Today in history

On May 4, 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island.

In 1776 Rhode Island declared its freedom from Britain two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.

In 1886, in what came to be known as the Haymarket riot, at least 10 Chicago police officers and labor demonstrators were killed when a bomb exploded in Haymarket Square during a rally for an eight-hour workday.

In 1929 actress Audrey Hepburn was born in Brussels. In 1932 mobster Al Capone, convicted of incometax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.

In 1942 the Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began during World War II.

In 1998 a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., sentenced Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski to four life terms plus 30 years under a plea agreement that spared Kaczynski the death penalty.

In 1999 five New York City police officers went on trial for the torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. (One officer later pleaded guilty to civil rights violations; a second later pleaded guilty to perjury; the remaining three were acquitted of brutality charges. Two of those three were later convicted of conspiring to obstruct justice; those convictions were overturned.)

In 2000 the “ILOVEYOU” email virus infected computer networks and hard drives across the globe, spawning various imitations.

In 2001 Bonny Lee Bakley, wife of actor Robert Blake, was shot to death as she sat in a car near a restaurant in Los Angeles. (Blake, accused of the killing, was acquitted in a criminal trial but was found liable by a civil jury and ordered to pay damages.)