Today in history

On April 5, 1614, American Indian princess Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe in Virginia.

In 1621 the Mayflower sailed from Plymouth, Mass., on a return trip to England.

In 1649 Elihu Yale, the philanthropist for whom Yale University is named, was born in Boston. In 1792 George Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

In 1856 African-American educator Booker T. Washington was born in Hales Ford, Va.

In 1887 British historian Lord Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Also in 1887, in Tuscumbia, Ala., teacher Anne Sullivan taught her blind and deaf pupil, Helen Keller, the word “water” as spelled out in sign language.

In 1895 playwright Oscar Wilde lost his criminal libel case against the Marquess of Queensberry, who had accused the writer of homosexual practices.

In 1937 Colin Powell, the retired Army general, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and secretary of state under President George W. Bush, was born in New York.

In 1951 Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were sentenced to death following their conviction in New York on charges of conspiring to commit espionage for the Soviet Union; co-defendant Morton Sobell was sentenced to 30 years in prison. (He was released in 1969.)

In 1964 Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur died in Washington; he was 84.

In 1986 an American soldier and a Turkish woman were killed in the bombing of a West Berlin discotheque, an incident that prompted the U.S. air raid on Libya more than a week later.