TODAY IN HISTORY
Today is Thursday, May 5, the 125th day of 2022. There are 240 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight
On May 5, 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America’s first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Mercury capsule Freedom 7.
On this date
In 1494, during his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus landed in Jamaica.
In 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte, 51, died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
In 1925, schoolteacher John T. Scopes was charged in Tennessee with violating a state law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution. (Scopes was found guilty, but his conviction was later set aside.)
In 1942, wartime sugar rationing began in the United States.
In 1945, in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children. Denmark and the Netherlands were liberated as a German surrender went into effect.
In 1973, Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
In 1981, Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
In 1994, Singapore caned American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by President Bill Clinton.
In 2016, former Los Angeles trash collector Lonnie Franklin Jr. was convicted of 10 counts of murder in the “Grim Sleeper” serial killings that targeted poor, young Black women over two decades.
Today’s birthdays
Actor Pat Carroll is 95. Actor Michael Murphy is 84. Actor Lance Henriksen is 82. Comedian-actor Michael Palin is 79. Actor John Rhys-Davies is 78. Rock correspondent Kurt Loder is 77. Actor Lisa Eilbacher is 65. Singer Ian McCulloch (Echo and the Bunnymen) is 63. Broadcast journalist Brian Williams is 63. Actor Tina Yothers is 49. Actor Henry Cavill is 39. Singer Adele is 34. Singer Chris Brown is 33. Figure skater Nathan Chen is 23.