THIS DAY IN HISTORY

Today is Tuesday, May 11, the 131st day of 2021. There are 234 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 11, 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.

On this date:

In 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state of the Union.

In 1943, during World War II, U.S. forces landed on the Aleutian island of Attu, which was held by the Japanese; the Americans took the island 19 days later.

In 1946, the first CARE packages, sent by a consortium of American charities to provide relief to the hungry of postwar Europe, arrived at Le Havre, France.

In 1947, the B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, Ohio, announced the development of a tubeless tire.

In 1953, a tornado devastated Waco, Texas, claiming 114 lives.

In 1960, Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

In 1973, the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the “Pentagon Papers” case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct.

In 1981, legendary reggae artist Bob Marley died in a Miami hospital at age 36.

In 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.

In 1997, IBM’s “Deep Blue” computer demolished an overwhelmed Garry Kasparov, winning the six-game chess rematch between man and machine in New York.

In 1998, India set off three underground atomic blasts, its first nuclear tests in 24 years. A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency, the euro.

In 2010, Conservative leader David Cameron, at age 43, became Britain’s youngest prime minister in almost 200 years after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.

Ten years ago: Former hedge fund titan Raj Rajaratnam was convicted by a federal jury in New York in an insider-trading case of five counts of conspiracy and nine of securities fraud. (Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison.)