Ten years ago: Five Black people were shot, three fatally, in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Jake England and Alvin Watts, who admitted targeting the victims because of race, pleaded guilty to murder, and were sentenced to life in prison without parole. A Navy F18 Hornet jet whose pilots were forced to eject crashed in a spectacular fireball into a big apartment complex in Virginia Beach, Virginia; miraculously, no one died. Fang Lizhi (fahng lee-juhr), 76, who was one of China’s best-known dissidents, died in Tucson, Arizona. Painter Thomas Kinkade, 54, died in Monte Sereno, California.
Five years ago: President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (shee jihn-peeng) opened a two-day summit at Trump’s Florida beach resort. Don Rickles, the big-mouthed, bald-headed “Mr. Warmth” whose verbal assaults endeared him to audiences and peers and made him the acknowledged grandmaster of insult comedy, died at his Beverly Hills home at age 90.
One year ago: Moving up his deadline by about two weeks, President Joe Biden said every adult in the U.S. would be eligible for a coronavirus vaccination by April 19. Major League Baseball announced that the All-Star Game would be played at Coors Field in Denver; the game had been pulled from Atlanta because of objections to changes in Georgia’s voting laws.
