May 31
1578 - The Christian catacombs of ancient Rome were accidentally discovered by workers digging in a vineyard along the Via Salaria.
1790 - The first U.S. copyright law was enacted, protecting books, maps and other original materials.
1819 - Poet Walt Whitman was born in West Hill, New York.
1859 - The Big Ben clock tower in London went into operation.
1889 - Heavy rains caused the South Fork Dam to collapse, sending 20 million tons of water into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing more than 2,200 people and destroying nearly the entire town.
1911 - The hull of the Titanic was launched in Belfast. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, "Not even God himself could sink this ship."
1913 - The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was declared in effect.
1916 - British and German fleets fought the Battle of Jutland off Denmark during World War I.
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.
1935 - Movie studio 20th Century Fox was created through a merger of the Fox Film Corp. and Twentieth Century Pictures.
1961 - South Africa became an independent republic as it withdrew from the British Commonwealth.
1962 - Former Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel.
1970 - An earthquake in Peru left more than 50,000 dead.
1977 - The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was completed after three years of work.
1989 - House Speaker Jim Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign. (Tom Foley later succeeded him.)
1990 - The sitcom "Seinfeld" premiered on NBC.
1991 - Leaders of Angola's two warring factions signed a peace treaty, ending a 16-year civil war.
1994 - The United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.
2003 - Eric Rudolph, suspected in bombings at a Birmingham. Alabama, abortion clinic and at the Atlanta Olympics, was arrested outside a grocery store in Murphy, N.C. (He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four life terms.)
2004 - Alberta Martin, age 97, one of the last widows of a U.S. Civil War veteran, died. She had married Confederate veteran William Martin in 1927 when she was 21 and he was 81.
2005 - Former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward as "Deep Throat," the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
2009 - Dr. George Tiller, a provider of late-term abortions, was shot and killed in a Wichita, Kansas, church. (Gunman Scott Roeder was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.)
2009 - Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Southampton, England at 97.
2010 - Nine people are dead after an Israeli navy commando attacks a flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats on their way to Gaza to provide aid and supplies for the area.
2014 - Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan, was freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Bergdahl, who’d gone missing in June 2009, later pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by walking away from his post in Afghanistan; his sentence included a dishonorable discharge, a reduction in rank and a fine, but no prison time.)
2016 - A jury found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped to convict him in the killing of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
2019 - A longtime city employee opened fire in a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, killing 12 people on three floors before police shot and killed him; officials said DeWayne Craddock had resigned by email hours before the shooting.
2020 - Tens of thousands of protesters again took to the streets across America, with peaceful demonstrations against police killings overshadowed by unrest; officials deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and enacted strict curfews in major cities. Protesters in Washington, D.C., started fires near the White House amid increasing tensions with police, who fired tear gas and stun grenades. In tweets, President Donald Trump blamed anarchists and the media for fueling violence.
2020 - The privately-owned spacecraft SpaceX delivered two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
Birthdays
25 - Normani Hamilton (singer)
30 - Farrah Abraham (reality star)
31 - Phillipa Soo (actress)
34 - Curtis Williams Jr. (actor)
36 - Jordy Nelson (football player)
37 - Yael Grobglas (actress)
39 - Jonathan Tucker (actor)
39 - Casey James (country singer)
44 - Eric Christian Olsen (actor)
45 - Colin Farrell (actor)
49 - Archie Panjabi (actor)
56 - Brooke Shields (actress)
57 - DMC (rapper)
58 - Hugh Dillon (actor)
59 - Corey Hart (actor)
60 - Lea Thompson (actress)
61 - Chris Elliott (actor/comedian)
64 - Kyle Secor (actor)
71 - Gregory Harrison (actor)
71 - Tom Berenger (actor)
78 - Joe Namath (football player)
78 - Sharon Gless (actress)
83 - Peter Yarrow (singer)
91 - Clint Eastwood (actor/director)
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Today in Sports History - May 31
1927 - Johnny Neun (Detroit Tigers) made an unassisted triple play.
1937 - The Brooklyn Dodgers ended Carl Hubbell's (New York Giants) 24-game winning streak.
1948 - Tommy Lasorda strikes out 25 batters in 15 innings of a minor league game.
1983 - The Philadelphia 76ers sweep the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA championship.
1987 - The Edmonton Oilers defeat the Philadelphia Flyers to win the Stanley Cup.
2008 - Usain Bolt of Jamaica breaks the world record in the men's 100 meter dash with a time of 9.72 seconds; it broke the old record of 9.74 set by American Asafa Powell in 2007. (Bolt would go on to break his own record two more times and is the current world record holder with a time of 9.58.)
1578 - The Christian catacombs of ancient Rome were accidentally discovered by workers digging in a vineyard along the Via Salaria.
1790 - The first U.S. copyright law was enacted, protecting books, maps and other original materials.
1819 - Poet Walt Whitman was born in West Hill, New York.
1859 - The Big Ben clock tower in London went into operation.
1889 - Heavy rains caused the South Fork Dam to collapse, sending 20 million tons of water into Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killing more than 2,200 people and destroying nearly the entire town.
1911 - The hull of the Titanic was launched in Belfast. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, "Not even God himself could sink this ship."
1913 - The 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the popular election of U.S. senators, was declared in effect.
1916 - British and German fleets fought the Battle of Jutland off Denmark during World War I.
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.
1935 - Movie studio 20th Century Fox was created through a merger of the Fox Film Corp. and Twentieth Century Pictures.
1961 - South Africa became an independent republic as it withdrew from the British Commonwealth.
1962 - Former Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel.
1970 - An earthquake in Peru left more than 50,000 dead.
1977 - The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was completed after three years of work.
1989 - House Speaker Jim Wright, dogged by questions about his ethics, announced he would resign. (Tom Foley later succeeded him.)
1990 - The sitcom "Seinfeld" premiered on NBC.
1991 - Leaders of Angola's two warring factions signed a peace treaty, ending a 16-year civil war.
1994 - The United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.
2003 - Eric Rudolph, suspected in bombings at a Birmingham. Alabama, abortion clinic and at the Atlanta Olympics, was arrested outside a grocery store in Murphy, N.C. (He later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four life terms.)
2004 - Alberta Martin, age 97, one of the last widows of a U.S. Civil War veteran, died. She had married Confederate veteran William Martin in 1927 when she was 21 and he was 81.
2005 - Former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward as "Deep Throat," the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Richard M. Nixon during the Watergate scandal.
2009 - Dr. George Tiller, a provider of late-term abortions, was shot and killed in a Wichita, Kansas, church. (Gunman Scott Roeder was later convicted and sentenced to life in prison.)
2009 - Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Southampton, England at 97.
2010 - Nine people are dead after an Israeli navy commando attacks a flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats on their way to Gaza to provide aid and supplies for the area.
2014 - Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan, was freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Bergdahl, who’d gone missing in June 2009, later pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by walking away from his post in Afghanistan; his sentence included a dishonorable discharge, a reduction in rank and a fine, but no prison time.)
2016 - A jury found former suburban Chicago police officer Drew Peterson guilty of trying to hire someone to kill the prosecutor who helped to convict him in the killing of his third wife, Kathleen Savio.
2019 - A longtime city employee opened fire in a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, killing 12 people on three floors before police shot and killed him; officials said DeWayne Craddock had resigned by email hours before the shooting.
2020 - Tens of thousands of protesters again took to the streets across America, with peaceful demonstrations against police killings overshadowed by unrest; officials deployed thousands of National Guard soldiers and enacted strict curfews in major cities. Protesters in Washington, D.C., started fires near the White House amid increasing tensions with police, who fired tear gas and stun grenades. In tweets, President Donald Trump blamed anarchists and the media for fueling violence.
2020 - The privately-owned spacecraft SpaceX delivered two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station.
Birthdays
25 - Normani Hamilton (singer)
30 - Farrah Abraham (reality star)
31 - Phillipa Soo (actress)
34 - Curtis Williams Jr. (actor)
36 - Jordy Nelson (football player)
37 - Yael Grobglas (actress)
39 - Jonathan Tucker (actor)
39 - Casey James (country singer)
44 - Eric Christian Olsen (actor)
45 - Colin Farrell (actor)
49 - Archie Panjabi (actor)
56 - Brooke Shields (actress)
57 - DMC (rapper)
58 - Hugh Dillon (actor)
59 - Corey Hart (actor)
60 - Lea Thompson (actress)
61 - Chris Elliott (actor/comedian)
64 - Kyle Secor (actor)
71 - Gregory Harrison (actor)
71 - Tom Berenger (actor)
78 - Joe Namath (football player)
78 - Sharon Gless (actress)
83 - Peter Yarrow (singer)
91 - Clint Eastwood (actor/director)
===================================
Today in Sports History - May 31
1927 - Johnny Neun (Detroit Tigers) made an unassisted triple play.
1937 - The Brooklyn Dodgers ended Carl Hubbell's (New York Giants) 24-game winning streak.
1948 - Tommy Lasorda strikes out 25 batters in 15 innings of a minor league game.
1983 - The Philadelphia 76ers sweep the Los Angeles Lakers to win the NBA championship.
1987 - The Edmonton Oilers defeat the Philadelphia Flyers to win the Stanley Cup.
2008 - Usain Bolt of Jamaica breaks the world record in the men's 100 meter dash with a time of 9.72 seconds; it broke the old record of 9.74 set by American Asafa Powell in 2007. (Bolt would go on to break his own record two more times and is the current world record holder with a time of 9.58.)
