TODAY IN HISTORY

Today is Wednesday, May 25, the 146th day of 2016. There are 220 days left in the year.

In 1787, the Constitutional Convention began at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia after enough delegates had shown up for a quorum. In 1810, Argentina began its revolt against Spanish rule with the forming of the Primera Junta in Buenos Aires. In 1916, the Chicago Tribune published an interview with Henry Ford in which the automobile industrialist was quoted as saying, “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present and the only history that is worth a tinker’s dam is the history we make today.” In 1935, Babe Ruth hit his last three career home runs — nos. 712, 713 and 714 — for the Boston Braves in a game against the Pittsburgh Pirates. (The Pirates won, 11-7.) In 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court, in State Athletic Commission v. Dorsey, struck down a Louisiana law prohibiting interracial boxing matches. (The case had been brought by Joseph Dorsey Jr., a black professional boxer.) In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told Congress: “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.” In 1977, the first “Star Wars” film (retroactively designated “Episode IV: A New Hope”) was released by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. In 1979, 273 people died when an American Airlines DC-10 crashed just after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. Six-year-old Etan Patz disappeared while on his way to a school bus stop in lower Manhattan. In 1981, daredevil Dan Goodwin, wearing a Spiderman costume, scaled the outside of Chicago’s Sears Tower in 7 1/2 hours.