On this day, May 6
1812 William Turner & Co. opened what is believed to have been the city’s first theater.
1889 The Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.
1937 The hydrogen-filled German airship Hindenburg caught fire and crashed while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, N.J.; 35 of the 97 people on board were killed along with a crewman on the ground.
1963 The Pittsburgh Pirates rejected a demand that they give $3.83 million to the North Side stadium project.
1979 The federal government formally committed $265 million to the Port Authority of Allegheny County for the proposed light-rail transit system that would connect the South Hills with Downtown.
1981 Yale architecture student Maya Lin was named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1992 Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill had spoken of the “Iron Curtain.” Gorbachev said the world was still divided, between North and South, rich and poor.
2007 President George W. Bush welcomed Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II to the White House, drawing laughter when he mistakenly started to say that the queen had previously helped the U.S. celebrate its bicentennial in “17...,” then quickly corrected himself to say “1976.”
2008 A Georgia man who killed his live-in girlfriend was executed. He was the first inmate put to death since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections.
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.)
2017 A Nigerian military official said 83 Chibok schoolgirls had been released more than three years after they were abducted from their boarding school by Boko Haram extremists.
Today’s birthdays: Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays, 87. Rock singer Bob Seger, 73. Gospel singer-comedian Lulu Roman, 72. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 65. TV personality Tom Bergeron, 63. Rock singer John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants), 58. Actor-director George Clooney, 57. Actor Clay O’Brien, 57. Rock musician Chris Shiflett (Foo Fighters), 47. Model/TV personality Tiffany Coyne, 36. Actress Adrianne Palicki, 35. Actress Gabourey Sidibe, 35. Actress-comedian Sasheer Zamata, 32. Rapper Meek Mill, 31. Actress-singer Naomi Scott, 25. Actor Noah Galvin, 24.
Thought for today: “The people no longer believe in principles, but will probably periodically believe in saviours.”