Today is Sunday, May 5, the 125th day of 2019. There are 240 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On May 5, 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte, 51, died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
On this date:
In 1494, during his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus landed in Jamaica.
In 1818, political philosopher Karl Marx, co-author of "The Communist Manifesto" and author of "Das Kapital," was born in Prussia.
In 1862, Mexican troops defeated French occupying forces in the Battle of Puebla.
In 1891, New York's Carnegie Hall (then named "Music Hall") had its official opening night, featuring Russian composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky as a guest conductor.
In 1892, Congress passed the Geary Act, which required Chinese in the United States to carry a certificate of residence at all times, or face deportation.
In 1925, schoolteacher John T. Scopes was charged in Tennessee with violating a state law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution. (Scopes was found guilty, but his conviction was later set aside.)
In 1934, the first Three Stooges short for Columbia Pictures, "Woman Haters," was released.
In 1942, wartime sugar rationing began in the United States.
In 1945, in the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children. Denmark and the Netherlands were liberated as a German surrender went into effect.
In 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America's first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Mercury capsule Freedom 7.
In 1981, Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
In 1994, Singapore caned American teenager Michael Fay for vandalism, a day after the sentence was reduced from six lashes to four in response to an appeal by President Bill Clinton.