TODAY IN HISTORY

1776: Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.

1886: At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an 8-hour work day turned into a deadly riot when a bomb exploded.

1904: The United States took over construction of the Panama Canal from the French.

1932: Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone was later transferred to Alcatraz.)

1942: The Battle of the Coral Sea, the first naval clash fought entirely with carrier aircraft, began in the Pacific during World War II. (The outcome was considered a tactical victory for Japan, but ultimately a strategic one for the Allies.)

1945: During World War II, German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed to surrender.

1961: The first group of “Freedom Riders” left Washington, D.C., to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.

1970: Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire during an anti-war protest at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.

1998: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento under a plea agreement that spared him the death penalty.

2001: Bonny Lee Bakley, wife of actor Robert Blake, was shot to death as she sat in a car near a restaurant in Los Angeles. (Blake, accused of Bakley’s murder, was acquitted in a criminal trial but found liable by a civil jury and ordered to pay damages.)

2006: A federal judge sentenced Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 attacks, telling the convicted terrorist, “You will die with a whimper.”

2011: President Barack Obama said he had decided not to release death photos of Osama bin Laden because their graphic nature could incite violence and create national security risks. Officials told The Associated Press that the Navy SEALs who’d stormed bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan shot and killed him after they saw him appear to lunge for a weapon.

2020: New York state reported more than 1,700 previously undisclosed coronavirus deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities.