Today is May 11. On this date in:
1502
Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere.
1812
British Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London.
1935
The Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs.
1943
During World War II, U.S. forces landed on the Aleutian island of Attu, which was held by the Japanese; the Americans took the island 19 days later.
1953
A tornado devastated Waco, Texas, claiming 114 lives.
1960
Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
1969
The British comedy troupe Monty Python formed.
1973
The espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the “Pentagon Papers” case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct.
1987
Doctors in Baltimore transplanted the heart and lungs of an auto accident victim to a patient who gave up his own heart to another recipient. (Clinton House, the nation’s first living heart donor, died 14 months later.)
1996
An Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
1998
India set off three underground atomic blasts, its first nuclear tests in 24 years. A French mint produced the first coins of Europe’s single currency, the euro.
2006
Lawmakers demanded answers after a USA Today report that the National Security Agency was secretly collecting records of millions of ordinary Americans’ phone calls; President George W. Bush sought to assure Americans their civil liberties were being “fiercely protected.”
2010
Conservative leader David Cameron, at age 43, became Britain’s youngest prime minister in almost 200 years after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.
2017
President Donald Trump signed an executive order launching a commission to review alleged voter fraud and voter suppression, building upon his unsubstantiated claims that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election.
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