Today is Monday, May 14, the 134th day of 2018. There are 231 days left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History: On May 14, 1948, according to the current-era calendar, the independent state of Israel was proclaimed in Tel Aviv by David Ben-Gurion, who became its first prime minister; U.S. President Harry S. Truman immediately recognized the new nation.
On this date:
1643: Louis XIV became King of France at age 4 upon the death of his father, Louis XIII.
1796: English physician Edward Jenner inoculated 8-year-old James Phipps against smallpox by using cowpox matter.
1804: The Lewis and Clark expedition to explore the Louisiana Territory as well as the Pacific Northwest left camp near present-day Hartford, Illinois.
1900: The Olympic games opened in Paris as part of the 1900 World’s Fair.
1925: The Virginia Woolf novel “Mrs Dalloway” was first published in England and the United States.
1942: Aaron Copland’s “Lincoln Portrait” was first publicly performed by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
1955: Representatives from eight Communist bloc countries, including the Soviet Union, signed the Warsaw Pact in Poland. (The Pact was dissolved in 1991.)
1961: Freedom Riders were attacked by mobs in Anniston and Birmingham, Alabama.
1968: John Lennon and Paul McCartney held a news conference in New York to announce the creation of the Beatles’ latest business venture, Apple Corps.
1973: The United States launched Skylab 1, its first manned space station. (Skylab 1 remained in orbit for six years before burning up during re-entry in 1979.) The National Right to Life Committee was incorporated.
1988: 27 people, mostly teens, were killed when their church bus collided with a pickup truck going the wrong direction on a highway near Carrollton, Kentucky. (Truck driver Larry Mahoney served 9½ years in prison for manslaughter.)
1998: Frank Sinatra died at a Los Angeles hospital at age 82. The hit sitcom “Seinfeld” aired its final episode after nine seasons on NBC.
