This Day in History

On May 12, 2002, Jimmy Carter arrived in Cuba, becoming the first U.S. president in or out of office to visit since the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power.

On this date:

In 1780, during the Revolu- tionary War, the besieged city of Charleston, South Carolina, surrendered to British forces.

In 1922, a 20-ton meteor crashed near Blackstone, Vir- ginia.

In 1937, Britain’s King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey; his wife, Elizabeth, was crowned as queen consort.

In 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Afri- ca surrendered. The two-week Trident Conference, headed by President Franklin D. Roos- evelt and British Prime Minis- ter Winston Churchill, opened in Washington.

In 1949, the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, which the Western powers had succeeded in circumventing with their Berlin Airlift.

In 1955, Manhattan’s last elevated rail line, the Third Av- enue El, ceased operation.

In 1958, the United States and Canada signed an agree- ment to create the North American Air Defense Command (later the North Ameri- can Aerospace Defense Com- mand, or NORAD).

In 1970, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Har- ry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice.

In 1982, in Fatima, Portu- gal, security guards overpow- ered a Spanish priest armed with a bayonet who attacked Pope John Paul II. (In 2008, the pope’s longtime private secretary revealed that the pontiff was slightly wounded in the assault.)

In 2001, singer Perry Como died in Jupiter Inlet Colony, Florida, at age 88.

In 2008, a devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Chi- na’s Sichuan province left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.

In 2009, five Miami men were convicted in a plot to blow up FBI buildings and Chicago’s Sears Tower; one man was acquitted. Suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk was deported from the United States to Germany.

Ten years ago: An Afriqi- yah Airways Airbus A330 jet- liner plunged into the Libyan desert less than a mile from the runway in Tripoli after a flight from Johannesburg; a 9-yearold Dutch boy was the sole survivor of the crash that killed 103 people.