Today in history

On May 6, 1856,

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was born in the present-day Czech Republic. Also in 1856 explorer Robert Edwin Peary was born in Cresson, Pa.

In 1861

Arkansas seceded from the Union.

In 1862

philosopher and author Henry David Thoreau died in Concord, Mass; he was 44.

In 1882,

over the veto of President Chester Arthur, Congress passed legislation barring Chinese immigrants from the U.S. for 10 years.

In 1889

the Paris Exposition opened, featuring the justcompleted Eiffel Tower.

In 1895

Rudolph Valentino, who would become a star of silent movies, was born in Castellaneta, Italy.

In 1915

actor and director Orson Welles was born in Kenosha, Wis. Also in 1915 Babe Ruth, then with the Boston Red Sox, hit his first major league home run, against the New York Yankees in the old Polo Grounds, which the Yankees then shared with the Giants.

In 1931

baseball legend Willie Mays was born in Westfield, Ala.

In 1935

the Works Progress Administration began operations.

In 1937

the hydrogen-filled German dirigible “Hindenburg” burned and crashed in Lakehurst, N.J., killing 35 of the 97 people on board and a Navy crewman on the ground.

In 1941

Josef Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav Molotov.

In 1942,

during World War II, about 15,000 Americans and Philippine troops on Corregidor surrendered to the Japanese.

In 1954

medical student Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, in 3 minutes and 59.4 seconds.

In 1960

Britain’s Princess Margaret married commoner Anthony Armstrong-Jones in Westminster Abbey. (They would divorce in 1978.)

In 1981

Yale architecture student Maya Lin was named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

In 1987

CIA Director William Casey died in Glen Cove, N.Y.; he was 74.

In 1992

actress Marlene Dietrich died in Paris at 90.

In 1994

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries.

Also in 1994 former Arkansas state worker Paula Jones filed suit against President Bill Clinton, alleging he had sexually harassed her in 1991, when he was Arkansas’ governor.

In 1996

the body of former CIA director William Colby was found washed up on a riverbank in southern Maryland, eight days after he had disappeared.

In 1995

friends and relatives of the Oklahoma City bombing victims made a somber pilgrimage to the site of the attack to say goodbye to their loved ones. Also in 1995 long-shot Thunder Gulch won the 121st Kentucky Derby.

In 1997

hemophiliacs who contracted AIDS between 1978 and 1985 from tainted blood products accepted a $600 million settlement from four health-care companies.