In 1678, the Godiva procession through Coventry began.
In 1790, U.S. President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright law.
In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pa., left more than 2,200 people dead.
In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.
In 1927, the final Ford Model T was built. More than 15 million of the vehicles were produced.
In 1962, Israel hanged Adolf Eichmann for his part in the killing of 6 million Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II.
In 1973, the U.S. Senate voted to cut off funds for U.S. bombing of Cambodia.
In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was a single-day
record for closings since the FDIC was founded in 1934.
In 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev opened a four-day summit in Washington, focusing on the role of a united Germany
in Europe.
In 1994, U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., was indicted on felony charges, including embezzlement.
In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-sought fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympic bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, in which
two died, was arrested while rummaging through a dumpster in North Carolina.
In 2004, a bomb ripped through a Shiite mosque in Karachi, Pakistan, while worshippers were saying evening prayers. Sixteen people were killed.
In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that, while No. 2 man in the FBI, he was “Deep Throat,” the shadowy contact whose help to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward
and Carl Bernstein on the 1972 Watergate break-in led to U.S. President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
In 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush called on the world’s top polluters to develop a strategy to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
Also in 2007, a civilian Nigerian president was succeeded by another civilian for the first time.
In 2008, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois moved closer to capturing the Democratic presidential nomination. At the end of May, the last full month on
the party’s primary calendar. Obama led Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York by a reported more than 150 delegates.
In 2009, the U.S. stock market rose for the third consecutive month with the Dow Jones industrial average up 4.1 percent and the Standard and Poor’s 500
and Nasdaq composite up 5.3 and 3.3 percent, respectively.
Also in 2009, Dr. George Tiller, 67, who ran an abortion clinic in Wichita, Kan., was killed while ushering at a church service. Scott Roeder, a fervent
abortion opponent, was charged with first-degree murder.
