TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Wednesday, May 12.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS
On May 12, 1949, the Soviet Union lifted the Berlin Blockade, which the Western powers had succeeded in circumventing with their Berlin Airlift.
ON THIS DATE
In 1780, during the Revolutionary War, the besieged city of Charleston, South Carolina, surrendered to British forces.
In 1937, Britain’s King
George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey; his wife, Elizabeth, was crowned as queen consort.
In 1955, Manhattan’s last elevated rail line, the Third Avenue El, ceased operation.
In 1958, the United States and Canada signed an agreement to create the North American Air Defense Command (later the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD).
In 1970, the Senate voted unanimously to confirm Harry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice.
In 1975, the White House announced the new Cambodian government had seized an American merchant ship, the Mayaguez, in international waters. (U.S. Marines gained control of the ship three days after its seizure, not knowing the 39 civilian members of the crew had already been released by Cambodia.)
In 1982, in Fatima, Portugal, security guards overpowered a Spanish priest armed with a bayonet who attacked
Pope John Paul II. (In 2008, the pope’s longtime private secretary revealed that the pontiff was slightly wounded in the assault.)
In 1997, Australian Susie Maroney became the first woman to swim from Cuba to Florida, covering the 118-mile distance in 24 ½ hours.
In 2002, Jimmy Carter arrived in Cuba, becoming the first U.S. president in or out of office to visit since the 1959 revolution that put Fidel Castro in power.
In 2008, a devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake in China’s Sichuan province left more than 87,000 people dead or missing.
In 2009, five Miami men were convicted in a plot to blow up FBI buildings and Chicago’s Sears Tower; one man was acquitted. Suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk (dem-YAHN’-yuk) was deported from the United States to Germany.
Ten years ago: CEOs of the five largest oil companies went before the Senate Finance Committee, where Democrats challenged the executives to justify tax breaks at a time when people were paying $4 a gallon for gas.
Five years ago: A divided
U.S. Supreme Court blocked the execution of an Alabama inmate so that a lower court could review claims that strokes and dementia had rendered him incompetent to understand his looming death sentence. (A federal appeals court ruled in March 2017 that Vernon Madison was incompetent, and could not be executed.) One year ago: House Democrats unveiled a coronavirus aid package totaling more than $3 trillion, including nearly $1 trillion for states and cities to avert layoffs and a fresh round of direct cash aid to American households. (The measure won House approval but Senate Republicans and the White House rejected it as too costly.)