• Today is Saturday, May 5, the 126th day of 2012. There are 240 days left in the year.
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• Today's Highlight in History:
• On May 5, 1862, the Battle of Puebla took place in Mexico as forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeated troops that had been sent by Napoleon III during the so-called French Intervention. (The Cinco de Mayo holiday commemorates Mexico's victory.)
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• On this date:
• In 1821, Napoleon Bonaparte, 51, died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
• In 1891, New York's Carnegie Hall (then named "Music Hall") had its official opening night.
• In 1922, construction began on the original Yankee Stadium in New York.
• In 1925, schoolteacher John T. Scopes was charged in Tennessee with violating a state law that prohibited teaching the theory of evolution. (Scopes was found guilty, but his conviction was later set aside.)
• In 1936, the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, fell to Italian invaders.
• In 1941, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie returned to Addis Ababa after the Italians were driven out with the help of Allied forces.
• In 1942, wartime sugar rationing began in the United States.
• In 1955, West Germany became a fully sovereign state. The baseball musical "Damn Yankees" opened on Broadway.
• In 1961, astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. became America's first space traveler as he made a 15-minute suborbital flight aboard Freedom 7, a Mercury capsule launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla.
• In 1972, an Alitalia DC-8 crashed into Mount Longa near Palermo, Sicily, with the loss of all 115 people on board.
• In 1981, Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland in his 66th day without food.
• In 1987, the congressional Iran-Contra hearings opened with former Air Force Maj. Gen. Richard V. Secord (SEE'-kohrd) the lead-off witness. The federal government began a yearlong amnesty program, offering citizenship to illegal aliens who

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