Ten years ago: Addressing graduating cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, President Barack Obama said the U.S. had to shape a world order as reliant on diplomacy as on the might of its military to lead, a repudiation of the go-it-alone approach forged by his predecessor, George W. Bush. An Air India Express Boeing 737-800 crashed after overshooting a runway at Mangalore International Airport, killing all but eight of the 166 people aboard. Jordan Romero, at age 13, became the youngest climber to reach the peak of Mount Everest.
Five years ago: Ireland’s citizens voted in a landslide to legalize gay marriage, with 62.1 percent saying “yes” to changing the nation’s constitution to define marriage as a union between two people regardless of their gender. Mexican federal police got into a gunbattle with drug cartel suspects at a ranch in the western state of Michoacan (meech-wah-KAHN’); of the 43 people killed, all but one were suspected criminals, raising questions how the operation went down.
One year ago: President Donald Trump abruptly stalked out of a White House meeting with congressional leaders, declaring he would no longer work with Democrats unless they dropped all investigations in the aftermath of the special counsel’s Trump-Russia report; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she was praying for Trump and the nation. A tornado touched down in Jefferson City, Missouri, causing heavy damage but no deaths or injuries in the state capital, as severe weather swept across the state. Historical officials said researchers working in the murky waters of the northern Gulf Coast had located the wreck of the Gulf schooner Clotilda, the last ship known to have brought enslaved people from Africa to the United States.
