HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY

Today’s highlight:

On May 18, 1953, Jacqueline Cochran, 47, became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a Canadair F-86 Sabre jet.

On this date:

1152: Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, married Henry, Duke of Normandy (the future King Henry II), two months

after her marriage to King Louis VII of France was annulled.

1642: The Canadian city of Montreal was founded by French colonists. On this date in 1765, One-quarter of Montreal was destroyed by a fire.

1652: Rhode Island became the first American colony to pass a law abolishing African slavery; however, the law was apparently never enforced. 1781: Peruvian revolutionary Tupac Amaru II, 43, was forced to witness the execution of his relatives by the Spanish in the main plaza of Cuzco before being beheaded. 1896: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Plessy v. Ferguson, endorsed “separate but equal” racial segregation. 1933: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a measure creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1967: Tennessee Gov. Buford Ellington signed a measure repealing the law against teaching evolution that was used to prosecute John T. Scopes in 1925. 1980: The Mount St. Helens volcano in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.

1998: The U.S. government filed an antitrust case against Microsoft, saying the powerful company had a “choke hold” on competitors that was denying consumers important choices. The Justice Department and Microsoft reached a settlement in 2001.