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Tuesday, May 6, 1997

  • Today's Events
  • On Horizon
  • On This Day
  • Newslink
  • Holidays & more
  • Almanac archive
  • "I won't be back -- forever."

    -- letter written by Timothy McVeigh





    Today's events


    • German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel is scheduled to visit Egypt.

    • The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, holds its annual induction ceremonies.

    • President Clinton meets with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.

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    On the horizon


    • On Wednesday, May 7, the 50th Cannes international film festival opens in France.

    • On Thursday, May 8, U.S. President Bill Clinton and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright attend a regional summit in Costa Rica.

    • On Friday, May 9, America's first ambassador to Vietnam, Douglas "Pete" Peterson, takes up his post.

    • On Saturday, May 10, Pope John Paul II is scheduled to visit Lebanon. The trip marks the Pope's first visit to the Middle East.

    • On Sunday, May 11, German Chancellor Helmut Kohl is scheduled to visit Kazakhstan.

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    On this day


    • In 1527, Rome was sacked when troops under Charles, Duke of Bourbon, pillaged the city and killed some 4,000 inhabitants.

    • In 1626, a Dutch settler, Peter Minuit, bought what is now Manhattan Island from the Indians for a handful of trinkets worth no more than 25 dollars.

    • In 1757, Frederick II of Prussia captured Prague in the Seven Years' War.

    • In 1840, the first adhesive postage stamps, the Penny Black and the Twopenny Blue, went on sale in Britain.

    • In 1861, Arkansas voted to secede from the Union and join the Confederacy.

    • In 1882, British statesman Lord Cavendish was murdered by Irish nationalists soon after arriving in Dublin as chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland.

    • In 1919, the Paris Peace Conference disposed of Germany's colonies; German East Africa was assigned as a League of Nations mandate to Britain and France, German South-West Africa as a mandate to South Africa.

    • In 1932, President Paul Doumer was assassinated by a Russian ŽmigrŽ in Paris.

    • In 1937, the German airship Hindenburg hit the landing mast on arrival at Lakehurst, New Jersey, and burst into flames, killing 36 people.

    • In 1941, Russian dictator Joseph Stalin appointed himself chairman of the Council of People's Commissars.

    • In 1942, the island fortress of Corregidor in the Philippines surrendered to the Japanese.

    • In 1945, the U.S. Third Army captured Pilsen in Czechoslovakia; General Johannes Blaskowitz surrendered the German armies in The Netherlands.

    • In 1954, British athlete Roger Bannister became the first athlete to run a mile in under four minutes, recording a time of 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.

    • In 1960, the sister of Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, married Anthony Armstrong-Jones in Westminster Abbey.

    • In 1968, the worst street fighting in Paris since the liberation shook the Left Bank as students and police fought for control of the fashionable Boulevard St. Germain.

    • In 1974, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt resigned after an aide was arrested on charges of spying for East Germany.

    • In 1976, an earthquake struck the town of Udine in northern Italy, killing 973 people and leaving over 100,000 homeless.

    • In 1979, in Austria's general election, Dr. Bruno Kreisky's Socialist Democratic Party were returned to power for a fourth consecutive term.

    • In 1981, the U.S. expelled all Libyan diplomats because of the Libyan government's support for international terrorism.

    • In 1990, Soviet authorities agreed to open for just one day eight crossing points along a 400-km (260-mile) stretch of the River Prut, which had marked the division of Moldavia between Romania and the Soviet Union since 1945.

    • In 1990, former president P.W. Botha quit South Africa's ruling National Party as a protest against the apartheid reform program of his successor F.W. de Klerk.

    • In 1994, Nelson Mandela and his ANC, finally confirmed as runaway victors of South Africa's historic elections, named their team for a post-apartheid government of national unity.

    • In 1994, historic rivals Britain and France were joined for the first time since the Ice Age by an undersea tunnel hailed as one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century.

    • In 1996, Guatemala's leftist guerrillas signed a key accord in talks with the government of President Alvaro Arzu aimed at ending 35 years of civil war.

    • In 1996, the body of former CIA Director William Colby was found at a river's edge nine days after he apparently drowned while canoeing near his weekend home in southern Maryland.

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    Newslink


    Can't make it to the 1997 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony today? Never fear, all the information you need is here.


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    Holidays and more


    • Today is Martyrs' Day in Lebanon and Syria.

    • Actor George Clooney is 36.

    • Actor Ben Masters is 50.

    • Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays is 66.

    • Musician Bob Seger is 52.

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    Sources: Associated Press,
    Chase's Calendar of Events 1997, J.P. Morgan



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