Today in history

On April 28, 1789, there was a mutiny on the Bounty as rebelling crew members of the British ship led by Fletcher Christian set Capt. William Bligh and 18 sailors adrift in a launch in the South Pacific. ( Bligh and most of the men with him managed to reach Timor in 47 days.)

In 1758, the fifth president of the United States, James Monroe, was born in Westmoreland County, Va.

In 1788, Maryland became the seventh state to ratify the U. S. Constitution.

In 1817, the United States and Britain signed the Rush- Bagot Treaty, which limited the number of naval vessels allowed in the Great Lakes.

In 1918, Gavrilo Princip, the assassin of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and the archduke’s wife, Sophie, died in prison of tuberculosis.

In 1937, former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was born in the village of al- Oja near the desert town of Tikrit ( he was executed in Dec. 2006).

In 1942, pollster George Gallup said most Americans preferred to call the current global conflict “World War II” or “The Second World War” ( other suggestions included “Survival War” or “War of World Freedom”).

In 1945, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress, Clara Petacci, were executed by Italian partisans as they attempted to flee the country.

In 1952, war with Japan officially ended as a treaty signed in San Francisco the year before took effect. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower resigned as Supreme Allied commander in Europe; he was succeeded by Gen. Matthew B. Ridgway.

In 1967, heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali refused to be inducted into the Army, the same day General William C. Westmoreland told Congress the U. S. “would prevail in Vietnam.”

In 1987, Contra rebels in Nicaragua killed Benjamin Ernest Linder, an American engineer working on a hydroelectric project for the Sandinista government.

In 1988, a flight attendant was killed and more than 60 persons injured when part of the roof of an Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 tore off during a flight from Hilo to Honolulu.

In 1992, the Agriculture Department unveiled its pyramidshaped recommended- diet chart that had cost nearly $ 1 million to develop. ( A revised pyramid was introduced in 2005; a new approach, “Myplate,” replaced the pyramid concept in 2011.)

Ten years ago: Severe weather, including tornadoes in Missouri and Maryland, killed at least six people. Alexander Lebed, the gruff former general who’d helped defeat the 1991 hard- line Soviet coup, was killed in a helicopter crash near the Russian town of Abakan; he was 52.

Five years ago: A suicide car bomber struck in Karbala, Iraq, killing at least 63 people. A suicide attack on Pakistan’s Interior Minister ( Aftab Khan Sherpao) killed 28 people; the official was slightly hurt. Death claimed “Tonight Show” assistant conductor Tommy Newsom at age 78 and character actor Dabbs Greer at age 90.

We have two lives... the one we learn with and the life we live with after that. – Bernard Malamud, American author ( 1914- 1986).