Today is Monday, May 24, the 144th day of 2010. There are 221 days left in the year.
TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT
On May 24, 1844, Samuel F.B. Morse transmitted the message, “What hath God wrought,” from Washington to Baltimore as he formally opened America’s first telegraph line.
ON THIS DATE
In 1819, Queen Victoria was born in London.
In 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge, linking Brooklyn and Manhattan, was opened to traffic.
In 1935, the first major league baseball game to be played at night took place at Cincinnati’s Crosley Field as the Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-1.
In 1941, the German battleship Bismarck sank the British dreadnought Hood in the North Atlantic.
In 1962, astronaut Scott Carpenter became the second American to orbit Earth as he flew aboard Aurora 7.
In 1976, Britain and France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde supersonic transport service to Washington.
In 1977, in a surprise move, the Kremlin ousted Soviet President Nikolai Podgorny from the Communist Party’s ruling Politburo.
In 1980, Iran rejected a call by the World Court in The Hague to release American hostages.
In 2000, Israeli troops pulled out from south Lebanon, ending 18 years of occupation. Gunmen killed five people and wounded two others in a robbery attempt at a Wendy’s restaurant in the Queens borough of New York. (The gunmen, Craig Godineaux and John Taylor, are serving life prison sentences.) The state of Maryland dismissed its wiretapping case against Linda Tripp after judge disallowed most of Monica Lewinsky’s testimony.
In 2001, 23 people died when the floor of a Jerusalem wedding hall collapsed beneath dancing guests in a horrifying scene captured on video.
In 2005, ignoring President Bush’s veto threat, the House voted to lift limits on embryonic stem cell research.
Associated Press
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