Today in History
Today's Highlight in History:
On May 29, 1953, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tensing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit.
On this date:
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.
In 1660, Britain's King Charles II was restored to the throne on his 30th birthday after nine years in exile.
In 1765, Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.
In 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th original colony to ratify the United States Constitution.
In 1848, Wisconsin became the 30th state of the union.
In 1917, the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
In 1932, World War I veterans began arriving in Washington to demand cash bonuses they weren't scheduled to receive until 1945.
In 1943, Norman Rockwell's portrait of "Rosie the Riveter" appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. (The model for Rockwell's Rosie, Mary Doyle Keefe, died in April 2015 at age 92.)
In 1961, a couple in Paynesville, West Virginia, became the first recipients of food stamps under a pilot program created by President John F. Kennedy.
In 1977, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500, finishing in 29th place (the winner was A.J. Foyt).
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened their historic summit in Moscow.
In 1998, Republican elder statesman Barry Goldwater died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at age 89.
Ten years ago: The Vatican issued a decree stating that anyone trying to ordain a woman as a priest and any woman who attempted to receive the ordination would incur automatic excommunication. Actor-comedian Harvey Korman, Emmy winner for "The Carol Burnett Show," died in Los Angeles at age 81.
Five years ago: A U.S. drone strike killed Waliur Rehman (wah-lee-UR' REH'-man), the No. 2 commander of the Pakistani Taliban. Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, a conservative firebrand and a favorite of tea party Republicans, said she would not run for another term in the U.S. House. The Rev. Andrew Greeley, 85, an outspoken Roman Catholic priest, best-selling author and longtime newspaper columnist, died in Chicago.
One year ago: In his first Memorial Day remarks as president, Donald Trump expressed the nation's "boundless and undying" gratitude to Americans who had fallen in battle and to the families they left behind, hailing as heroes the hundreds of thousands buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Americans turned out by the thousands to celebrate the life and legacy of President John F. Kennedy on the day he would have turned 100. Manuel Noriega, a onetime U.S. ally who was ousted as Panama's dictator by an American invasion in 1989, died at age 83.
Thought for Today: "A pessimist and an optimist, so much the worse; so much the better." — Jean de La Fontaine, French poet (1621-1695).