Today is Thursday, May 6, the 126th day of 2021. There are 239 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 6, 1954, medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.
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 1915, Babe Ruth hit his first major-league home run as a player for the Boston Red Sox.
In 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.
In 1942, during World War II, some 15,000 American and Filipino troops on Corregidor island surrendered to Japanese forces.
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 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 2015, the NFL released a 243-report on “Deflategate” that stopped short of calling Patriots quarterback Tom Brady a cheater, but did call some of his claims “implausible” and left little doubt that he’d had a role in having footballs deflated before New England’s AFC title game against Indianapolis and probably in previous games.
Today’s Birthdays: Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays is 90. Rock singer Bob Seger is 76. Gospel singer-comedian Lulu Roman is 75. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is 68. TV personality Tom Bergeron is 66. Actor Julianne Phillips is 61. Actor-director George Clooney is 60. Model/TV personality Tiffany Coyne is 39. Houston Astros infielder Jose Altuve is 31.
