DAILY ALMANAC
Today is Thursday, May 5, the 125th day of 2022. There are 240 days left in the year.
On this date in:
1494: During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus landed in Jamaica.
1821: Napoleon Bonaparte, 51, died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
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.)
1942: Wartime sugar rationing began in the United States.
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.
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.
1973: Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby, the first of his Triple Crown victories.
1981: Irish Republican Army hungerstriker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
1994: Authorities in 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.
2009: Texas health officials confirmed the first death of a U.S. resident with swine flu.
2014: A narrowly divided Supreme Court upheld Christian prayers at the start of local council meetings.
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.
2020: Tyson Foods said it would resume limited operation of its huge pork processing plant in Waterloo, Iowa, with enhanced safety measures, more than two weeks after closing the facility because of a coronavirus outbreak among workers. Facebook said it had removed several accounts and pages linked to Qanon, taking action for the first time against the far-right conspiracy theory circulated among supporters of President Donald Trump.
Comedian-actor Michael Palin
(Monty Python) is 79. Actor John Rhysdavies is 78. Former MTV News correspondent Kurt Loder is 77. Drummer Bill Ward of Black Sabbath is 74. Actor Melinda Culea is 67. Singer Ian Mcculloch of Echo and the Bunnymen is 63. Newsman Brian Williams is 63. TV personality Kyan Douglas
(“Rachael Ray,” “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) is 52. Actor Tina Yothers
(“Family Ties”) is 49. Singer Raheem Devaughn is 47. Actor Vincent Kartheiser (“Mad Men”) is 43. Singer Craig David is 41. Actor Danielle Fishel (“Boy Meets World”) is 41. Actor Henry Cavill
(“Man of Steel,” “The Tudors”) is 39. Bassist Josh Smith of Halestorm is 39.
Singer Adele is 34.