This Day In History

May 31 1889
Relentless rain and inadequate maintenance causes the South Fork Dam to fail, unleashing a 35-foot-high wall of water on Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Then 2,209 people are entombed beneath a pile of debris half a mile wide.



May 31 1921
After a white woman claims that a black man had grabbed her arm in an elevator, the largest race riot in U.S. history breaks out in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Marauding whites set fire to the exclusively-negro Greenwood district, leveling its 35 city blocks of black-owned businesses. The official death toll is reported as 36, but later historians estimate it was more like 300.



May 31 1963
Nun Nu Thanh Quang, a Buddhist monk, immolates himself at the Dieu de Pagoda in Hue, Vietnam.



May 31 1996
Timothy Leary dies quietly in his sleep, thereby failing his intended mission of suiciding live on the Internet. On a brighter note, a longstanding Moody Blues prophecy is fulfilled.




May 31 2005
Actor Christian Slater is arrested in New York City after a woman complains of ass-grabbery to police. Slater denies everything and is charged with third-degree sexual abuse.

This Day In History

May 30 1942
Returning home from a night of drinking and reminiscing about the recent death of John Barrymore, movie star Errol Flynn flips on the lights and is horrified to discover Barrymore's corpse propped up in a living room chair. Some of Flynn's friends had given a funeral director $200 to borrow the body for a couple of hours.

This Day In History

May 22 1957
A B-36 bomber accidentally drops a 10 megaton hydrogen bomb over an uninhabited area near Albuquerque, New Mexico. The conventional charges detonate on impact, leaving a radioactive crater 12 feet deep and 25 feet wide.

May 22 1968
The nuclear submarine U.S.S. Scorpion sinks to the bottom with all 99 aboard perishing, after it is reassigned to a spy mission and begins to head towards the Canary Islands. Navy Warrant Officer John Walker (a mole) had certainly reported enough to the KGB to allow them to read the Scorpion's encrypted transmissions. For reasons yet unknown, Navy officials of the U.S. and Soviet Union agree not to discuss the circumstances of this incident or the sinking of a Soviet sub the same year.

May 22 1981
Peter Sutcliffe is convicted of murdering 13 women in the Yorkshire Ripper trial. In the words of the presiding judge: "It is difficult to find words that are adequate in my judgment to describe the brutality and gravity of these offences and I say at once I am not going to pause to seek those words. I am prepared to let the catalogue of crimes speak for itself."

This Day In History

May 20 1989
Attempting to clear Tiananmen Square of student activists and quell 100 million others protesting throughout the country, China declares martial law in Beijing. Two weeks later, after they continue to loiter in the Square, thousands of students are massacred by government troops.

May 20 1999
The dissolving body parts of eight people are discovered inside six plastic barrels sitting in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, Australia.