This day in history
Today is Wednesday, May 3, the 123rd day of 2023. There are 242 days left in the year.
▶Birthdays: Singer Frankie Valli is 89. Senator Jim Risch, Republican of Idaho, is 80. Sports announcer Greg Gumbel is 77. Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, is 74. Pop singer Mary Hopkin is 73. Singer Christopher Cross is 72. Actor Amy Ryan is 55. Actor Bobby Cannavale is 53. Dancer Cheryl Burke is 39.
▶In 1802, Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city.
▶In 1937, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, “Gone with the Wind.” ºIn 1947, Japan’s postwar constitution took effect.
▶In 1948, the Supreme Court, in Shelley v. Kraemer, ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to Blacks or members of other racial groups were legally unenforceable.
▶In 1960, the Harvey SchmidtTom Jones musical “The Fantasticks” began a nearly 42-year run at New York’s Sullivan Street Playhouse.
▶In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher was chosen to become Britain’s first female prime minister as the Tories ousted the incumbent Labour government in parliamentary elections.
▶In 1987, The Miami Herald said its reporters had observed a young woman spending “Friday night and most of Saturday” at a Washington townhouse belonging to Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart. (The woman was later identified as Donna Rice; the resulting controversy torpedoed Hart’s presidential bid.)
▶In 2006, a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., rejected the death penalty for Al-Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, deciding he should spend life in prison for his role in 9/11; as he was led from the courtroom, Moussaoui taunted, “America, you lost.”
▶In 2016, in a stunning triumph for a political outsider, Donald Trump all but clinched the Republican presidential nomination with a resounding victory in Indiana that knocked rival Ted Cruz out of the race.
▶In 2018, a federal grand jury in Detroit indicted former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn on charges stemming from the company’s diesel emissions cheating scandal. (Under Germany’s constitution, he could not be extradited to the US to face charges.) President Trump insisted that his reimbursement of a 2016 hush payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels had nothing to do with his election campaign.
▶Last year, President Biden blasted as “radical” a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion throwing out the Roe v. Wade abortion rights ruling after 50 years. Chief Justice John Roberts said he had ordered an investigation into what he called an “egregious breach of trust.” Russian forces began storming the steel mill containing the last pocket of resistance in Mariupol, just as scores of civilians who evacuated the bombed-out plant reached relative safety in Ukrainian-held territory.