Today is Thursday, May 31, the 151st day of 2018. There are 214 days left in the year.
Today’s highlight: On May 31, 1921, a race riot erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as white mobs began looting and leveling the affluent black district of Greenwood over reports a black man had assaulted a white woman in an elevator; hundreds are believed to have died.
On this date:
In 1578, the Christian catacombs of ancient Rome were accidentally discovered by workers digging in a vineyard along the Via Salaria.
In 1790, President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright act.
In 1889, some 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, perished when the South Fork Dam collapsed, sending 20 million tons of water rushing through the town.
In 1916, during World War I, British and German fleets fought the naval Battle of Jutland off Denmark; there was no clear-cut victor, although the British suffered heavier losses.
In 1977, the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making despite objections from environmentalists and Alaska Natives, was completed. (The first oil began flowing through the pipeline 20 days later.)
Today’s birthdays: Actor-director Clint Eastwood is 88. Football Hall of Famer Joe Namath is 75. Actor Tom Berenger is 68. Rapper DMC is 54. Actress Brooke Shields is 53. Actor Colin Farrell is 42.
Thought for today: “The genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges, or churches, or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors, but always most in the common people.” — Walt Whitman, American poet and essayist (born this date in 1819, died in 1892).
— Associated Press
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