HIGHLIGHTS IN HISTORY
Today’s highlight:
On May 14, 1948, according to the current-era calendar, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, who became its first prime minister; U.S. President Harry S. Truman immediately recognized the new nation.
On this date:
1643: Louis XIV became King of France at age four upon the death of his father, Louis XIII. 1796: English physician Edward Jenner inoculated 8-yearold James Phipps against smallpox by using cowpox matter. 1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Illinois. 1900: The Olympic games opened in Paris as part of the 1900 World’s Fair. 1925: The Virginia Woolf novel “Mrs Dalloway” was first published in England and the United States. 1942: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” was first publicly performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. 1955: Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, signed the Warsaw Pact in Poland. The Pact was dissolved in 1991. 1961: Freedom Riders were attacked by violent mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama. 1968: John Lennon and Paul McCartney held a news conference in New York to announce the creation of the Beatles’ latest business venture, Apple Corps. 1973: The United States launched Skylab 1, its first manned space station. Skylab 1 remained in orbit for six years before burning up during re-entry in 1979. The National Right to Life Committee was incorporated. 1988: 27 people, mostly teens, were killed when their church bus collided with a pickup truck going the wrong direction on a highway near Carrollton, Kentucky. Truck driver Larry Mahoney served 9½ years in prison for manslaughter. 1998: Frank Sinatra died at a Los Angeles hospital at age 82. The hit sitcom “Seinfeld” aired its final episode after nine seasons on NBC. 2008: President George W. Bush opened a celebratory visit to Israel, which was marking the 60th anniversary of its birth. Former rival John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination during a surprise appearance at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Interior Department declared the polar bear a threatened species because of the loss of Arctic sea ice. 2013: In an op-ed appearing in The New York Times, Oscarwinning actress Angelina Jolie said she’d undergone a preventive double mastectomy after learning she carried a gene that made it extremely likely she would get breast cancer. 2017: Emmanuel Macron swept into office as France’s new president, pledging to fortify the European Union, redesign French politics and glue together his divided nation. Five days after South Korea elected a president who expressed a desire to reach out to North Korea, Pyongyang sent a challenge to its rival’s new leader by test-firing a ballistic missile.
Thought for today
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” — Dorothy Parker, American author, humorist, poet (1893-1967)