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a blockade of Southern ports.
• In 1912, a special subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee opened hearings in New York into the Titanic disaster.
• In 1933, the United States went off the gold standard.
• In 1943, during World War II, tens of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto began a valiant but ultimately futile battle against Nazi forces.
• In 1945, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical "Carousel" opened on Broadway.
• In 1951, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his Far East command by President Harry S. Truman, bade farewell in an address to Congress in which he quoted a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
• In 1960, South Korean students began an uprising that toppled the government of President Syngman Rhee a week later. The South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) was founded in Namibia.
• In 1973, the science-fiction film "Soylent Green," starring Charlton Heston, was released.
• In 1982, astronauts Sally K. Ride and Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first woman and first African-American to be tapped for U.S. space missions.
• In 1995, a truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. (Bomber Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.)
• In 2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope in the first conclave of the new millennium; he took the name Benedict XVI.
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• Ten years ago: Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo (oh-LOO'-see-gun oh-BAH'-sahn-joh) won a new term in an election denounced by opponents as fraudulent.
• Five years ago: President George W. Bush wrapped up two days of talks at Camp David with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak. A Russian capsule carrying South Korea's first astronaut (Yi So-yeon) touched down 260 miles off target in northern Kazakhstan after hurtling through the atmosphere in a bone-jarring descent from the international space station.
(Continued on page 32)
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