ON MAY 31 ...

In 1809 composer Franz Joseph Haydn died in Vienna; he was 77.

In 1819 poet Walt Whitman was born in West Hills, N.Y.

In 1913 the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, took effect.

In 1962 World War II Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann was hanged by Israel for his role in the Holocaust.

In 1977 the trans-Alaska oil pipeline was completed after three years of work.

In 1994 Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., maintaining his innocence, was indicted on 17 felony counts alleging he had plundered nearly $700,000 from the government.

In 2003 Olympic Centennial Park bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph was arrested outside a Murphy, N.C., grocery store.

In 2005, breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward as “Deep Throat,” the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal.

In 2014 Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a Taliban captive for nearly five years, was released in exchange for five detainees held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.