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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 1939, Connecticut became the last of the original 13 colonies to ratify the Bill of Rights, 147 years after it took effect.
• 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 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 1975, India launched its first satellite atop a Soviet rocket.
• In 1989, investment banker Trisha Meili, a jogger in New York's Central Park, was brutally beaten and raped. (Five teenagers were convicted of the crime; all served prison time. But their convictions were vacated in 2002 after Matias Reyes, a murderer and serial rapist, confessed that he alone had attacked Meili.)
• In 1993, the 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including sect leader David Koresh, were killed.
• In 1994, a Los Angeles jury awarded $3.8 million to beaten motorist Rodney King. The Supreme Court, 6-3, outlawed the practice of excluding people from juries because of their gender.
• 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.)
•
• Ten years ago: A Russian rocket roared into space carrying an American, a Russian and a Dutchman to the international space station on the third manned mission since the halt of the U.S. shuttle program. Catherine Ndereba (da-REH'-bah) won the Boston Marathon for the third time, finishing in 2:24:27; Timothy Cherigat won the men's race in 2:10:37 to complete a Kenyan sweep. McDonald's Corp. chairman and CEO Jim Cantalupo died in Orlando, Fla., at age 60.
• Five years ago: The Summit of the Americas wrapped up in Trinidad and Tobago; afterward, President Barack Obama held a news conference in which he defended his brand of world politics, saying he "strengthens our hand" by reaching out

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