Today is Wednesday, May 30, the 150th day of 2007. There are 215 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 30, 1431, Joan of Arc, condemned as a heretic, was burned at the stake in Rouen, France.
On this date:
In 1854, the territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.
In 1883, 12 people were trampled to death when a rumor that the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge was in imminent danger of collapsing triggered a stampede.
In 1911, Indianapolis saw its first long-distance auto race; Ray Harroun was the winner.
In 1922, the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated by President Harding, Chief Justice William Howard Taft and Robert Todd Lincoln.
In 1937, 10 people were killed when police fired on steelworkers demonstrating near the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.
In 1943, American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
In 1958, unidentified American soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflict were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
In 1971, the American space probe Mariner 9 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, Fla., on a journey to Mars.
In 1981, Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated in a failed military coup.
In 1986, 21 elderly passengers were killed when a tour bus went out of control on a mountain road and plunged into the Walker River near the California-Nevada border.
Ten years ago: Child molester Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, N.J., of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka, whose 1994 murder inspired “Megan’s Law,” requiring that communities be notified when sex offenders move in. (Timmendequas was later sentenced to death; he remains on death row.)
Five years ago: A solemn, wordless ceremony marked the end of the agonizing cleanup at ground zero in New York, 8½ months after Sept. 11. Attorney General John Ashcroft issued new terror-fighting guidelines allowing FBI agents to visit Internet sites, libraries, churches and political organizations as part of an effort to pre-empt terrorist strikes. Nine climbers fell into a crevasse near the summit of Oregon’s Mount Hood; three died.
One year ago: U.S. Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden was sworn in as CIA director. President Bush tapped Goldman Sachs chief Henry Paulson to be Treasury secretary. A jury in Rockville, Md., convicted John Allen Muhammad of six of the Washington-area sniper killings. The FBI said it had found no trace of Jimmy Hoffa after digging up a suburban Detroit horse farm. Actor Robert Sterling, who appeared in the ghostly 1950s comedy series “Topper,” died in Los Angeles at age 88.
Today’s Birthdays: Country musician Johnny Gimble is 81. Actor Clint Walker is 80. Actor Keir Dullea is 71. Actress Ruta Lee is 71. Actor Michael J. Pollard is 68. Actor Stephen Tobolowsky is 56. Actor Colm Meaney is 54. Actor Ted McGinley is 49. Actor Ralph Carter is 46. Actress Tonya Pinkins is 45. Country singer Wynonna Judd is 43. Rock musician Tom Morello (Audioslave; Rage Against The Machine) is 43. Movie director Antoine Fuqua is 42. Rock musician Patrick Dahlheimer (Live) is 36. Actress Idina Menzel is 36. Actor Trey Parker is 35. Rapper Cee-Lo is 33. Actor Blake Bashoff is 26.
Thought for Today: “To write or to speak is almost inevitably to lie a little. It is an attempt to clothe an intangible in a tangible form; to compress an immeasurable into a mold. And in the act of compression, how Truth is mangled and torn!” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh, American writer (1906-2001).