Today is Saturday, May 11, the 131st day of 2019. There are 234 days left in the year.
Today's Highlight in History:
On May 11, 1996, an Atlanta-bound ValuJet DC-9 caught fire shortly after takeoff from Miami and crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board.
On this date:
In 1502, Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere.
In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant (STY'-veh-sunt) arrived in New Amsterdam to become governor of New Netherland.
In 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state of the Union.
In 1935, the Rural Electrification Administration was created as one of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal programs.
In 1943, during World War II, U.S. forces landed on the Aleutian island of Attu, which was held by the Japanese; the Americans took the island 19 days later.
In 1953, a tornado devastated Waco, Texas, claiming 114 lives.
In 1960, Israeli agents captured Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
In 1973, the espionage trial of Daniel Ellsberg and Anthony Russo in the "Pentagon Papers" case came to an end as Judge William M. Byrne dismissed all charges, citing government misconduct.
In 1987, doctors in Baltimore transplanted the heart and lungs of an auto accident victim to a patient who gave up his own heart to another recipient. (Clinton House, the nation's first living heart donor, died 14 months later.)
In 1998, India set off three underground atomic blasts, its first nuclear tests in 24 years. A French mint produced the first coins of Europe's single currency, the euro.
In 2006, Lawmakers demanded answers after a USA Today report that the National Security Agency was secretly collecting records of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls; President George W. Bush sought to assure Americans their civil liberties were being "fiercely protected."
In 2010, Conservative leader David Cameron, at age 43, became Britain's youngest prime minister in almost 200 years after Gordon Brown stepped down and ended 13 years of Labour government.