Ten years ago: The U.S. and China outlined a tentative deal to send Chen Guangcheng (chehn gwahng-chung), a blind legal activist, to America for study and potentially bring a face-saving end to a delicate diplomatic crisis. (Chen left China on May 19, 2012.) Adam Yauch, 47, the gravelly-voiced rapper who helped make The Beastie Boys one of the seminal groups in hip-hop, died in New York.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump met with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull aboard the USS Intrepid, a decommissioned aircraft carrier in New York, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the World War II Battle of the Coral Sea, which reinforced the ties between the U.S. and Australia. A U.S. service member was killed in Somalia during an operation against the extremist group al-Shabab, the first American combat death there in more than two decades. Buckingham Palace announced that Queen Elizabeth II’s 95-year-old husband, Prince Philip, was retiring from royal duties.
One year ago: President Joe Biden set a new vaccination goal to deliver at least one shot to 70% of adult Americans by July Fourth. (The effort would fall short, with a 67% vaccination rate.) Crews in Mexico City untangled train carriages from the steel and concrete wreckage that fell onto a roadway a day earlier, killing 26 people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu missed a midnight deadline to put together a new governing coalition; his Likud party would be pushed into the opposition for the first time in 12 years.
