TODAY IN HISTORY
TODAY IS TUESDAY, MAY 31, the 151st day of 2022. There are 214 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On this date in 1889, some 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, perished when the South Fork Dam collapsed, sending 20 million tons of water rushing through the town.
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. (The first oil began flowing through the pipeline 20 days later.)
In 1989, House Speaker Jim Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign. (Tom Foley later succeeded him.)
In 2009, Dr. George Tiller, a rare provider of late-term abortions, was shot and killed in a Wichita, Kansas, church. (Gunman Scott Roeder was later convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 50 years.) Millvina Dean, last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Southampton, England at 97.
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.
TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS: Actor-director Clint Eastwood is 92. Singer Peter Yarrow is 84. Actor Sharon Gless and Football Hall-of-Famer Joe Namath are 79. Actor Kyle Secor is 65. Actor Roma Maffia is 64. Actor/comedian Chris Elliott is 62. Actor Lea Thompson is 61. Singer Corey Hart is 60. Actor Hugh Dillon is 59. Rapper DMC is 58. Actor Brooke Shields is 57. TV host Phil Keoghan is 55. Jazz musician Christian McBride and actor Archie Panjabi are 50. Actor Merle Dandridge (TV: “Greenleaf”) is 47. Actor Colin Farrell is 46. Rock musician Scott Klopfenstein (Reel Big Fish) and actor Eric Christian Olsen are 45.