history at a glance

TODAY is Sunday May 21 the 141st day of the year. There are 224 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1927 – Charles Lindbergh touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s

first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. 1932 – Bad weather forces Amelia Earhart to land in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, and

she thereby becomes the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. 1937 – A Soviet station, North Pole-1, becomes the first scientific research settlement to

operate on the drift ice of the Arctic Ocean. 1946 – Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a critical incident during an experiment

with the demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory. 1951 – The opening of the Ninth Street Show, otherwise known as the 9th Street Art Exhibition: A gathering of a number of notable artists, and the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School. 1966 – The Ulster Volunteer Force declares war on the Irish Republican Army in Northern

Ireland. 1969 – Civil unrest in Rosario, Argentina, known as Rosariazo, following the death of a 15

year-old student. 1972 – Michelangelo’s Pietà in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, the

mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth. 1979 – White Night riots in San Francisco following the manslaughter conviction of Dan White

for the assassinations of George Moscone and Harvey Milk. 1980 – Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back is released in theaters. 1982 – Falklands War: A British amphibious assault during Operation Sutton leads to the

Battle of San Carlos. 1991 – Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi is assassinated by a female suicide bomber

near Madras. 1991 – Mengistu Haile Mariam, President of the People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia,

flees Ethiopia, effectively bringing the Ethiopian Civil War to an end. 1994 – The Democratic Republic of Yemen unsuccessfully attempts to secede from the

Republic of Yemen; a war breaks out. 1996 – The ferry MV Bukoba sinks in Tanzanian waters on Lake Victoria, killing nearly 1,000. 1996 – The Trappist Martyrs of Atlas, kidnapped during the Algerian Civil War and held for two

months, are found dead. 1998 – In Miami, five abortion clinics are hit by a butyric acid attacker. 1998 – President Suharto of Indonesia resigns following the killing of students from Trisakti University earlier that week by security forces and growing mass protests in Jakarta against his ongoing corrupt rule. 2003 – The 6.8 Mw Boumerdès earthquake shakes northern Algeria with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). More than 2,200 people were killed and a moderate tsunami sank boats at the Balearic Islands. 2006 – The Republic of Montenegro holds a referendum proposing independence from the

State Union of Serbia and Montenegro; 55% of Montenegrins vote for independence. 2010 – JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, launches the solar-sail spacecraft

IKAROS aboard an H-IIA rocket. The vessel would make a Venus flyby late in the year. 2011 – Radio broadcaster Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on this date. 2012 – A bus accident near Himara, Albania kills 13 people and injures 21 others. 2012 – A suicide bombing kills more than 120 people in Sana’a, Yemen. 2014 – A knife attack on a Taipei Metro train leaves four people dead and almost two dozen

others injured. 2014 – The National September 11 Museum opens to the public.