TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, May 6, the 127th day of 2020. There are 239 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in
History: On May 6, 1915, Babe Ruth hit his first major-league home run as a player for the Boston Red Sox. On this date:
In 1863, the Civil War Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia ended with a Confederate victory over Union forces.
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 1935, the Works Progress Administration began operating under an executive order signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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 1941, Stalin assumed Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov. Comedian Bob Hope did his first USO show before an audience of servicemen as he broadcast his radio program from March Field in Riverside, California.
In 1942, during World War II, some 15,000 American and Filipino troops on Corregidor island surrendered to Japanese forces.
In 1954, medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3:59.4.
In 1960, Britain's Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones, a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. (They divorced in 1978.)
In 1994, former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he had sexually harassed her in 1991. (Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.) Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries.
In 2004, President George W. Bush apologized for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by American soldiers, calling it "a stain on our country's honor"; he rejected calls for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation.
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.)
Ten years ago: 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.