
In 1980, Cable News Network made its debut.
In 2009, General Motors filed for Chapter 11, becoming the largest U.S. industrial company to enter bankruptcy protection.
In 2017, President Donald Trump declared he was pulling the U.S. from the landmark Paris climate agreement. (President Joe Biden signed an order returning the U.S. to that accord on his first day in office.)
In 2020, police violently broke up a peaceful and legal protest by thousands of people in Lafayette Park across from the White House, using chemical agents, clubs and punches to send protesters fleeing; the protesters had gathered following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis a week earlier. President Donald Trump, after declaring himself “the president of law and order” and threatening to deploy the U.S. military in a Rose Garden speech, then walked across the empty park to be photographed holding a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, which had been damaged a night earlier.
In 2021, the Biden administration suspended oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by the Trump administration.
In 2022, a Virginia jury ruled in favor of Johnny Depp in his libel lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard, vindicating his stance that Heard fabricated claims that she was abused by Heard and awarding him $15 million. But jurors also found in favor of Heard, who said she was defamed by Depp’s lawyer when he called her abuse allegations a hoax, giving her $2 million.
—From AP reports
