Ten years ago: Coast Guard Rear Adm. Mary Landry said a massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was worse than officials had believed, and that the federal government was offering to help industry giant BP contain the slick threatening the U.S. shoreline.
Five years ago: Urging Americans to “do some soul-searching,” President Barack Obama expressed deep frustration over recurring black deaths at the hands of police, rioters who responded with senseless violence and a society that would only “feign concern” without addressing the root causes. Nigerian troops rescued nearly 300 girls and women during an offensive against Boko Haram militants in the northeast Sambia forest; those rescued did not include any of the schoolgirls kidnapped a year earlier from Chibok. Jack Ely, the singer known for “Louie Louie,” the low-budget recording that became one the most famous songs of the 20th century, died in Redmond, Oregon, at age 71.
One year ago: Former Republican Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, a leading voice on foreign policy during his 36 years in the Senate, died at a hospital in Virginia at the age of 87. A shooting in Topeka, Kansas, killed a Washburn University football player, Dwayne Simmons, and wounded a former team member, Corey Ballentine, who had been drafted just hours earlier by the New York Giants; authorities said they were “in the wrong place at the wrong time” when they were shot outside an off-campus house party. (Francisco Alejandro Mendez has pleaded not guilty to charges including first-degree murder.) “Avengers: Endgame” shattered the record for biggest opening weekend with an estimated $350 million in ticket sales domestically and $1.2 billion globally, on its way to becoming the highest-grossing film ever.
