history at a glance

TODAY is Sunday May 31 the 152nd day of the year. There are 214 days left in the year.

Highlights in history on this date:

1921 – Tulsa race riot: civil unrest in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The official death toll is 39, but recent investigations

suggest the actual toll may be much higher.

1941 – Anglo-Iraqi War: The United Kingdom completes the re-occupation of Iraq and returns ‘Abd al-Ilah to

power as regent for Faisal II.

1942 – World War II: Imperial Japanese Navy midget submarines begin a series of attacks on Sydney, Australia.

1961 – The Union of South Africa becomes the Republic of South Africa.

1973 – The United States Senate votes to cut off funding for the bombing of Khmer Rouge targets within

Cambodia, hastening the end of the Cambodian Civil War.

1977 – The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System is completed.

1985 – United States–Canada tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and

Ontario, leaving 76 dead.

1989 – A group of six members of the guerrilla group Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA) of Peru,

shoot dead eight transsexuals, in the city of Tarapoto.

1991 – Bicesse Accords in Angola lay out a transition to multi-party democracy under the supervision of the

United Nations’ UNAVEM II mission.

2005 – Vanity Fair reveals that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.

2010 – In international waters, armed Shayetet 13 commandos, intending to force the flotilla to anchor at the Ashdod port, boarded ships trying to break the ongoing blockade of the Gaza Strip, resulting in nine civilian deaths.

2013 – The asteroid 1998 QE2 and its moon make their closest approach to Earth for the next two centuries.