Today is Tuesday, May 29, the 149th day of 2018. There are 216 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
On May 29, 1953, Mount Everest was conquered as Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tensing Norgay of Nepal became the first climbers to reach the summit.
On this date:
In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks, marking the end of the Byzantine Empire.
In 1660, Britain’s King Charles II was restored to the throne on his 30th birthday after nine years in exile.
In 1765, Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia’s House of Burgesses.
In 1790, Rhode Island became the 13th original colony to ratify the United States Constitution.
In 1848, Wisconsin became the 30th state of the union.
In 1917, the 35th president of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, was born in Brookline, Massachusetts.
In 1932, World War I veterans began arriving in Washington to demand cash bonuses they weren’t scheduled to receive until 1945.
In 1943, Norman Rockwell’s portrait of “Rosie the Riveter” appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post. (The model for Rockwell’s Rosie, Mary Doyle Keefe, died in April 2015 at age 92.)
In 1961, a couple in Paynesville, West Virginia, became the first recipients of food stamps under a pilot program created by President John F. Kennedy.
In 1977, Janet Guthrie became the first woman to race in the Indianapolis 500, finishing in 29th place (the winner was A.J. Foyt).
In 1988, President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev opened their historic summit in Moscow.
In 1998, Republican elder statesman Barry Goldwater died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, at age 89.
