Today in history

On May 15, 1602,

Cape Cod was discovered by English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold.

In 1911

the Supreme Court ordered the dissolution of Standard Oil Co., ruling it was in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act.

In 1918

U.S. airmail began service among Washington, Philadelphia and New York.

In 1930

Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard a United Airlines flight between San Francisco and Cheyenne, Wyo.

In 1940

nylon stockings went on sale for the first time.

In 1942

gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to three gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.

In 1948

the day-old state of Israel was attacked by Egyptian planes and invaded by troops from Lebanon and Trans-Jordan.

In 1963

astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasted off on the final mission of the Mercury space program. He circled the Earth 22 times in 34 hours.

In 1969

Abe Fortas resigned as an associate justice of the Supreme Court amid a controversy over past legal fees.

In 1970

two black students at Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed when police opened fire on a campus demonstration.

In 1972

Alabama Gov. George Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer while campaigning in Laurel, Md., for the Democratic presidential nomination; Wallace was paralyzed for the rest of his life.

In 1986

searchers on Oregon’s Mount Hood found two teenage survivors of a hiking expedition that became trapped in a blizzard. (Nine other climbers died.)

In 1988

the Soviet Union began withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, eight years after its forces had entered the country.

In 2001

a runaway freight train rolled about 70 miles through Ohio with no one aboard before a railroad employee jumped onto the locomotive and brought it to a stop.

In 2002

the White House acknowledged that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks President George W. Bush was told by U.S. intelligence that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, but that officials didn’t know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles.

In 2006

a defiant Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea at his trial, insisting he was still Iraq’s president as a judge formally charged him with crimes against humanity. Also in 2006 the Pentagon disclosed the names of everyone detained at the Guantanamo Bay prison since it opened four years earlier. Also in 2006 the U.S. removed Libya from its list of terrorist states.

In 2008

the California Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that same-sex couples should be permitted to marry, rejecting state marriage laws as discriminatory.