TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Saturday, May 11, the 132nd day of 2024. There are 234 days left in the year. On this date in:
868: The earliest known dated and printed book, a copy of “Diamond Sutra,” was published. Printed from wood blocks, the Buddhist text was dated, marked for general distribution and dedicated to the printer’s parents.
1812: The United Kingdom’s Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated, shot in the lobby of the House of Commons.
1858: Minnesota became the 38th state.
1894: In response to reductions in wages, workers at a Pullman factory in Chicago began a wildcat strike, which is undertaken without the approval of union leadership. The strike and a national railroad boycott that began in June eventually led to President Grover Cleveland sending federal troops to Chicago to enforce an injunction barring union officials from directing or encouraging workers to not do their jobs.
1934: A dust storm that began two days earlier in the plains carried dust as far as the East Coast, depositing it in cities from Boston to Washington, D.C.
1947: The B.F. Goodrich Co. announced it had created a tubeless tire, no longer in need of an inner tube. The company was granted patents in 1952, and the tires soon became standard on new vehicles.
1981: Reggae star Bob Marley died of cancer at age 36. He was first diagnosed in 1977, but the cancer spread through his body in 1980.
1981: More than a year before its appearance on Broadway in New York, the musical “Cats” premiered in London’s West End at the New London Theatre and ran through May 11, 2002.
1987: In an operation at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Clinton House became the first live heart donor in the United States. House needed new lungs, and as it was deemed safer to perform a lungand-heart transplant than transplant just the lungs, House received a new heart and lungs from an accident victim. His healthy heart was transplanted to John Couch.
1990: The first wide-release film about AIDS, “Longtime Companion,” opens in New York. The film had had showings at festivals for several months before opening to the wider public. Bruce Davison’s role earned him an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
1996: ValuJet Flight 592, a DC-9 aircraft, crashed in Florida’s Everglades, killing all 110 people onboard.
1997: In a rematch after an upgrade, IBM computer Deep Blue defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. It was the first time a world champion had lost a match with standard time controls to a computer. In their 1996 match, Kasparov prevailed four games to two. In the rematch, Deep Blue won two games, Kasparov one, and three games were draws.
2020: President Donald Trump spoke to the nation from the White House Rose Garden to say anyone who wants a coronavirus test can get one and to encourage businesses to reopen.