Today in history

On May 28, 1977, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky. (Investigators cited faulty electrical wiring, fire safety code violations and overcrowding as reasons for the disaster.)

In 1533, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.

In 1892, the Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco.

In 1912, the Senate Commerce Committee issued its report on the Titanic disaster that cited a “state of absolute unpreparedness,” improperly tested safety equipment and an “indifference to danger” as some of the causes of an “unnecessary tragedy.”

In 1929, the first all-color talking picture, “On with the Show!” produced by Warner Bros., opened in New York.

In 1934, the Dionne quintuplets — Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne — were born to Elzire Dionne at the family farm in Ontario, Canada.

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington signaling that vehicular traffic could begin crossing the just-opened Golden Gate Bridge in California. Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain. In Nazi Germany, Volkswagen was founded by the German Labour Front for the purpose of creating a “people's car.”

In 1940, during World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.

In 1945, the novel “Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh was published in London by Chapman & Hall.

In 1957, National League owners gave permission for the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants baseball teams to move to Los Angeles and San Francisco.

In 1961, Amnesty International had its beginnings with the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Observer, “The Forgotten Prisoners.”

In 1987, to the embarrassment of Soviet officials, Mathias Rust (mah-TEE'-uhs rust), a young West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square without authorization. (Rust was freed by the Soviets the following year.)

In 1998, comic actor Phil Hartman of “Saturday Night Live” and “NewsRadio” fame was shot to death at his home in Encino, California, by his wife, Brynn, who then killed herself.

“Intelligence rules the world, ignorance carries the burden.” — Marcus Garvey, Jamaican black nationalist (1887-1940).