Today in History - May 6
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For Asia History: https://www.asiaobserver.org/category/news/on-this-day-in-asian-history
523 May 6, Thrasamunde, king of Vandals (496-523), died.
(MC, 5/6/02)(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15268b.htm)
973 May 6, Henry II, German King (1002) and Holy Roman Emperor (1014-1024), was born.
(HN, 5/6/98)(MC, 5/6/02)
988 May 6, Dirk II, West Frisian count of Holland, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1124 May 6, Balak, Emir of Aleppo (Syria), was murdered.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1527 May 6, German and Spanish troops under Charles V began sacking Rome, bringing about the end of the Renaissance. Libraries were destroyed, Pope Clement VII was captured and thousands were killed. 147 of 189 of the Pope’s Swiss guard were killed.
(HN, 5/6/02)(PCh, 1992, p.174)(WSJ, 4/14/06, p.W5)
1529 May 6, Babur defeated the Afghan Chiefs in the Battle of Ghagra, India.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1536 May 6, King Henry VIII ordered a bible placed in every church.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1576 May 6, The peace treaty of Chastenoy ended the fifth war of religion.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1576 The Fifth War of Religion in France ended with the Peace of Monsieur. The Huguenots were granted freedom of worship in all places except Paris.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1581 May 6, Frans Francken, the Younger, painter, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1606 May 6, Lorenzo Lippi, [Perlone Zipoli], poet, painter, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1638 May 6, Cornelius Jansen, theologian (Jansenism), died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1642 May 6, Frans Francken, the Younger, Flemish painter, died on 61st birthday.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1648 May 6, Battle at Zolty Wody-Bohdan: Chmielricki's Cossacks beat John II Casimir.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1667 May 6-7, Johann Jakob Froberger (b.1616), German organist, singer, composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)(MC, 5/7/02)
1682 May 6, King Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, France.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1733 May 6, 1st international boxing match: Bob Whittaker beat Tito di Carni.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1740 May 6, John Penn, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1753 May 6, French King Louis XV observed a transit of Mercury at Mendon Castle.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1757 May 6, Battle at Prague: Frederik II of Prussia beat emperor's army.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1758 May 6, Maximilien F.M.I. de Robespierre (d.1794), a leader of the French Revolution, was born. He was known as the "Sea-Green Incorruptible" from his sallow complexion. He decreed death for all those he considered enemies of the revolution.
(V.D.-H.K.p.231)(HN, 5/6/99)(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.C5)
1794 May 6, In Haiti Toussaint Louverture (L’Ouverture), Haitian rebel leader, ended his alliance with the Iberian monarchy and embraced the French Republicans. An order followed that led to the massacre of Spaniards.
(www.travelinghaiti.com/history_of_haiti/toussaint_louverture.asp)(WSJ, 1/19/07, p.W4)
1794 May 6, Jean-Jacques Beauvarget-Charpentier (59), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1795 May 6, Dr. Pierre-Joseph Dessault visited the incarcerated 10-year-old dauphin, the heir to the French throne. He found the dying child in abject misery. The boy died June 8.
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W9)
1801 May 6, British Lt. Thomas Cochrane, commander of the 14-gun sloop HMS Speedy, engaged and captured the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo. The climactic battle in Patrick O’Brian’s novel “Master and Commander" is based on the Speedy’s fight with El Gamo. Cochrane was later elected to Parliament, pointed out corruption and was arrested on trumped up charges. After that he served as the first commander of Chile’s navy, then Brazil’s navy and the Greek navy before returning to England. In 2000 Robert Harvey authored “Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain."
(ON, 11/04, p.1)
1806 May 6, Chapin Aaron Harris, founder of the America Society of Dental Surgeons, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1814 May 6, Wilhelm Ernst, violinist, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1814 May 6, George Joseph Vogler (64), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1833 May 6, John Deere made his 1st steel plow.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1835 May 6, The 1st edition of NY Herald was priced at 1 cent. The Herald specialized in crime with an emphasis on murder. James Gordon Bennett was the Scottish-born steward of the Herald. Within a few years of the 1936 Jewett murder case, a coalition of clergymen, financiers and rival editors waged a “Moral War" against Bennett and his newspaper
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)(SFEM, 8/6/00, p.45)(MC, 5/6/02)
1836 May 6, Christian Ignatius Latrobe (78), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1840 May 6, Frederick William Stowe, was born He was the son of the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe and fighter in the Civil War for the Union.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1847 May 6, The Californian newspaper of Monterey moved to San Francisco.
(SFC, 7/12/14, p.C2)
1849 May 6, Wyatt Eaton, artist, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1851 May 6, Dr. John Gorrie patented a "refrigeration machine."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1851 May 6, Linus Yale patented his Yale lock.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1853 May 6, The 1st major US rail disaster killed 46 at Norwalk, Connecticut.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1856 May 6, Robert Peary, arctic explorer, was born. He reached the North Pole in 1909. [see 1909 &1856-1920, Peary]
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AHD, p.964) (HN, 5/6/98)
1856 May 6, Sigmund Freud (d.1939), father of psychology and the Viennese physician who discovered the unconscious, was born. He treated his hysterical patients by encouraging them to associate freely. He insisted that sexual desires and fears lay just beneath the surface of everyone’s mind. A biography of Freud was later written by Peter Gay.
(V.D.-H.K.p.281-282)(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.9)(HN, 5/6/98)
1856 May 6, U.S. Army troops from Fort Tejon and Fort Miller prepared to ride out to protect Keyesville, California, from Yokut Indian attack.
(HN, 5/6/00)
1859 May 6, Baron Freidrich von Humboldt (b.1769), German naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps, died. In 2015 Andrea Wulf authored “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt)(Econ, 11/7/15, p.78)
1861 May 6, Jefferson Davis approved a bill declaring War between US and Confederacy.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1861 May 6, Arkansas and Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th state to secede from US. [see Jun 8]
(AP, 5/6/97)(HN, 5/6/98)(MC, 5/6/02)
1862 May 6, Henry David Thoreau (b.1817), American writer, died of tuberculosis in Concord, Mass. In 1999 his unfinished manuscript "Wild Fruits," a catalog of his observations on local plants and fruits, was published. In 2017 Laura Dassow Walls authored “Henry David Thoreau: A Life."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau)(SFC, 9/7/99, p.A3)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.67)
1864 May 6, In the second day of the Battle of Wilderness between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate Gen. James Longstreet (d.1903) was wounded by his own men.
(HN, 5/6/99)(MC, 5/6/02)
1864 May 6, General Sherman began to advance on Atlanta.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1868 May 6, Gaston Leroux, French novelist (The Phantom of the Opera), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1877 May 6, Chief Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Crazy Horse brought General Custer to his end.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1882 May 6, Over President Arthur’s veto, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the United States for 10 years. It was amended and passed by Congress on August 3 and was signed by Pres. Arthur. Renewals and amendments continued to 1904. The laws were repealed in 1943. In 2011 the US Senate passed a resolution expressing regret for the act.
(AP, 5/6/97)(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h739.html)(SFC, 10/11/11, p.C1)
1884 May 6, Buck Grant told his father, former Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, that a loan to Ferdinand Ward had gone bad and that Ward had absconded with the money. The Grants were wiped out, as were other trusting investors, including friends and family of the Grants. Ward’s Ponzi scheme led to the collapse of major financial institutions on Wall Street and around the country. In 2012 Geoffrey C. Ward, the grandson of Ferdinand Ward, authored “A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated man in the United States.
(http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/lastyears.html)(SFC, 5/21/12, p.E3)
1888 May 6, Russell Stover, candy manufacturer, was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1889 May 6, The Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1895 May 6, Rudolph Valentino, legendary silent-screen star, was born in Castellaneta, Italy.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1896 May 6, Samuel P. Langley (1834-1906), American physicist and aviation pioneer, launched the first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft.
(NPub, 2002, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley)
1898 May 6, Daniel Gerber, baby food pioneer, was born in Freemont, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, Harry Golden, Jewish humorist, writer (2 Cents Plain, Only in America), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, Max Ophuls (d.1957), film director (La Ronde, Lola Montes), was born in the Rhine Valley of Jewish parents. He made films in Germany, France, Netherlands and the US.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)(HN, 5/6/01)
1902 May 6, Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, British SS Camorta sank off Rangoon and 739 died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, There was a Zulu assault at Holkrantz, South-Africa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1907 May 6, San Francisco streetcar workers of the Carmen’s Union went on strike after owner Patrick Calhoun refused to accept a $3 per 8-hour day wage. Calhoun hired James Farley to break the union.
(SFC, 9/13/02, p.D9)
1908 May 6, The Great White Fleet, sent by Pres. Roosevelt on an around-the-world voyage, arrived in SF. The fleet left San Francisco on July 7.
(SFC, 5/6/08, p.B3)
1910 May 6, Edward VII (68), Britain's King (1901-1910), died and George V ascended to the British throne.
(AP, 5/6/97)(MC, 5/6/02)
1913 May 6, Stewart Granger, [James Stewart], actor (Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche), was born in London.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1914 May 6, British House of Lords rejected women suffrage.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1915 May 6, Orson Welles (d.1985), actor, director, and writer, was born in Kenosha, Wisc. He is famous for his movie Citizen Kane (1941).
(HN, 5/6/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles)
1915 May 6, Theodore H. White, historian, writer (Making of President), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1915 May 6, Babe Ruth (20), pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, hit his 1st HR. The Red Sox lost to the Yanks 4-3 in 13 innings.
(http://baseballguru.com/hfrommer/analysishfrommer31.html)
1915 May 6, German U-20 sank Centurion SE of Ireland.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1919 May 6, Paris Peace Conference disposed of German colonies; German East Africa was assigned to Britain & France, German SW Africa to South Africa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1919 May 6, Frank Lyman Baum (62), American author, died in Los Angeles. In 1897 he wrote and published “Mother Goose in Prose," a collection of Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Baum and illustrator W. W. Denslow published “The Wonderful World of Oz" in 1900.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum)
1926 May 6, Marguerite Piazza, operatic soprano (Young Broadway), was born in New Orleans, LA.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1931 May 6, Willie Mays, the 'Say hey ' kid who played baseball for the New York Giants, was born. He made a great outfield catch in the 1954 World Series.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1935 May 6, The Works Progress Administration began operating.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1935 May 6, British King George & Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1936 May 6, The Hindenburg airship departed Germany and on the 9th on May, it arrived at Lakehurst, N.J., having completed the first scheduled transatlantic dirigible flight.
(www.airships.net/hindenburg/flight-schedule/maiden-voyage/passenger-account)
1937 May 6, At 7:25 p.m. the giant German airship (dirigible or zeppelin) Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed to the ground as it attempted to dock with a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Carrying 36 passengers and 61 crew, Hindenburg left Frankfurt on May 4 for its first transatlantic voyage of the 1937 season. A total of 36 died when the fire ignited the 16 hydrogen-filled cells and destroyed the zeppelin in only 34 seconds. This included 13 passengers, 22 crew members and one of the ground crew. The airship was 803 feet long and had private rooms for 50 passengers. It had an 11,000 mile range. A newsreel film of the Hindenburg Disaster was made. The true cause of the disaster remains a mystery, although crash investigators considered claims that Hindenburg was lost due to sabotage or an accidental charge of static electricity.
(Hem., 1/96, p.108)(AP, 5/6/97)(SFC,11/21/97, p.C17)(ON, 8/12, p.11)
1938 May 6, Dutch writer Maurits Dekker was sentenced to 50 days for "offending a friendly head of state" (Hitler).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1939 May 6, 1st performance of Honegger and Claudel's "Jeanne d'Arc at the Stake."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1940 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1941 May 6, Ghena Dimitrova, soprano (Nabucco), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1941 May 6, Bob Hope (b. May 29, 1903) began broadcasting his first USO radio show from March Field at Riverside, Ca. The United Service Organizations (USO) began operations this year and provided free coffee, donuts, and entertainment to US military forces. The organization is supported entirely by private citizens and corporations.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.D5)(HN, 5/6/98)(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.8)
1941 May 6, Dictator Josef Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1942 May 6, Ariel Dorfman, Chilean writer (Death and the Maiden), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1942 May 6, On Corregidor US Gen’l. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered his forces, some 15,000 Americans and Filipinos, to the Japanese. This began a 3-year ordeal for 4 doctors as POWs under the Japanese. In 2005 John A. Glusman authored “Conduct Under Fire," and account of their survival as POWs.
(AP, 5/6/97)(SSFC, 7/10/05, p.E4)(http://tinyurl.com/736ws)
1943 May 6, British 1st army opened an assault on Tunis.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1944 May 6, The Red Army besieged and captured Sevastopol in the Crimea.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1945 May 6, Bob Seger, folk singer (Silver Bullet Band-Shake Down), was born in Dearborn, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1945 May 6, Axis Sally made her final propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1946 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to Arthur M. Schlesinger ("Age of Jackson").
(MC, 5/6/02)
1948 May 6, 43 communist rebels were executed in Athens.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1949 May 6, P.M.B. Maurice Maeterlinck (b.1862), Belgian philosopher, playwright (Grand Fairie) and essayist, died in Nice, France. He won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.861)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Maeterlinck)
1950 May 6, Liz Taylor wed Conrad Hilton Jr. in her first marriage.
(www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,291072~7~~,00.html)
1950 May 6, Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer, died. She was best known for her chronicling of the Chinese revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori (b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC, 1/6/07, p.B1)
1954 May 6, Medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, finishing in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1955 May 6, West Germany joined NATO.
(WSJ, 10/8/01, p.A14)(MC, 5/6/02)
1957 May 6, Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey into Night" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" won the Pulitzer for biography or autobiography.
(AP, 5/6/07)
1957 May 6, Last broadcast of "I Love Lucy" on CBS-TV. [see Jun 24]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1959 May 6, Iceland gunboats shot at British fishing ships.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1960 May 6, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1960 May 6, Britain's Princess Margaret married Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. They divorced in 1978.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1960 May 6, Jacques Mornard (Ram¢n Mercader), Trotsky's murderer, was freed in Mexico.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1961 May 6, George Clooney, actor (Dr Douglas Ross-ER, Batman), was born in Lexington, KY.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1962 May 6, In the first test of its kind, the submerged submarine USS Ethan Allen fired a Polaris missile armed with a nuclear warhead that detonated above the Pacific Ocean.
(AP, 5/6/97)(HN, 5/6/98)
1962 May 6, Pathet Lao broke cease fire and conquered Nam Tha Laos.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1963 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1964 May 6, Joe Orton's "Entertaining Mr. Sloan," premiered in London. [see Apr 18]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1967 May 6, 400 students seized the administration building at Cheyney State College, Pa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1967 May 6, Gordon /Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced that he was giving the Bank of England the responsibility for setting interest rates. Within weeks Mr. Brown stripped the central bank of its responsibility for bank regulation and public debt management.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.12)
1967 May 6, The body of Keith Lyon (12) of Brighton, England, was found clad in his school uniform on a grass bank near a rural bridle path between the nearby villages of Ovingdean and Woodingdean, about 56 miles south of London. He had left home to buy a geometry set and never returned. Lyon had been stabbed 11 times in the chest, back and abdomen with a serrated kitchen knife. In 2006 2 suspects were arrested.
(AP, 8/1/06)
1968 May 6, Astronaut Neil Armstrong was nearly killed in a lunar module trainer accident.
(HNQ, 7/20/99)
1968 May 6, In Paris violent fighting took place in the morning and then from 2 p.m. in the afternoon to 1 a.m. the next morning on the Boulevard Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain. Close to 600 students and police were wounded. Student strikes spread to the provinces.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/frank/1968/may1968/chronology.htm)
1970 May 6, Yuichiro Miura (b.1932) of Japan skied down Mt. Everest.
(http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1090978/index.htm)
1974 May 6, Bundy victim Roberta Parks disappeared from OSU, Corvallis, Ore.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6664391)
1975 May 6, In hockey the Philadelphia Flyers won the semifinal series over Boston 4 games to 1. On May 16 the Montreal Canadiens won the finals in 4 games.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975-76_Philadelphia_Flyers_season)
1975 May 6, Bundy victim Lynette Culver disappeared from Pocatello, Idaho.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy)
1975 May 6, A tornado swept through Omaha, Nebraska, along 72nd St. the site of many motels on a weekday noon. All sorts of folks had to explain just how they wound up in a state of dishabille in a roofless motel room.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.65)(www.crh.noaa.gov/oax/archive/may1975/may675.php)
1975 May 6, Hungarian Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty (b.1892) died in Vienna, Austria. The staunch foe of Communism spent more than seven years in prison in his homeland and several years in asylum at the US Embassy in Budapest. He later was granted permission by Hungarian authorities to live in exile in Vienna.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zsef_Mindszenty)(AP, 2/13/19)
1976 May 6, An earthquake struck Italy’s northern region at Friuli-Venezia Giulia, affecting 11 villages near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The earthquake killed more than 1,000 people in a 3,300-square-mile area and left 80,000 homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/dvzp6)(SFC, 12/17/05, p.F1)
1978 May 6, On this day at 12:34, the numbers 12345678 represented the time and day: 12:34 5/6/78. The next such sequence will occur in 2078.
(SFC, 7/14/96, A1 p.2)
1980 May 6, Stanford Linear Accelerator officials announced a successful collision of matter and antimatter in their new $78 million accelerator.
(SFC, 5/6/05, p.F2)
1981 May 6, Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin was named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1981 May 6, The US expelled Libyan diplomats.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html)
1984 May 6, Nicolas Ardito Barletta was elected president of Panama. Gen. Manuel A. Noriega reportedly rigged the elections.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Ardito_Barletta_Vallarino)(Econ 6/3/17, p.82)
1987 May 6, Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart held a news conference in Hanover, N.H., in which he denied ever having an affair with Miami model Donna Rice, but declined to say whether he'd ever committed adultery. Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor asked him: "Have you ever committed adultery?"
(AP, 5/6/97)(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A1)
1987 May 6, PTL's Jim Bakker and Rich Dortch were dismissed from Assemblies of God.
(http://tinyurl.com/mu4cn)
1987 May 6, William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981-1987), died at age 74.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1987 May 6, A London building that housed the congress of South African Trade Unions was bombed under orders of the apartheid government of South Africa.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1988 May 6, In his first comment on the matter, President Reagan said he didn't "look kindly" on reports that a memoir by former chief of staff Donald Regan painted an unflattering portrait of first lady Nancy Reagan.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1989 May 6, Sunday Silence scored an upset victory over Easy Goer in the 115th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1990 May 6, Freed American hostage Frank Reed said at a news conference in Arlington, Va., that he had been savagely beaten by his captors in Lebanon after two unsuccessful escape attempts.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1990 May 6, Former president P.W. Botha quit South Africa's ruling National Party as a protest against the apartheid reform program of his successor F.W. de Klerk.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/06/)
1991 May 6, President Bush returned to work after spending two nights at Bethesda Naval Hospital because of an irregular heartbeat; he met at the White House with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
(AP, 5/6/01)
1991 May 6, US Steel was removed as a component of the Dow Jones.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R46)
1991 May 6, Wilfrid Hyde-White (87), British actor (Peyton Place/140+ films), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0405035/)
1992 May 6, Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill had spoken of the Iron Curtain; Gorbachev said the world was still divided, between north and south and rich and poor.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1992 May 6, Actress Marlene Dietrich (b.1901), film star and singer, died at her Paris home at age 90. She was buried in Germany on May 16.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.D-2)(AP, 5/16/97)
1993 May 6, The space shuttle "Columbia" landed safely in California after a 10-day mission.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1993 May 6, The Bosnian Serb parliament, for the third time, rejected a U.N. peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ordered a blockade of all supplies, except food and medicine, to the Bosnian Serbs.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1994 May 6, Paula Jones filed a complaint of sexual harassment in US District Court in Little Rock, Ark. against Pres. Bill Clinton. According to Jones, on May 8, 1991 at the Third Annual Governor’s Quality Management Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Gov. Bill Clinton invited Ms. Jones, a state employee working at the registration desk, to a private meeting and exposed his desire for her. Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A18)(AP, 5/6/04)
1994 May 6, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries. A first dividend to shareholders, promised in 1995, was paid in 2009.
(AP, 5/6/04)(Econ, 5/10/14, p.68)
1994 May 6, Nelson Mandela and his ANC finally were confirmed winners in South Africa.
(www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/bryant_5-6.html)
1995 May 6, Long-shot Thunder Gulch, ridden by Gary Stevens, won the 121st Kentucky Derby.
(AP, 5/6/00)(WSJ, 5/5/97, p.A16)
1995 May 6, Friends and relatives of the Oklahoma City bombing victims made a pilgrimage to the site of the attack.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1995 May 6, In London, thousands of World War II veterans celebrated the 50th anniversary of V-E Day.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1996 May 6, All the nearly 16,000 public companies nationwide were required to file their financial reports electronically with the SEC. All info will go into EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system. The home page of the SEC is: http://www.sec.gov.
(SJBJ, 5/13/96, p. 7)
1996 May 6, The body of former CIA director William E. Colby was found on a riverbank near his southern Maryland vacation home, eight days after he'd disappeared.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1996 May 6, Walter Petryshyn, a Rutgers Univ. mathematics professor, author of “Generalized Topological Degree and Semilinear Equations," smashed his wife’s skull with 30 blows from a claw hammer in North Brunswick, New Jersey. He had become depressed and paranoid over an error in his book.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.A-10)
1997 May 6, The New York Drama Critics’ Circle picked “How I Learned to Drive" as the best play for the ‘96-’97 season. “Violet" was selected as the best musical, and “Skylight" by David Hare was the best foreign play.
(SFC, 5/8/97, p.A20)
1997 May 6, World chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer played to a draw in game three of their six-game match.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, Pres. Clinton made a state visit to Mexico and spent some time meeting with the leaders of Mexico’s main opposition parties. Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo pledged closer cooperation on immigration and drug smuggling.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.c3) (AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, Sergeant Delmar Simpson received a 25 year sentence for raping 6 female trainees at the Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground Army base.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.A3)(AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, A car bomb in Algiers killed 4 students and injured 25 people.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C3)
1997 May 6, British PM Tony Blair, on the first full working day of the new Labor government, gave the Bank of England the right to set interest rates. Labor had won power pledging that it would by the party of welfare reform. The party had campaigned on the anthem “Things can only get better." In October the Bank of England lost its supervisory powers over banks to the new Financial Services Authority.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C2)(Econ, 3/25/06, p.63)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.52)(Econ, 6/14/08, p.70)(Econ, 5/1/10, p.27)
1997 May 6, It was reported that Syrian missiles were tipped with VX, a lethal chemical that kills on contact with the skin. The Syrian chemical weapons program was assisted by Anatoly Kuntsevich, former head of the Russian Army’s Chemical Troops. The existing stockpile of Sarin, the nerve gas used by the terrorists in Tokyo, was hoped to be upgraded to VX.
(WSJ, 5/6/97, p.A22)
1997 May 6, In Zaire Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko left Zaire for a 3-day visit to Gabon. He was not expected to return.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C2)
1998 May 6, Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of the House fund-raising inquiry, apologized to GOP colleagues for the furor over his release of selected portions of tapes of Webster Hubbell's prison conversations; Burton's top investigator departed, ordered fired by House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1998 May 6, Jurgen Schrempp of Daimler Benz and Robert Eaton of Chrysler announced in London that the German auto company will purchase Chrysler in a $38 billion merger. The takeover was later documented by Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz in their book “Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off with Chrysler."
(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W1)(WSJ, 6/12/00, p.A28)
1998 May 6, Astronomers announced the detection of a gamma ray burst in a galaxy 12 billion light years away that was equal to the energy expended by the sun in a trillion years.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1998 May 6, In Bosnia 5 key Karadzic holdovers were arrested or suspended for political and economic illegal acts.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A10)
1998 May 6, The Danish government intervened to end a ten day strike by 500,000 workers. It was planned to make strikes illegal until March, 2000, and offered 2 extra vacation days and an additional 3 days of family leave for working parents with children under 14.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A16)
1998 May 6, There was a border skirmish between Ethiopia and Eritrea over the 150-square-mile area called the Badme triangle. This grew into a two-decades-long war with half a million civilians forced from their homes. Later a settlement of the border war was contingent on the borders prior to this date. An international panel in 2005, formed to resolve disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia, said Eritrea violated int’l. law when it invaded the north of Ethiopia.
(SFC, 1/30/99, p.A12)(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A12)(AFP, 12/22/05)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.14)
1998 May 6, In Peru a Boeing 737, chartered by Occidental Petroleum from the Peruvian air force, crashed in the Amazon jungle. At least 13 of 87 people survived the crash.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A1)
1998 May 6, In Serbia fighting in Kosovo continued. A Serb policeman and an ethnic Albanian separatist were killed. The bodies of 2 Albanians who backed Serb rule were pulled from a river and a local politician died in a third attack.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A1)
1999 May 6, President Clinton met with Kosovo refugees in Germany, listening to accounts of murder, rape and terror and promising them, "You will go home again in safety and in freedom."
(AP, 5/6/00)
1999 May 6, The Clinton administration suspended the sale of handguns to Venezuelan companies because of concerns that the guns were ending up in the hands of narcotics gangs and guerrilla groups in Colombia.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D3)
1999 May 6, The US House of Rep. approved a $13.1 billion emergency spending bill to pay for the air war in Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A3)
1999 May 6, A US appeals court ruled that government restrictions on the export of encryption software violated free speech.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Bristol-Myers announced a plan to spend $100 million over the next 5 years in 5 southern African nations to fund AIDS research trials.
(WSJ, 5/6/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Scientists reported that the salmonella bacteria becomes disabled when stripped of a gene that produces the DNA adenine methylase (Dam). The research was seen as a potent new source for vaccines.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A1,17)
1999 May 6, The storm in Oklahoma that killed 41 people moved on to Tennessee and took killed 4 people.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A3)
1999 May 6, In Germany pharmaceutical salesman Piotr Blumenstock was shot dead in Berlin. In 2019 German police offered up to 10,000 euros ($11,400) for information on the whereabouts of Polish suspect Vladimir Svintkovski of Poland.
(AP, 1/7/19)
1999 May 6, In Iraq the new vacation-resort city of Saddamiat al-Tharthar opened 85 miles west of Baghdad. Nearly every brick was engraved with the initials of Saddam Hussein.
(SFC, 5/12/99, p.C5)
1999 May 6, Russia joined NATO to back a framework for ending the conflict in Kosovo that included an international security presence to enforce peace.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Electricity was restored in Belgrade as NATO air strikes continued in Yugoslavia. A main railroad bridge was destroyed near the Romanian border and oil depots in Nis were hit.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A15)
1999 May 6, In Scotland elections for the 129-member Edinburgh parliament were scheduled. Its powers would include control over taxes, health, transport, education, legal affairs, sports and the arts. Reversing decades of overwhelming loyalty to Britain's governing Labor Party, Scottish and Welsh voters elected strong nationalist oppositions to their first separate assemblies of modern times. The Scottish National Party won 56 of 129 seats, the Liberal Democrats won 17 and the Conservatives won 18.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A28)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A10)(AP, 5/6/00)
1999 Apr 6, In Wales the 2.2 million voters were to elect a 60-member assembly. It would be responsible for distributing a $13 million grant from London. Labor took 28 of 60 seats, the nationalist Plaid Cymru took 17, the Conservatives got 9 and the Liberal Democrats got 6.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A28)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A10)
2000 May 6, The 1st geocaching cache was found hidden outside Portland, Oregon, by Mike Teague. [see May 3]
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.A20)
2000 May 6, Fusaichi Pegasus won the 126th Kentucky Derby. He was the first favorite to win the Kentucky Derby since “Spectacular Bid" in 1979.
(SFEC, 5/7/00, p.D1)(AP, 5/6/01)
2000 May 6, Jack Mazzan, who’d spent 20 years on death row for the murder of a judge’s son, was released on bail, three months after the Nevada Supreme Court reversed his conviction. Before he could be tried again, Mazzan pleaded guilty to killing Richard Minor Jr. and received a life sentence; Mazzan has since sought parole, unsuccessfully.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2000 May 6, It was reported that Jin Wenchao, a former soldier and head of a Chinese construction firm involved in the Three Gorges dam project, had disappeared with over $120 million.
(SFC, 5/6/00, p.A12)
2000 May 6, In Sierra Leone rebels clashed with UN peacekeepers and advanced on Freetown. Rebel leader Foday Sankoh halted the rebel advance.
(SFEC, 5/7/00, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/00, p.A12)
2000 May 6, In Sudan Pres. Omar el-Bashir dismissed Hassan Turabi as the secretary-general of the ruling National Congress Party.
(SFC, 5/8/00, p.A13)
2001 May 6, An anonymous donor pledged $100 million to Johns Hopkins Univ. to develop a vaccine and new drugs for malaria.
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)
2001 May 6, American businessman Dennis Tito ended the world's first paid space vacation as he returned to Earth aboard a Russian capsule.
(AP, 5/6/02)
2001 May 6, SF held the grand opening of the Presidio Crissy Field Park. It had once served as a dump site for the Presidio. 87,000 tons of contaminated waste had been removed following a $32 million fundraising effort.
(SFC, 5/3/01, p.G1)(SFC, 10/2/13, p.D5)(SSFC, 12/1/19, p.A13)
2001 May 6, In Sari, Iran, the Mottaqi stadium grandstand collapsed and killed several people with hundreds injured.
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)
2001 May 6, Macedonian forces lobbed shells into villages seized by ethnic Albanian rebels.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C1)
2001 May 6, In the Philippines Pres. Arroyo lifted the “state of rebellion" order.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C1)
2001 May 6, In Spain Manuel Gimenez Abad (52), a politician of the ruling Popular Party, was shot to death in Zaragoza.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C3)
2001 May 6, In Syria Pope John Paul II prayed in the Great Umayyad Mosque, the 1st time a pontiff ever visited and prayed in a Muslim house of worship. He called for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.A1)(AP, 5/6/02)
2002 May 6, It was reported that the Bush administration planned to annul the 1998 US signature on the Rome Statute, a treaty for creating an int'l. war-crimes tribunal.
(WSJ, 5/6/02, p.A1,4)
2002 May 6, Federal regulators released documents that showed Enron Corp. had manipulated the California power system to increase profits.
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)
2002 May 6, Two mailbox pipe bombs were found in Colorado and another one in Nebraska.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A3)
2002 May 6, Otis Blackwell (70), songwriter, died in Nashville. His 1950s songs included “Don't Be Cruel," “All Shook Up," “Return to Sender," and “Great Balls of Fire."
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A31)
2002 May 6, Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX)
2002 May 6, In Afghanistan the CIA fired a missile from a Predator in an attempt to kill Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of Hezb-e-Islami, and his top aides outside Kabul.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A22)
2002 May 6, French Pres. Chirac appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin (center right) as PM.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A12)(Econ, 2/12/05, p.50)
2002 May 6, Jose Luis Nieto (56) raced his pickup into a crowd of toddlers in Ecatepec, near Mexico City, and killed 2 children aged 2 and 3. A daily school ceremony had blocked access to his house.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A12)
2002 May 6, Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was freed after 19 months of house arrest.
(AP, 5/6/03)
2002 May 6, In Nepal the government reported that army air strikes had killed an additional 200 rebels in the remote districts of Rolpa and Pyuthan.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A11)
2002 May 6, In the Netherlands Pim Fortuyn (54), a right-wing populist with an anti-immigrant platform, was shot to death in Hilversum. Volkert van der Graaf (32), an environmental activist, was arrested May 7 for the murder. He was later sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/02, p.A17)(AP, 5/6/03)
2002 May 6, Daan Goosen, South Africa scientist, passed a vial of genetically engineered bacteria to a retired US CIA officer and offered an entire collection of pathogens developed in SA bio-weapons research for $5 million and immigrations permits for 19 associates and family members. The deal collapsed.
(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.A16)
2002 May 6, Zimbabwe arrested an 8th journalist under its harsh new press law.
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)
2003 May 6, President Bush lifted Clinton-era sanctions (1993-1998) against Angola's UNITA rebels, citing the end of a quarter-century of civil war.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, White House budget chief Mitchell Daniels announced his resignation.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Florida Senator Bob Graham launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by accusing President Bush of retreating from the war on terrorism to "settle old scores" between the Bush family and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Kmart Corporation emerged from bankruptcy after more than 15 months of Chapter 11 protection.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Six Algerian soldiers were killed when suspected Islamic fighters bombed their vehicle and sprayed the survivors with gunfire.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, In northeastern India suspected separatist guerrillas killed 19 Bengali settlers in Tripura state.
(AP, 5/6/03)
2003 May 6, Ghazi Hammud, Baath regional chairman in the Kut district, was put in custody. He is No. 32 on Central Command's list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's regime.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, The Liberian government announced that Sam Bockerie (39), a guerrilla RUF leader, was killed in a shootout with Liberian soldiers.
(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A1)
2003 May 6, Saudi authorities seized a weapons cache and foiled plans by suspected terrorists. At least 19 men were sought.
(SFC, 5/8/03, p.A1)
2003 May 6, It was reported that AIDS in Zambia had cut the average life expectancy to 33 years from 44 a decade ago. One in 5 adults was reported to have HIV.
(WSJ, 5/6/03, p.A1)
2004 May 6, An estimated 51.1 million people tuned in for the final first-run episode of "Friends" on NBC.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2004 May 6, Pres. Bush told King Abdullah II of Jordan that he was sorry for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US guards.
(SFC, 5/7/0, p.A1)
2004 May 6, The US FBI, using fingerprint evidence, arrested Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield as part of the investigation into the Madrid, Spain, train bombings. The bureau later said Mayfield's arrest had been a mistake, and apologized. In 2006 the US government agreed to pay Mayfield $2 million to settle a lawsuit.
(AP, 5/6/05)(SFC, 11/30/06, p.A7)
2004 May 6, Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to one year in prison.
(SFC, 5/7/04, p.C3)
2004 May 6, An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden offered rewards in gold for the killing of top U.S. and U.N. officials in Iraq or of the citizens of any nation fighting there.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 6, The Bank of England raised interest rates a quarter point to 4.25%.
(Econ, 5/8/04, p.53)
2004 May 6, The leader of the breakaway region of Adzharia fled after street protests, and Georgia's president flew into the restive province, vowing to pursue the integration of two other separatist regions.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2004 May 6, A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside the so-called Green Zone that houses the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, killing five Iraqi civilians and a U.S. soldier. U.S. soldiers backed by tanks and armored fighting vehicles seized control of the governor's office from Shiite militiamen in the city of Najaf. As many as 41 Iraqis were killed in Najaf.
(AP, 5/6/04)(SFC, 5/7/04, p.A17)
2004 May 6, A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on charges they intentionally infected some 393 children with the AIDS virus as part of an experiment to find a cure. 9 Libyan health workers were acquitted. Under Libyan law, death sentences generate an automatic 60-day period for appeal.
(AP, 5/6/04)(SSFC, 6/6/04, E3)
2004 May 6, A Mexican court sentenced eight drug-gang members to 40 years each in prison for their roles in the 1993 shooting of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and 6 others at a Guadalajara airport.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 6, In Nigeria lawmakers in the mostly Islamic Kano state approved a law calling for Muslims to be whipped and Christians to be jailed if they are caught drinking alcohol.
(AP, 5/8/04)
2004 May 6, Hundreds of Rwandan rebels attacked Kingi village in volatile eastern Congo, sparking a two-hour battle in which at least five Congolese soldiers and insurgents were killed.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2005 May 6, President Bush arrived in Riga, Latvia, as he opened a fast-paced, four-country journey to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2005 May 6, Joe Grant (96), pioneering Disney artist/storyman, died. He was co-story director on "Fantasia," co-writer of "Dumbo" and designer of the witch/queen character in "Snow White." Grant remained vital and active at Disney feature animation until his death.
(www.talkdisney.com/forums/printthread.php?t=27485)
2005 May 6, In Bahrain about 5,000 citizens jammed a main road in the capital, waving red and white Bahraini flags in the 2nd rally for constitutional reforms in a month.
(AP, 5/7/05)
2005 May 6, British Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled his Cabinet, changing leadership in defense and health but keeping mostly familiar faces after a third term victory dampened by a reduced majority in Parliament.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2005 May 6, Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah). In 1951 Israel’s Parliament set the day of commemoration for the 27th of Nissan, a few days after the end of Passover.
(WSJ, 5/6/05, p.W11)
2005 May 6, An Indian federal probe into disappearing tigers in a state-protected reserve has found the entire population of big cats has been wiped out by poachers. "The special investigation team in its preliminary assessment report has indicated that there was no evidence to prove the presence of tigers in Sariska (national park)."
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Arab television station al-Jazeera said militants holding an Australian engineer hostage have issued a 72-hour ultimatum for Australia to start pulling troops out of Iraq.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Insurgent car bombs struck a market in Suwayrah killing 17 civilians, and a police bus in Tikrit, killing at least 8 policemen.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, At least a dozen bodies were found buried at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Baghdad, some of them blindfolded and shot in the head.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, In Lebanon an explosion ravaged a shopping area and set off a fire near a Christian religious radio station in the port city of Jounieh north of Beirut.
(AP, 5/7/05)
2005 May 6, In southwestern Nepal unidentified gunmen fatally shot Narayan Pokhrel, the chief of the World Hindu Council's Nepal chapter, while he was touring villages.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah movement narrowly fended off a strong challenge by Hamas to win local elections, but the Islamic militant group captured the 3 biggest races in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, establishing itself as a major political force.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Romania's foreign minister said his government would keep its troops in Iraq supporting postwar operations despite the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, The UN Sec. Gen. appointed Alvaro de Soto as the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. De Soto resigned in May, 2007.
(www.un.org/unsco/coordinator.html)
2006 May 6, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Stipe Mesic of Croatia, the final stop of a three-nation tour dominated by the issue of political reform in countries making the post-Cold War transition toward democracy.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2006 May 6, Lillian Gertrud Asplund (99), the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died in Shrewsbury, Mass.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2006 May 6, Chen Li (b.1929), a Chinese journalist and former editor-in-chief of China Daily, the communist government's main English-language newspaper, died in Beijing.
(AP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, Gen. Frantisek Perina (b.1911), a Czech WWII fighter ace who fought against Nazi Germany in the French and British air forces died in Prague.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, In Athens, Greece, some 30,000 people marched in an anti-war and anti-globalization demonstration that also saw anarchist attacks on banks, shops and police vehicles. The march was organized by the European Social Forum, which was holding a four-day meeting on the outskirts of Athens.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, At least seven people, including three Iraqi army officers and two children, were killed and seven others kidnapped in a series of rebel attacks across Iraq.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, A chemical weapons expert for a major Islamic extremist group was killed by security forces in Baghdad. Ali Wali, a member of Ansar al-Islam, died during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.
(AP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, A British military helicopter crashed in Basra and the 5 people were killed. Flight Lieutenant Sarah Mulvihill died in the crash in the southern city of Basra along with Wing Commander John Coxen, Lieutenant Commander Darren Chapman, Lieutenant David Dobson and Marine Paul Collins. Iraqis hurled stones at British troops and set fire to at least one armored vehicle that rushed to the scene. Four Iraqi adults and a child were reported killed during in the melee when Shiite gunmen exchanged fire with British soldiers. 2 insurgents were killed in Tikrit while they were planting a roadside bomb.
(AP, 5/6/06)(AP, 5/7/06)(AFP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, Teachers at five schools in the West Bank city of Hebron went on strike, demanding their overdue paychecks in the first sign of unrest by public employees. Hundreds of government workers, most of them supporters of Abbas' moderate Fatah faction, also protested in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, Singaporeans voted in legislative elections. The ruling party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. It has won every general election held in the island nation since it became independent in 1965.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, A local rights group said Zimbabwe state security agents have stepped up the use of torture against government opponents, with 19 cases reported in March compared with three during the previous two months.
(Reuters, 5/6/06)
2007 May 6, Carey Bell, Mississippi-born blues harmonica player, died in Chicago.
(SFC, 5/8/07, p.B5)
2007 May 6, In eastern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed 5 police and wounded two others, while a clash in the west left eight police and at least four suspected militants dead. An Afghan soldier shot and killed two US troops and wounded 2 others outside Pul-e-Charkhi prison. The next day Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said the Afghan soldier was mentally ill. A bus crashed in northern Afghanistan, sparking a fire that left nine people dead and 25 injured.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, In Brazil Eneas Carneiro (68), a three-time presidential candidate who was later elected to Congress with the largest number of votes ever received by a Brazilian lawmaker, died of leukemia.
(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, Britain’s Home Secretary John Reid announced that he would resign from the government within weeks, just as Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is likely to take over from Tony Blair as prime minister.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Lord Weatherill (86), the last speaker to wear the traditional shoulder-length wig, died. He had ushered Britain's House of Commons into the television age.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 6, In Egypt a plane carrying foreign peacekeepers across the Sinai desert crashed near a stretch of highway where it had tried to make an emergency landing, killing eight French soldiers and a Canadian.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, French voters turned out in force in a presidential election offering divergent choices for the future, with conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy urging the French to work more and Socialist Segolene Royal pledging to safeguard welfare protections. Nicolas Sarkozy (52), a US-friendly conservative and an immigrant's son, defeated Socialist Segolene Royal by 53% to 47% with about 85% voter turnout.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, A car bomb ripped through a wholesale food market in western Baghdad, flattening cars and shops and killing at least 30 people in the deadliest of a wave of attacks across Iraq that killed at least 95 people. A car bomb near the Ministry of Labor in Baghdad killed five people and wounded 10. Insurgents exploded another car bomb outside a police station in the Sunni town of Samarra, killing 12 officers and disabling the city’s water system. A few minutes later, militants in the town attacked a police checkpoint near the Askariya shrine, killing another police officer. US and Iraqi forces raided the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, uncovering a weapons cache, a torture room and killing at least eight insurgents in a gunbattle. In Diyala 6 US soldiers and a Russian photojournalist were killed when a massive bomb destroyed their vehicle. Two American soldiers died in separate bombings in Baghdad.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)(SFC, 5/7/07, p.A16)(SFC, 5/11/07, p.A18)
2007 May 6, Two Israeli human rights groups charged in a report that Israel's Shin Bet security service uses torture in its interrogation of Palestinian prisoners, violating a 1999 court ruling outlawing such practices.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Italian news said a Vatican court for the first time has issued a drug conviction, giving a former employee of the Holy See a four-month suspended sentence for cocaine use.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Japan pledged $100 million in grants to the Asian Development Bank to combat global warming and promote greener investment in the region and called for a stronger international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, More than 18,000 people stripped down and bared it all in Mexico City's vast main square for US photographer Spencer Tunick's biggest nude shoot yet.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Pakistan's sacked top judge, declared the "era of dictatorship is over" to cheers from tens of thousands as he took his battle with President Pervez Musharraf to the eastern city of Lahore. In northwestern Pakistan a passenger bus veered off a mountain road and fell about 600 feet into a ravine, killing 21 people and injuring seven others.
(AFP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, In Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region Islamic militants began confiscating music cassettes from public buses and ordering shops to only sell CDs promoting jihad in the latest push to Talibanize the lawless frontier region.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 6, Palestinian militants opened fire near a children's festival at a UN-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a bodyguard of a local Fatah leader and wounding seven other people. Palestinian militants shot and seriously injured an Israeli motorist who was driving west of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, In South Africa Helen Zille, mayor of Cape Town, was elected as leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA).
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.51)
2007 May 6, Spain's Supreme Court barred hundreds of Basque separatist candidates from running in regional elections later this month because of links to an outlawed party closely tied to armed group ETA.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, In eastern Sri Lanka a landmine detonated by Tamil Tigers killed three police commandos, while seven suspected rebels died elsewhere in the embattled region.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Frank Hsieh, former prime minister of Taiwan, won the ballot of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as candidate for next year’s presidential elections. Hsieh favored better relations with China.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.44)
2007 May 6, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul withdrew his candidacy for presidential elections after Parliament failed for the second time to vote him into office.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2008 May 6, Sen. Barack Obama climbed within 200 delegates of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. In the Indiana primary Clinton won 51% to 49%. In North Carolina Obama won 56% to 42%.
(AP, 5/7/08)(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A1)
2008 May 6, In New Mexico Wayne Bent (66), the leader of an apocalyptic sect, was arrested and charged with felony sex crimes against children.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A4)
2008 May 6, In California the Vallejo City Council voted to declare bankruptcy after talks with public employee unions failed to address a $16 million shortfall.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.B1)
2008 May 6, The California Community College system announced a $50 million gift from the Bernard Osher Foundation.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.B1)
2008 May 6, In Georgia William Earl Lynd (53) was executed for the murder of his live-in girlfriend. He was the first inmate executed since the Supreme Court upheld lethal injections on April 16.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A2)
2008 May 6, In Afghanistan a Canadian soldier was killed and another was wounded in a gun battle with insurgents near Kandahar city.
(AFP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 6, Canadian researchers reported that suicide victims who were abused as children have clear genetic changes in their brains in a finding they said shows neglect can cause biological effects.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Chile’s Chaiten volcano spewed lava and blasted ash more than 12 miles into the sky, prompting a total evacuation of the provincial capital and other settlements.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Tokyo for a feel-good visit that will use ping pong and pandas to take the edge off more contentious problems like border disputes, historical animosity and concerns over China's rule in Tibet.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Djibouti, a key US ally in the Horn of Africa, urged the UN Security Council to take immediate action to prevent a conflict with its northern neighbor Eritrea.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Egyptian border police fatally shot a Nigerian man who was trying to cross illegally into Israel. Guards also shot three Sudanese men and one woman who were also trying to sneak into Israel.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Officials in Indonesia said at least 13 illegal gold miners were killed in a landslide in remote Papua province.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, At least four civilians were killed overnight in the Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. The US military announced that about 3,500 American soldiers are scheduled to leave Iraq in the coming weeks. US Hellfire missiles killed 3 militants planting a roadside bomb in the Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad.
(AP, 5/6/08)(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A3)
2008 May 6, In Italy the data-protection authority ruled that releasing tax returns into cyberspace was illicit. Tax authorities had recently put all 38.5 million tax returns for 2005 up on the internet. A measure authorizing the released had been signed on March 5, but not enacted until the defeat of the Prodi government.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.61)
2008 May 6, Kenya froze the assets of businessman Felicien Kabuga, the most wanted suspect in Rwanda's genocide, saying it would stop him avoiding capture or helping other fugitives. The US government has offered a $5 million bounty for Kabuga's capture.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)(AP, 9/23/09)
2008 May 6, Lebanon’s government declared Hezbollah’s military telecommunications network illegal and said it was a threat to state security. The cabinet removed Beirut airport’s security chief over alleged ties to Hezbollah.
(WSJ, 5/7/08, p.A1)(AP, 5/8/08)
2008 May 6, In northern and central Mali attacks by Tuareg rebels on several army posts left one person dead.
(AFP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Mauritania’s President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi said in a statement he had named economist Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef (50) as prime minister.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 6, Myanmar's junta decided to postpone voting on a new constitution in areas hardest-hit by a devastating cyclone as the death toll soared above 22,500.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Niger Delta rebels said that former US President Jimmy Carter had agreed to act as a mediator if invited by Nigeria's government, and the group promised to declare a ceasefire if talks went ahead.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, In northwest Pakistan a suicide bomber riding a rickshaw attacked a police checkpoint and gunmen fired on officers guarding a bank, killing five people and testing the new government's fledgling peace process.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Russia and the US signed a long awaited civilian nuclear cooperation pact that will allow firms from the world's two biggest atomic powers to expand bilateral nuclear trade.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, In Somalia hundreds of youths in Mogadishu lobbed stones at shops and cars and set tires ablaze in a second day of violence over soaring food prices. Amnesty Int’l. accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Swiss bank UBS, hard hit by the US subprime crisis, reported a first-quarter loss of $10.97 billion and said it will slash almost 7 percent of its work force.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Two senior Taiwanese officials resigned over the loss of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to persuade Papua New Guinea to officially recognize Taiwan.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2009 May 6, Maine's Gov. John Baldacci signed a freshly passed bill approving gay marriage, making it the fifth state to approve the practice and moving New England closer to allowing it throughout the region.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In California a wildfire surged into Santa Barbara forcing at least 8,000 residents to evacuate.
(SFC, 5/7/09, p.B6)
2009 May 6, New H1N1 flu cases across Europe and a second US death kept health officials on alert despite signs Mexico's epidemic had passed its peak. Mexican health officials said that testing of backlogged cases has increased the confirmed swine flu death toll from 31 to 42, including three new deaths in the past two days.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Virginia police found former NASCAR driver Kevin Grubb (31) dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Grubb was suspended from NASCAR indefinitely in 2006 because he refused to submit to a random drug test following the Busch Series race at Richmond International Raceway.
(AP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 6, US scientists in the Jason submersible from Woods Hole, Mass., filmed the West Mata undersea volcano between Samoa and Fiji. The summit of the volcano now reached some 4,000 feet from the sea floor and was still some 4,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
(SFC, 12/18/09, p.A14)(http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/05/undersea-eruption.html)
2009 May 6, Ben Southall (34), a bungee jumping, ostrich-riding British charity worker was named the winner of what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World," a 150,000 Australian dollar ($111,000) contract to serve as the caretaker of Australia’s tropical Hamilton Island. He beat out nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world for assignment to swim, explore and relax in the Great Barrier Reef for six months while writing a blog to promote the area.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Bangladesh Home Minister Sahara Khatun said the UAE has given the government nearly $1.44 million to distribute among 879 Bangladeshi children who worked as jockeys at camel races after it was banned in 1993. The law was openly flouted until authorities reached an agreement in 2005 with UNICEF to help repatriate and rehabilitate child jockeys, who were mostly taken from poorer Muslim nations such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Brazilian officials said at least 29 people have been killed by floods and mudslides in northern Brazil as authorities struggled to rush aid to dozens of small cities cut off from civilization by overflowing rivers in the Amazon region.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Canada and the EU signed an "open skies" pact under which airlines from the two trading partners will be able to fly freely between any airport in the 27-country EU and any in Canada.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Iraq a car bomb exploded at the entrance to a fruit and vegetable market in south Baghdad, killing 15 people and wounding about 40. Hours later, another car bomb exploded in the capital's Karradah district, killing two people and wounding six.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Malaysian officials said 2 political activists have been arrested ahead of a parliamentary showdown between the government and the opposition over control of northern Perak state.
(AFP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia after heavy criticism from neighboring Russia and a brief mutiny in the Georgian military.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Nepal police clashed with protesting Maoists, who vowed to prevent a new government from being formed unless the president supports the firing of the country's army chief. The key dispute has thrown the Himalayan country into crisis.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Pakistani helicopter gunships and ground troops attacked the Taliban in the Swat valley. Pakistan said it killed more than 80 militants in heavy bombardments in an upsurge of fighting that has caused tens of thousands to flee and threatened to torpedo a northwest peace deal. There were also reports of civilian casualties in fighting in Swat.
(AFP, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/7/09)(Econ, 5/9/09, p.45)
2009 May 6, Russia said it is expelling two Moscow-based NATO employees who are Canadian diplomats in retaliation for NATO's recent expulsion of two Russian envoys from its headquarters in Belgium.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Russia retired Gen. Valentin Varennikov (85), a hawkish World War II veteran who directed the Soviet war in Afghanistan, died. He had joined the rebellion against Mikhail Gorbachev that sped the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Spanish authorities said they have arrested 29 people suspected of forging credit cards to finance an elaborate scheme to smuggle Cubans into the US from Mexico.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, South Africa's parliament has elected Jacob Zuma as the country's president. Zuma won 277 votes in the 400 member National Assembly. Zuma's African National Congress won elections last month with 65.9% of the vote. He is due to be inaugurated on May 9.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels said intense fighting in the war zone was killing and wounding hundreds of civilians a day and asked for the UN to push for urgent food shipments to avert a hunger crisis.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Senior Sudanese aid official Hassabo Mohammed Abdelrahman said that Khartoum was ready to allow foreign aid groups to operate in Darfur but ruled out the return of the 13 aid agencies kicked out in March.
(AFP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 6, Venezuelan prosecutors filed embezzlement and other charges against a former Caracas mayor who supports the government of President Hugo Chavez. Juan Barreto, mayor from 2004 to 2008, denied the allegations and vowed to clear his name in court.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Zimbabwe a top rights activist and 14 others were ordered freed on bail after Zimbabwe's president and prime minister forced a judge to reverse her decision to send them back to the prison where they said they had been tortured. She refused, however, to free three others she had ordered returned to prison, saying their case was more serious because they had allegedly been found with explosives. The last 3 were released on May 13.
(AP, 5/6/09)(AFP, 5/14/09)
2010 May 6, The US FCC announced a plan to classify the last mile of internet access as a telecommunications service.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.86)
2010 May 6, The Dow Jones fell nearly 1000 points in intraday trading, but recovered to close at 10,520.32, down 347.8. Unrest in Greece and a trading glitch were cited as causes. After 5 months regulators said the “flash crash" was sparked by a sloppily executed sell order of one mutual fund group when the market was already jittery over economic turmoil in Europe.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.A1)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.107)
2010 May 6, In Ramapo, NY, Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor (51) was charged with raping a 16-year-old runaway who police said was forced into prostitution by a man who had beaten her up. Third-degree rape is a charge levied when the victim is under the age of consent, which is 17 in New York.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, SFJazz unveiled plans for the new 3-story, $60 million SF Jazz Center to rise at the corner of Fell and Franklin streets.
(SFC, 5/6/10, p.A1)
2010 May 6, An E.coli outbreak, possibly linked to tainted lettuce, sickened at least 19 people in Ohio, New York and Michigan prompting a recall throughout much of the US. Freshway Food in Sidney, Ohio, said it was recalling lettuce sold in 23 states and Washington DC.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.A4)
2010 May 6, In California Joseph Mercado (27) shot and killed Serena Tarin, his ex-girlfriend, as well as her father and brother. 6 other family members escaped the rampage in Hawaiian Gardens, LA County. Mercado was arrested by police after a bullet grazed his head.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.C6)
2010 May 6, Afghan officials said the Taliban have ordered mobile phone operators to shut down their networks during the night in a northern Afghan province, a sign of the militants' increasing influence in a once peaceful area. A NATO service member was killed in a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. Another died from a mortar or rocket attack in the east.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Julio Alberto Poch (57), a pilot who allegedly flew death flights for Argentina's military dictatorship, was extradited from Spain. Spain acted on Argentina's request, arresting him in front of his passengers and family during a stop in Valencia on what was supposed to be his final flight back to the Netherlands before retiring from Transavia.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Britain held national elections expected to deny all three major parties an outright majority, meaning the first so-called hung Parliament since 1974 is likely. David Cameron claimed the mantle of power after the Conservatives won the most seats in the election, though not enough to form a majority. Labour came in second, which for the first time since the 1970s produced no outright winner. Labour could still govern with the help of the Liberal Democrats.
(AP, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, In China a tornado and strong winds swept through the southwest early in the day, killing at least 58 people and injuring nearly 200. The southwestern municipality of Chongqing was the worst hit after a tornado and gale-force winds killed 29 people. 10 were left dead in Hunan province and 6 dead in Guangdong province. Torrential rain in the eastern province of Jiangxi killed seven people. 6 people died in rain-triggered landslides in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
(AP, 5/6/10)(AFP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, A Chinese media report said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il told President Hu Jintao during his secretive trip to Beijing that he is ready to return to stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations.
(AFP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Wan Yanhai, a prominent Chinese AIDS activist, fled China for the United States with his wife and 4-year-old daughter to escape increasing government harassment of him and his organization. Wan, a former Health Ministry official, founded the Aizhixing Institute in 1994 to raise awareness and fight discrimination.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 6, In southern Ethiopia attackers hurled a bomb at a political meeting in Adaba, killing two people and wounding 14 others just over two weeks before national elections. On May 20 Tadesse Haile was sentenced to death for throwing hand grenades into the packed stadium. He was also convicted on planting bombs close to a construction site on May 5.
(AFP, 5/7/10)(AFP, 5/20/10)
2010 May 6, Israel declined to address the international pressure that's been mounting for it to join the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, saying only that its refusal to acknowledge or deny it possesses atomic weapons is a pillar of its military deterrence.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In Kashmir a fierce gunbattle between Muslim rebels and Indian security forces in the Indian-controlled portion killed six insurgents and two soldiers.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Myanmar leaders of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party said they would continue working as a social movement after a new election law forced its dissolution as a political party at midnight.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson crashed to a shock defeat in the general election after a sex and cash scandal involving his wife battered his reputation.
(AFP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan (52) was sworn as president of the oil-rich African nation riven by religious and political divisions, hours after the death of the incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua (58). Jonathan vowed that electoral reform and fighting graft would be top priorities.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of smuggling large amounts of weapons into the West Bank as part of the militant group's efforts to undermine his administration.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In Paraguay Jesus Ortiz, alleged EPP logistics coordinator, was captured.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.42)
2010 May 6, Russian forces freed a hijacked Russian oil tanker and rescued its crew in a helicopter-backed operation that killed a Somali pirate. Investigators said the 10 captured pirates, who seized the China-bound MV Moscow University in the Gulf of Aden, will be brought to Moscow for prosecution.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In southern Sudan government troops clashed with soldiers loyal to renegade General George Athor, leaving 53 dead and ending hopes of a negotiated end to his mini revolt.
(Reuters, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, A Taiwanese fishing boat, the Tai Yuan 227, was hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast who demanded a ransom for the crew.
(AP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 6, Thailand's PM Abhisit Vejjajiva said he would dissolve Parliament in September, paving the way for new elections demanded by anti-government protesters if they end their crippling occupation of Bangkok's commercial district.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2011 May 6, Afghan police killed 10 militants in a gun battle in eastern Paktika province.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Algeria a bomb struck a military convoy on a highway linking Jijel to Constantine, killing five soldiers and injuring five others. Journalist, Ahmed Nezar, was shot dead in his hometown of Baghlia.
(AFP, 5/7/11)(Reuters, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Australia's Defense Ministry announced it will slash 1,000 civilian jobs as part of a belt-tightening exercise to bring the national budget back into surplus.
(AFP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Brazilian federal police confirmed that 16 suspected members of a Serbian gang were arrested between May1-5 across the country. The crackdown concluded a two-year operation that resulted in 35 arrests, the seizure of 1,370 pounds (620 kilograms) of cocaine and the equivalent of $1.2 million.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Brazil’s Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo launched a disarmament campaign hoping to take more than 1 million guns off the streets by the end of the year.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, The EU agreed to place sanctions on Syrian officials next week as it tries to halt a government crackdown against protesters.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, France ordered 14 diplomats loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to leave the country within 48 hours.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, A Guinean government minister said at least 25 people have been killed and a mosque has been destroyed in fighting that took place earlier this week in Galapaye.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Nearly 800 Air India pilots demanding more pay ended their 10-day-old strike, which cost the state-run airline around 12 million rupees ($2.7 million) a day.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Commuters in Italy scrambled to find the few buses and subway trains running during a one-day general strike that also affected air and rail travel, banks, public offices and schools.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Ivory Coast UN investigators headed to a soccer field in Yopougon believed to be the site of a new mass grave. 29 bodies were counted in the grave. A resident said that militants loyal to arrested strongman Laurent Gbagbo swept through the neighborhood amid celebrations over Gbagbo's April 11 arrest.
(AP, 5/8/11)
2011 May 6, Japan's PM Naoto Kan ordered the suspension of operations at an ageing nuclear power plant southwest of Tokyo because it is located close to a dangerous tectonic faultline.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Kenyan authorities said they have seized the tusks of 58 elephants, totaling one ton of ivory, after sniffer dogs led investigators to containers at the country's main airport that were bound for Nigeria.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Moamer Kadhafi's regime reacted angrily to a NATO-led decision to provide funding to the three-month-old rebellion against his rule in Libya, describing as "piracy" plans to tap its assets frozen abroad.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, A ship carrying up to 600 migrants trying to flee Libya sank off the coast of the North African country. At least three other boats that departed Libya in late March have disappeared, bringing to 800 the number of people believed to have perished at sea trying to reach European shores.
(AP, 5/9/11)
2011 May 6, Mexico authorities said they recovered 11 more bodies at a series of mass grave pits in Durango, bringing the total number of bodies found in a monthlong search of the pits to at least 157. Cartel gunmen fired on a military convoy in Monterrey with a grenade launcher and hit a bus carrying employees of a US-owned assembly plant. One attacker was killed. Prosecutors said they have detained four local policemen, five Guatemalans and one Honduran in connection with mass kidnappings of migrants in the border city of Reynosa. Police captured Jose Zarco Cardenas (22) and an accomplice in Mexico City. He had recently begun heading drug operations in Morelos state for a gang that broke off from the Beltran Leyva cartel.
(AP, 5/6/11)(SFC, 5/9/11, p.A2)
2011 May 6, In Nigeria polling opened in some parts of the state of Imo for a governorship election after irregularities marred a previous exercise. Attackers killed at least 16 people and set fire to more than a dozen houses in Tafawa Balewa, Bauchi state, a town that has been beset by years of sectarian violence.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(Reuters, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, In Pakistan a US drone attack targeted a vehicle and a compound in North Waziristan killing 16 people, including 10 Taliban militants. Hundreds of Pakistanis took to the streets in Abbottabad, Quetta, Multan and Peshawar cheering Osama bin Laden and shouting "death to America" to condemn a unilateral US raid on their soil that killed bin Laden. Assailants using rockets and guns attacked a group of people exercising at an open soccer field on the outskirts of Quetta, killing six of them and wounding 13.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/6/11)(AP, 2/25/12)
2011 May 6, In Poland one miner and one rescuer were already confirmed dead after methane ignited some 2,700 feet (820 meters) underground at the Krupinski mine near Katowice. The body of a missing rescuer was found on May 12, bringing the death toll to 3.
(AP, 5/12/11)
2011 May 6, Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin proposed creating a "broad popular front" ahead of Russia's parliamentary election, in an apparent attempt to counter growing public discontent with his political party and solidify support.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Spanish police searched for 22 African migrants missing in the Mediterranean Sea after a packed boat they were traveling in nearly sank.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Thousands of Syrians rallied on a "Day of Defiance" even as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad deployed tanks in at least three centers of an uprising against his autocratic rule. Security forces opened fire on protesters, killing at least 30 people, as thousands joined demonstrations across the country calling for an end to Assad's regime.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, In Togo 26 people died after their bus crashed. The victims were mainly merchants from Burkina Faso who were traveling to the Togolese capital for business.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Venezuela authorities at a prison in western Tachira state found the bodies of eight inmates killed in what officials say is a conflict between rival gangs fighting for control of their cellblocks.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis flooded a boulevard on the western edge of the capital, releasing colorful balloons to press their demand for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, while he denounced his opponents as "terrorists" in a speech to supporters nearby.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2012 May 6, George Lindsey (83), TV actor, died in Nashville. He spent nearly 30 years as the grinning Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" (1964-1968) and "Hee Haw" (1971-1993). He played a jovial service station attendant on "Mayberry RFD" (1968-1971).
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Sky News Arabia, a joint venture between an Abu Dhabi royal and the British broadcaster BSkyB, launched a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel with a pledge to be impartial in a region where government influence over media is endemic.
(Reuters, 5/8/12)
2012 May 6, In northern Afghanistan a flash flood swept through a village, killing 21 people, many of them members of a wedding party in Dhy Marda village in Sari Pul province. Floods overnight in two other districts in the province killed three people.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, In Afghanistan a soldier with NATO's US-led coalition was killed by a man in Afghan army uniform, in the latest so-called "green-on-blue" attack. The individual who opened fire was killed when coalition forces returned fire. ISAF announced that one coalition service member died in a roadside bomb attack in the east of the country. 4 gunmen took over a tall building in Paktika province and started shooting down into surrounding government compounds, wounding one civilian before security forces killed them.
(AFP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/10/12)
2012 May 6, Armenians voted for a new parliament. President Serge Sarkisian's party won a majority of seats in a parliamentary election that international observers said were competitive and peaceful. The Republican Party won at least 68 of the parliament's 131 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, isolated in a Beijing hospital, appealed for official help to leave the country after a US-brokered diplomatic solution paved the way for his departure. Chen has been offered a fellowship from New York University.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In CongoDRC the March 23 Movement (M23) was created by army mutineers who were part of the former rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a Congolese Tutsi force that Rwanda denied supporting when it was waging its insurgency. The M23 Tutsi leaders came from the same ethnic group as Rwanda’s Pres. Kagame.
(AFP, 5/28/12)(Econ, 11/24/12, p.57)
2012 May 6, Egypt's Islamist-dominated parliament approved a ban on the country's next president from sending civilians for trial by military tribunals, but preserving that power for the military itself.
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, France voted in a presidential run-off election. Socialist challenger Francois Hollande (51.62%) defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy (48.38%) by capitalizing on public anger over the government's austerity policies. Sarkozy became the first French one-term president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing lost his re-election bid in 1981.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, Greeks cast ballots in their most critical election in decades. Greece voters let a far-right extremist group into Parliament and gave no party enough votes to govern alone. Conservative leader Antonis Samaras began trying to form a new coalition government. New Democracy came first with 18.85% and 108 of Parliament's 300 seats. The big winner was the anti-bailout Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, whose unprecedented second place with 16.78% gave it 52 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, It was reported that the US military has established 3 new forward bases in Honduras to interdict smugglers moving cocaine toward the US from South America.
(SSFC, 5/6/12, p.A8)
2012 May 6, A tornado ripped through eastern Japan, killing a teenager, destroying dozens of homes and cutting power to around 20,000 households. Television footage from Tsukuba showed houses swept from their foundations, overturned cars in muddy debris and fallen concrete power poles.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In Lebanon more than 1,000 people marched in Beirut calling for the establishment of a secular state in the country which is ruled by a system of power-sharing along religious lines.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Malaysian clerics issued a fatwa against demonstrations.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In northern Nigerian soldiers killed four suspected members of Boko Haram Islamist sect in a raid on their hideout in Kano. About a dozen suspected Islamists were arrested in the raid.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In Pakistan Taliban militants killed 9 soldiers in an ambush in Miran Shah, North Waziristan. The army retaliated with helicopter gunships, which pounded suspected militant hideouts and also hit three houses and a mosque in the town, killing 3 civilians. The military raided two houses in Miran Shah, killing a militant commander and several of his colleagues.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, In Russia at least 20,000 opposition demonstrators marched through Moscow, shouting "enough lies," in a final show of protest before Vladimir Putin is inaugurated once again as president.
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Serbs voted in a national election. The opposition Progressive Party won a narrow victory. A presidential runoff will be held on May 20 between pro-Western leader Boris Tadic, who won 26.7% of the vote, and nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, who had 25.5%. Nikolic's Progressives won 73 seats in the 250-member assembly, ahead of Tadic's Democrats, which took 68 seats. Ivica Dacic's Socialists won 45 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)(SFC, 5/8/12, p.A2)
2012 May 6, In eastern Yemen al-Qaeda leader Fahd al-Quso, who was wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was killed along with 2 bodyguards in an air strike in Rafadh, Shabwa province.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2013 May 6, In New York 30 horses being taken to slaughter in Canada were burned alive when the tractor-trailer transporting them caught fire on an upstate highway.
(Reuters, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Cleveland 3 women, Amanda Berry (27), Gina DeJesus (23) and Michelle Knight (32), who went missing separately about a decade ago, when they were in their teens or early 20s, were found alive in a residential area just south of downtown. 3 brothers, Ariel Castro (52), Pedro (54) and Onil Castro (50) were arrested. On May 8 Ariel Castro was charged with kidnapping and rape of the 3 women. His two borthers were not charged. On July 26 Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty.
(AP, 5/7/13)(AP, 5/8/13)(SFC, 5/8/13, p.A10)(AP, 5/9/13)(SFC, 7/27/13, p.A6)
2013 May 6, The SEC issued a long report on the financial misdeeds of Harrisburg, Pa. The state capital has been bankrupt since 2011.
(Econ, 5/11/13, p.80)
2013 May 6, US Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinsky (41), head of Air Force sexual assault prevention, was arrested on charges of groping a woman a day earlier in a suburban Virginia parking lot.
(SFC, 5/8/13, p.A8)
2013 May 6, Argentina’s Pres. Cristina Fernandez ruled out any currency devaluation while she's president, and dismissed as election-year politics a brewing scandal over allegations of money laundering by businessmen close to her and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, Bangladesh police banned all rallies in Dhaka for the rest of the day after at least 31 people died in clashes between police and large numbers of Islamic hardliners demanding that the government enact an anti-blasphemy law. The dead included police officers. The Awami League security crackdown on members of Hefajat-e-Islam, an extreme Islamist group, left as many as 50 people dead in Dhaka. Another 20 were reported killed in clashes in Narayanganj.
(AP, 5/6/13)(SSFC, 5/12/13, p.A4)(Econ, 5/11/13, p.54)
2013 May 6, China’s Pres. Xi Jinping met with Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and urged dialogue in Middle East peace negotiations.
(Econ, 5/11/13, p.52)
2013 May 6, Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez (56), who spent 13 years in a US prison, renounced his American citizenship, part of a deal that allows him to avoid returning to the US to serve out the remainder of his probation. He is one of the so-called "Cuban Five," intelligence agents convicted in 2001 of spying on US military installations in South Florida.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Germany Hans Lipschis (93), deported from the US in 1983 for lying about his Nazi past, was taken into custody after authorities concluded there was "compelling evidence" he was involved in crimes at Auschwitz while there from 1941 to 1943. Lipschis was released in December after a court concluded he was suffering from dementia. On Feb 28 the Ellwangen state court said that because of “worsening dementia" he could not be tried.
(AP, 5/6/13)(SFC, 12/7/13, p.A2)(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A2)
2013 May 6, In Iraq two car bombs blew up in a Baghdad suburb, killing 6 people in the deadlier of two attacks that left at least 10 dead. Attackers in a speeding car threw grenades at Sunni worshippers leaving al-Ihsan mosque in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, killing 7 and wounding 16.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security Cabinet and then departed to China for a scheduled visit.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Giulio Andreotti (b.1919), Italy's former seven-time premier and a symbol of post-war Italy, died at his home in Rome.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak appeared before the media to somberly acknowledge that his coalition had won general elections for the 13th time in a row. However the National Front polled only 5.24 million votes to the opposition's 5.62 million votes.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Nigeria two pilots were killed when their Alpha jet fighter went down 37 miles (60 km) west of Niamey.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Pakistan an explosion ripped through a campaign rally of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, a leading Islamist party, killing 25 people and wounding about 70 in the northwest Kurram tribal region.
(AP, 5/6/13)(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Russia about 20,000 protesters thronged Bolotnaya Square across from the Kremlin, a year after a protest at the same spot turned violent on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Syria regime warplanes pounded rebel positions inside the Mannagh air base as clashes between rebels and government forces raged on.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Yemeni tribal gunmen kidnapped two Egyptian technicians working in a cement factory in the south.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2014 May 6, The Obama administration released an updated report on how climate change requires urgent action to counter impacts that touch every corner of the country.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Pablo Picasso’s 1932 oil painting “Portrait of Dora Maar" sold for $22.6 million at a Christie’s auction in NYC.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/mmhox85)
2014 May 6, The city council of Beverly Hills passed a unanimous resolution calling for Brunei to change its laws or divest its ownership of the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. It has been the target of a growing Hollywood boycott since Brunei embraced its new penal code last week.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Bill Dana, one of the test pilots for NASA’s hypersonic X-15 rocket plane, died in Phoenix.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.D4)
2014 May 6, In Afghanistan a roadside bombing killed 3 policemen and wounded two in western Herat province. Afghan police fired gunshots into the air to disperse villagers who fought police and aid workers distributing emergency supplies near the remote site of the May 2 deadly landslide. A late-night roadside bombing in Herat province killed 9 people and wounded two.
(AP, 5/6/14)(Reuters, 5/6/14)(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Austrian Finance Minister Michael Spindelegger said a group of 11 European Union countries have agreed to introduce a financial transaction tax from 2016 onward.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Farley Mowat (b.1921), Canadian author, died. His 40 books included “Never Cry Wolf" (1963). His experience observing wolves in sub-Arctic Canada" was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.D7)
2014 May 6, Chinese police shot and wounded a suspect who attacked passengers at a busy railway station in the southern city of Guangzhou, leaving six people injured in the third high-profile assault on civilians at a train station in a little more than two months.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Croatian PM Zoran Milanovic sacked finance minister Slavko Linic over a property deal he said had hurt the state budget.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, An Egyptian court banned leaders of the country's former ruling party under ousted President Hosni Mubarak from running in any elections, a vague ruling that could bar former officials of that regime from returning to politics for the time being.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In France Helene Pastor, whose family built a real estate empire in Monaco with wealth rivaling that of the royal family, was shot after visiting her son in a hospital in Nice. Pastor and her chauffer died some days later. The attackers fled. Police in June detained 23 people in the case including the son-in-law and daughter of Pastor. In 2018 prosecutors called for the maximum life sentence for Wojciech Janowski, Poland's former consul in Monaco, who was on trial for ordering the murder of the billionaire heiress over an inheritance dispute. Janowski is a former partner of Pastor's daughter, Sylvia.
(AP, 6/24/14)(AFP, 10/12/18)
2014 May 6, Germany's Bayer said it has agreed to buy Merck & Co.'s non-prescription medicine and consumer care business for $14.2 billion.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Police in India recovered 6 more bodies from a river in Assam state after the worst ethnic violence in the remote northeast in two years, raising the death toll to 39. Ten people remained missing.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Israel marked its 66th Independence Day. In the north some 10,000 protesters, many waving Palestinian flags, joined a rally to remember 530 villages from which some 760,000 people fled or were expelled following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.
(AFP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Leaders of Kosovo's main parties agreed to dissolve parliament this week and hold an early election on June 8 after Serb minority lawmakers nixed a vote on creating a national army by failing to show up.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In eastern Malaysia a Chinese fish farm manager in Sabah state was kidnapped by gunmen and believed taken to the southern Philippines, where suspected insurgents are holding another Chinese and a Filipino also seized from Malaysia.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, The Philippines seized a Chinese fishing boat and its 11 crewmen on charges of catching endangered sea turtles in disputed South China Sea waters, prompting China to demand their release and accuse Manila of being provocative. On May 12 all nine men were charged with poaching over 500 endangered sea turtles.
(AP, 5/7/14)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A3)
2014 May 6, In Puerto Rico 3 people including a boy (16) were killed in the central mountain town of Cayey.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Saudi Arabia said it had uncovered an al Qaeda militant group with links to "extremist elements" in Syria and Yemen that had been plotting to assassinate officials and attack government and foreign targets.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In South Korea a civilian diver involved in searches for dozens of missing people from the April 16 Sewol ferry disaster died. Other divers picked up efforts to retrieve more bodies from the sunken ship.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In Syria a roadside bombing overnight killed Ali al-Nuaimi of the Nusra Front and his wife in Daraa province. The Nusra Front is al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In southern Thailand two bombs exploded in Hat Yai city, popular to local and foreign tourists, leaving nine people injured.
(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A2)
2014 May 6, Uruguay said citizens will be allowed to buy enough marijuana to roll about 20 joints a week at a price well below the black market rate, as the government detailed a new law legalizing the cannabis trade.
(Reuters, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, The Vatican released comprehensive statistics for the first time on how it has disciplined priests accused of raping and molesting children. It said 848 priests have been defrocked and an additional 2,572 given lesser sanctions over the past decade.
(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A3)
2014 May 6, Yemeni troops killed 2 suspected militants when they shelled overnight the house of a local Al-Qaeda chief in Shabwa province. The army also seized two Al-Qaeda strongholds in Abyan province, as it pressed an eight-day-old offensive with support from tribal militias.
(AFP, 5/6/14)(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A2)
2014 May 6, In Yemen gunmen launched two attacks on the export pipeline linking the eastern oil fields to the Red Sea, sparking a fire and halting oil flow.
(AFP, 5/7/14)
2015 May 6, A US government watchdog said nearly 160 IRS workers per year have been found to have willfully evaded taxes over a 10-year period.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, At Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX completed a successful test of its new launch escape system for astronauts using a dummy in a 1.5 minute test flight.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A11)
2015 May 6, Hawaii lawmakers passed a bill that puts an end to a requirement that a corn-based additive be mixed into fuel sold in the state. A 10% ethanol blend in its gas has been required since 2006.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, The Chicago City Council voted 42-0 to approve a $5.5 million reparations fund for torture victims of the notorious police commander Jon Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives (1972-1991).
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A10)
2015 May 6, In North Dakota an oil train derailed and ten cars caught fire near Heimdal.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, Afghan officials said as many as 10,000 families have fled their homes as Taliban insurgents and government forces prepared for a major battle for control of the southern fringes of Kunduz city.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, An Afghan judge sentenced four men to death for the March 19 mob killing of a woman accused of burning a Koran. Eight defendants were jailed for 16 years for participating in the attack in which a crowd beat and kicked the woman, named Farkhunda (27), and set her body on fire in Kabul. Nineteen police officers were also on trial, accused of standing by and doing nothing to stop the violence. Their verdicts and sentencing are due later in the week. On July 1 An appeals court set aside death sentences for the four men convicted in the mob killing. Three of those had their sentences reduced to 20 years in jail, while the fourth was re-sentenced to 10 years.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)(Reuters, 7/2/15)
2015 May 6, The UN said nearly 40,000 refugees have fled Burundi to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last month, amid protests against President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Austria two local trains collided head-on in Graz, killing one of the drivers and injuring eight people, including two who were in a critical condition.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Chile’s Pres. Michelle Bachelet asked her entire cabinet to resign.
(Econ, 5/9/15, p.32)
2015 May 6, The UN mission in Congo DRC said four missing peacekeepers have been found following an attack that left 2 others dead.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A2)
2015 May 6, The Egyptian military shot dead 3 Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated through a smuggling tunnel in the Sinai town of Rafah. One policeman was killed and five others wounded in clashes with supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in a Nile Delta city.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, German authorities conducted raids across the country, seizing explosives and arresting four people accused of founding a right-wing extremist group to attack mosques and housing for asylum seekers.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Germany a Berlin court overturned a federal entry ban on a group of nationalist Russian bikers planning to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago by riding their motorcycles through the capital to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Greece managed to make a 200 million-euro ($222 million) repayment to the International Monetary Fund, as its long-stalled bailout negotiations appeared to make some progress.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In India Bollywood star Salman Khan (49) was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of driving a vehicle over five men sleeping on a sidewalk and killing one in 2002. The hit-and-run case has dragged on for more than 12 years.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Israel approved construction of 900 settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem as PM Benjamin Netanyahu pieced together a 5-party coalition government that will include the far-right Jewish Home, which strongly backs settlement building and opposes a Palestinian state. The coalition will hold a parliamentary majority of just a single seat.
(AFP, 5/7/15)(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 May 6, The Kenya Red Cross said some 75 people have been killed in four days of cattle raids and revenge attacks in northern districts.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a gathering of leaders of Syria's Nusra Front and other insurgents in an area near Lebanon's eastern border with Syria, killing 3 of them.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Lithuania launched a military exercise to simulate an attack on its new gas terminal.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Macedonia violent clashes overnight between protesters and police in Skopje left 38 police officers and one protester injured after more than 1,000 people had gathered in front of the government building to protest the 2011 death of Martin Neskoski (22). He was killed in a police beating during post-election celebrations.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Nigerian troops rescued 25 more children and women from Boko Haram early today as the soldiers destroyed seven more of the extremists' camps in the northeastern Sambisa Forest stronghold.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck Yemeni provinces near the Saudi border overnight, killing at least 43 civilians. Another 9 people were killed and 18 were wounded in air strikes on a police academy in Dhamar province. Aid agencies warned that fuel shortages could halt their efforts to tackle Yemen's humanitarian crisis. Houthi fighters entered Aden's al-Tawahi district, one of the last strongholds of supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Fighting across Yemen killed 120 people, mostly civilians, including at least 40 who were trying to flee Aden in a boat that was struck by Houthi shells.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)(AFP, 5/6/15)(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 May 6, In Syria at least 16 members of the Syrian Kurdish security forces were killed in an Islamic State group attack on a base in the northeastern province of Hasakeh.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Ukraine said that 5 government soldiers were killed over the last 24 hours as fresh clashes rumbled on despite the resumption of talks between the government and rebels over a battered truce deal.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2016 May 6, The US government said it has suspended millions of dollars in funding to several organizations providing aid for Syria after discovering they were systematically overpaying Turkish companies for basic goods with the collusion of some of their staff.
(AFP, 5/10/16)
2016 May 6, Federal authorities in Pittsburgh said two men have been charged by authorities in Belarus with receiving $1.35 million stolen in a phishing scheme from the bank account of a Pennsylvania oil and gas drilling company. Aleskey Yaroshevich (34) and Egor Pavlenko (41) reportedly received a $1.35 million transfer made in September 2012. Both men were in custody in Minsk.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, The Pentagon acknowledged for the first time it has deployed a small number of US troops to Yemen since the country's collapse last year to bolster government and Arab coalition forces battling Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, A SpaceX rocket landed on an ocean platform for the 2nd time following the successful launch of a Japanese communications satellite at Cape Canaveral.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, Alabama’s Judicial Inquiry Commission filed ethics charges against the state’s Chief Justice Roy Moore over his effort to block same-sex marriages.
(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In San Francisco retired public defender Marla Zamora (65) was stabbed to death at her Potrero Hill home on the 400 block of Arkansas Street. Police detained Angelo Zamora (19), a relative who was found covered in blood at the home. On May 9 Angelo was charged with murder.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A1)(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A8)(SFC, 5/10/16, p.C2)
2016 May 6, In San Diego seaman James Derek Lovelace died from drowning during a Navy Seal basic training program after his instructor pushed him underwater at least twice. On July 6 a medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
(SFC, 7/8/16, p.A9)
2016 May 6, In Maryland Eulalio Tordil (62), a federal security officer, was arrested following the fatal shooting of 2 people. Tordil had shot and killed his wife a day earlier.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A7)(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In New York a fire in Syracuse left 6 people dead, including two men (33 and 34) a girl (7) and 3 boys (10-13).
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed at least four small children from the same family in the southern Zabul province. In the eastern Kunar province Afghan security forces repelled an insurgent attack, killing 26 militants.
(AP, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, Afghan special forces troops liberated more than 60 prisoners from a Taliban prison in the southern province of Helmand. Two Taliban militants were reported killed and three wounded in the ensuing battle.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced the launch of the next stage of a multibillion-dollar gold and copper mine in Mongolia following delays and political tension over revenue sharing and the foreign role in resource industries.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Bangladesh Sufi Muslim leader Mohammad Shahidulla (65) was found hacked to death after he disappeared this morning in a suspected Islamist killing.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Chile food and gasoline were running dangerously low on Chiloe Island, which has been blocked from the mainland by desperate fishermen demanding compensation for losing their livelihood to a toxic algae bloom. The government has declared a state of emergency in the region and offered those affected compensation.
(http://tinyurl.com/zal4wzs)(AP, 5/7/16)(SFC, 5/17/16, p.A4)
2016 May 6, In Denmark a jet ski slammed into a rental boat containing a group of students killing Leah Bell (18) of Madisonville, Louisiana, and Linsey Malia (21) of Easton, Massachusetts. On Jan. 4, 2018, a 24-year-old man was sentenced to two years in jail for aggravated manslaughter.
(AP, 1/4/18)
2016 May 6, Prosecutors in El Salvador announced they have arrested five police officers, 16 gunmen and a police administrative employee for allegedly killing street gang member and others.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Services in Greece, from garbage collection to public transport, shut down as workers kicked off three days of strikes to protest new bailout austerity measures that they say will further reduce incomes.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Iraqi security forces ramped up their presence across Baghdad, blocking most major roads and bridges to keep followers of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from reaching the government district they stormed a week earlier.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Iraq Australia-born terrorist and former rapper Neil Prakash (24) was killed in an American air strike in Mosul.
(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A4)
2016 May 6, Irish PM Enda Kenny won narrow re-election on his fourth try, ending 70 days of deadlock and clearing the way for an exceptionally fragile minority government.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Israeli warplanes launched new strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in response to mortar fire, as the worst cross-border violence since a 2014 war entered a third day.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In southern Italy Maria Chindoma (44), the mother of three small children, disappeared. In 2020 an informant told investigators that the businesswoman had refused to sell her land to the mafia and was kidnapped, murdered and fed to pigs after her body was ground up in a threshing machine.
(The Telegraph, 1/7/21)
2016 May 6, In Kazakhstan Kuandyk Bishimbayev, chief executive of a state financial holding company, was named economy minister following the resignation of his predecessor over public protests against a planned land reform.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Myanmar hundreds of villagers protested against the resumption of operations at a Chinese-backed copper mine, in one of the first tests for the new government's ability to deal with public anger.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said it is suspending aid to Nigeria’s AIDS agency over evidence that $3.8 million was stolen by its workers and consultants.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A2)
2016 May 6, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (33) opened the Seventh Workers' Party Congress, the country’s biggest political gathering in 36 years.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, North Korea detained BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes along with a BBC producer and cameraman and ordered their expulsion over his reporting as a large group of foreign reporters cover a rare congress of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party. On May 9 the three were on their way to the airport in Pyongyang.
(Reuters, 5/9/16)
2016 May 6, A Papua New Guinea court ruled that a pregnant African woman, who says she was raped at an Australia detention center for asylum seekers on the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru, cannot be forced to have an abortion in Papua New Guinea because it is unsafe and illegal.
(Reuters, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis approved a 150 million euro ($171 million) loan to neighboring Moldova needed to pay state sector salaries and pensions.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Syria rebels seized a village from government forces near Aleppo overnight. 43 rebels and 30 government forces were reported killed in the battle for Khan Touman, some 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Aleppo. 13 military advisers with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed as rebels seized the village of Khan Touman. 18 others wounded and five to six were captured.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)(AFP, 5/7/16)(Reuters, 5/9/16)
2016 May 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the European Union that Ankara will not change its anti-terrorism law, despite it being a condition laid down by Brussels to ensure visa-free travel for Turks.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Pope Francis accepted the prestigious International Charlemagne Prize, for his "message of hope and encouragement" and warned Europeans against the selfish temptation to put up fences to ward off newcomers, saying he still dreams of a Europe where migrants are welcomed.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Yemen the governor of Aden's Mansura prison was killed in a ride-by shooting.
(AFP, 5/7/16)
2017 May 6, Two San Diego police officers shot a killed a boy (15) who pointed a handgun at them in front of Torrey Pines High School early today. The gun was found to be a BB air pistol.
(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.A10)
2017 May 6, In northeastern Afghanistan Taliban insurgents overran a district police headquarters in Kunduz province after two days of intense fighting that left scores of casualties on both sides.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In China Nicole Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, made a pitch to attract $150 million in financing for a Jersey City housing development to more than 100 Chinese investors in Beijing. The pitch offered them the chance to get US immigrant visas if they put money in the real estate project. The controversial EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy US immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects.
(Reuters, 5/7/17)(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.A5)
2017 May 6, China's most recent nod for a Trump trademark, covering clothing, came today, bringing to 40 the number of marks China has granted or provisionally granted to the president and a related company, DTTM Operations LLC, since his inauguration.
(AP, 5/31/17)
2017 May 6, In Denmark suspected reckless driving by jet skiers in a Copenhagen harbor caused them to crash into a small boat, killing two people.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt the decapitated bodies of a father and his two sons recently kidnapped by Islamic militants were found lying in the street in the northern Sinai town of Rafah. The mother of the two siblings was killed last week by militants from the Islamic State group when they raided the family home in the village of Yamit, west of Rafah, and kidnapped the three men. The Interior Minsitry said two armed men suspected of making bombs were killed in a shoot-out with security forces in an area north of Cairo.
(AP, 5/6/17)(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt official media reported that Ahmed Hosny, the head of Egypt's Al-Azhar university, has been replaced after describing a leading Islamic researcher as an apostate. Al-Azhar university is the 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim learning.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt gunmen late today shot dead Nabil Saber Ayoub (50), a Christian man, inside a barbershop in northern Sinai. The killing in the coastal city of el-Arish came one day after IS warned it would escalate attacks against Christians.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, The French electoral commission said media should not republish information hacked from the campaign team of centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso said Japan will provide $40 million to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to promote high-level technology as part of efforts to boost quality infrastructure in Asia.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Japan and China agreed to bolster economic and financial cooperation.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In the Indian portion of Kashmir rebels attacked a police squad late today, triggering a gunbattle that left three civilians, one officer and an assailant dead.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, In Nepal a local man (85) attempting to become the oldest to climb Mount Everest died at the base camp, the second climber to die in a week while preparing to climb the world's highest mountain.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Nigeria secured the release of 82 of some 270 girls, kidnapped in Chibok in 2014, in exchange for five Boko Haram leaders.
(Reuters, 5/7/17)(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, North Korea detained Kim Hak Song, an American citizen employed at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, over unspecified hostile acts against the country.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, The Palestinian movement Hamas elected Ismail Haniyeh to head its political office, a leadership change that comes as the Islamist group looks to reconcile with Palestinian rivals.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In the Philippines two explosions in Manila killed two people and injured six others late today, just over a week after another blast in the same area. Police said the bombings were the result of a personal feud. The Islamic State said its fighters were responsible.
(AFP, 5/6/17)(SFC, 5/8/17, p.A3)
2017 May 6, Thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw to protest the policies of the populist ruling party under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, describing them as attacks on the country's democracy.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Russia's Defense Ministry said its military chief of staff and the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff have confirmed their readiness to restore a communications channel aimed at preventing midair incidents between Russian and US warplanes over Syria.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Syria government shelling of a suburb of the capital Damascus killed four insurgents and wounded one child south of the country as a “de-escalation" plan went into effect at midnight.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, The Syrian government pushed opposition fighters out of the village of Zalaqiyat, Hama province, following days of fighting that killed at least 14 rebels. 11 pro-government fighters were reported killed in the Zalaqiyat advance.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, Taiwan detained two Mainland Chinese fishermen after the island's coastguard fired rubber bullets at them and wounding them in the legs. China demanded their immediate release.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In northern Tanzania 35 people were killed, most of them young children, after a bus carrying students lost control and crashed near the Mlera river in Meatu district.
(AP, 5/6/17)(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said warrants were issued for 17 judges and six prosecutors for "membership in an armed terror organization." They are suspected of being followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who the government says is behind the July 15 coup attempt.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, At the Vatican forty new Swiss Guards were sworn in, the latest halberd-clutching soldiers of the pope to serve a tradition stretching back 500 years. Applicants have to be a practicing Roman Catholic, Swiss, single, between 19 and 30 years old and at least 1.74 meters tall.
(AFP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Venezuela thousands of women dressed in white marched in Caracas to keep pressure on President Nicolas Maduro, whose authority is being increasingly challenged by protests and deadly unrest.
(AFP, 5/6/17)
2018 May 6, Hawaiian officials said nearly 2,000 people on the Big Island have been evacuated from homes after lava eruptions destroyed five houses and sulfur dioxide gas threatened to harm anyone who stayed in the residential area.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In eastern Afghanistan a bomb blast inside a Khost city mosque that was being used as a voter registration center killed at least 14 people and wounded 33. A vehicle carrying shopkeepers on their way to a market struck a roadside bomb in northern Faryab province, killing seven of them. At least five police officers were killed in a Taliban attack on their patrol in southern Kandahar province. 15 Taliban fighters were reported killed and 11 others were wounded in the gunbattle.
(AP, 5/6/18)(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, In Afghanistan seven Indian engineers and an Afghan national working for a power plant in northern Baghlan province were kidnapped.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Cambodian health officials said ten villagers have died and 120 others have been sickened after drinking water suspected to be contaminated with insecticide.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Chad six people were killed, including four government officials and a soldier, in an overnight attack by Boko Haram jihadists on an army checkpoint on an island in Lake Chad.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Khaled Mohieddin (b.1922), an Egyptian leftist opposition leader, who helped overthrow the Egyptian monarchy in the 1952 revolution, died at a Cairo hospital. He was the last surviving member of the Revolutionary Command Council, an executive body that ran Egypt till 1956, when Nasser was elected as Egypt's president.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Egypt police arrested Shady Abu Zaid, a young comedian who was working for a popular satirical television program. He was charged with joining an outlawed group and spreading false news and ordered detained for 15 days.
(AP, 5/9/18)
2018 May 6, A Tehran prosecutor said sixteen women who went to Syria to join Islamic State have been jailed in Iran.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians who tried to breach the Gaza border fence. An axe and a wire cutter were found in their possession. Israel struck a facility of the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers overnight, with the Israeli army saying it was reacting to kite-borne fire bombings.
(AP, 5/6/18)(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Indian soldiers shot dead five Kashmir militants including a rebel university teacher in a gunfight that triggered violent protests in which five civilians were killed. A top commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, a key rebel group, was also among the dead.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Iraq carried out an airstrike in neighboring Syria targeting the Islamic State group. The strike targeted a position used by the commanders of the group, south of the town of Deshaisha.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Lebanon voters queued at polling stations across the country for the first general election in nine years. Hezbollah and its political allies won just over half the seats in the parliamentary election. PM Saad Hariri's group won 21 seats, 11 fewer than what it had been holding since 2009. A complex new law redrew constituency boundaries and changed the electoral system from winner-takes-all to a proportional one.
(AP, 5/6/18)(Reuters, 5/7/18)(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 5, In northwestern Nigeria as many as 40 people were killed by armed bandits in Gwaska, Kaduna state.
(SFC, 5/7/18, p.A2)
2018 May 6, North Korea said its intention to denuclearize, unveiled at a historic inter-Korean summit, was not the result of US-led sanctions and pressure, warning the United States not to mislead public opinion.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Pakistan's interior minister Ahsan Iqbal was shot in the arm in a suspected assassination attempt at a public meeting in Punjab province. Police soon identified the gunman as Abid Hussain. Iqbal was expected to survive. Police later said Abid Hussain (21) is a youth leader of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik party.
(AFP, 5/6/18)(AP, 5/7/18)(Reuters, 5/8/18)
2018 May 6, In southern Pakistan four people were burned alive late today when a truck collided with the motorized rickshaw they were in near at the famous shrine of Sufi saint Shahbaz Qalander.
(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, In Rwanda landslides caused by heavy rains killed at least 18 people in the Northern and Western province, pushing the death toll since January to more than 200.
(Reuters, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, Al Arabiya TV reported that Saudi Arabia's King Salman has ordered protection for employees who report financial and administrative corruption, as part of an effort to combat graft that saw dozens of royals and top businessmen detained last year.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabia has detained thousands of people for years without trial, slamming the country's powerful crown prince for the "arbitrary detentions".
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Serbian police prevented ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj (63) from demonstrating in Hrtkovci, a village in the Vojvodina province home to a Croatian minority where his firebrand speeches during the Balkan War earned him a jail term.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Thailand environmental activists in the northern city of Chiang Mai claimed victory after the country's military government agreed in talks not to use forested land to develop luxury property.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Tunisians voted in their first free municipal elections. The Islamist Ennahda and secular Nidaa Tounis parties, which form a coalition at national level, were expected to dominate the polls for 350 municipalities.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised new military operations against Kurdish militants along its border in Syria and Iraq as he presented his election manifesto.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2019 May 6, Many Muslims around the world began fasting to mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Afghanistan the Taliban stormed an army checkpoint overnight in western Farah province, killing 20 soldiers and abducting two. Insurgents struck security checkpoints in northeastern Takhar province's Khwaja Bahaudin district late today, killing eight members of the security forces — three soldiers and five policemen.
(AP, 5/06/19)(AP, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, In Brazil at least eight people died when police raided a drug-scarred Rio de Janeiro neighborhood.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, Meghan, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, gave birth in the early hours to a baby boy, Archie, the first mixed race child to be born into a senior position in British royalty in recent history.
(Reuters, 5/09/19)
2019 May 6, Indian voters cast ballots in the crucial fifth phase of the country’s marathon elections.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In India a panel of judges dismissed a sexual harassment complaint against chief justice Ranjan Gogoi. Protesters soon responded carrying placards demanding a new and impartial investigation.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, Officials said Cyclone Fani, that tore through parts of South Asia, has killed at least 34 people in India and 15 in neighboring Bangladesh and smashed thousands of thatched-roof huts.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, The Israeli military lifted protective restrictions on residents in southern Israel, while Gaza's ruling Hamas militant group reported a cease-fire deal had been reached to end the deadliest fighting between the two sides since a 2014 war.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Malaysia's attorney general said former Goldman Sachs executive Roger Ng has been temporarily extradited to the US to face criminal charges linked to the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund 1MDB.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Niger a tanker truck explosion near the international airport in Niamey killed 55 people. The death toll soon rose to 76.
(AFP, 5/12/19)
2019 May 6, In Russia a blast at the Azot chemical plant in the region of Perm killed three people. Russian fertilizer producer Uralchem owns the plant.
(Reuters, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Seven Russian tourists on a hiking holiday in Siberia were feared dead after an avalanche on a ridge in the Altai region. Two people survived.
(Reuters, 5/08/19)
2019 May 6, Spanish courts overruled a decision by Spain's Electoral Board and determined that Carles Puigdemont and two other Catalan separatists, who had fled abroad to escape arrest, must be allowed to run in this month's European Parliament elections.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Sri Lanka two people were arrested and an overnight curfew lifted after mobs attacked Muslim-owned shops and some vehicles in Negombo, where a suicide bombing targeted a Catholic church last month.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Syrian pro-government media said troops have captured al-Bani village and a strategic hill from insurgents in Hama province. Intense fighting killed 20 people.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Turkey’s High Election Board ruled for a fresh Istanbul mayoral contest on June 23, scrapping the March 31 vote, which was lost by Erdogan's party candidate, in a move that drew opposition accusations of dictatorship. Former Turkish PM Binali Yildirim will again be the ruling AK Party's candidate.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, The United Nations' first comprehensive report on biodiversity said nature is in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming over 1 million species of plants and animals.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Pope Francis said the plight of suffering immigrants and refugees was "the cross of humanity," taking up their case for the second consecutive day during a visit to Bulgaria that has put him at odds with the government.
(Reuters, 5/06/19)
2020 May 6, Pres. Donald Trump said that the COVID-19 task force would continue indefinitely, but focus more on rebooting the economy.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, President Donald Trump vetoed legislation that limited a president’s ability to wage war against Iran without the approval of Congress. Trump said that he vetoed the Iran war powers resolution because it was “insulting" to the presidency.
(AP, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued new regulations on sexual assault at colleges and schools designed to increase protections for people accused of sexual harassment and assault on campus. The change rolls back Obama-era guidance for schools to step up investigations.
(NY Times, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, California to date had 58,724 cases of coronavirus and 2,379 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 9,032 cases and 328 deaths. The United States recorded more than 22,000 new cases of COVID-19. Total cases nationwide reached over 1,206,886 with the death toll at 71,220.
(sfist.com, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The first immigrant in US detention died of the novel coronavirus at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
(Reuters, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, In San Francisco a new UCSF Pandemic Workforce Training Academy opened with an $8.7 million state grant to train workers to follow the spread of the COVID-19 disease through widespread contact tracing and case investigation.
(SFC, 5/13/20, p.A1)
2020 May 5, A federal appeals court blocked, for now, a judge’s order forcing Florida's Miami-Dade County to give masks, soap and cleaning supplies to inmates at Metro West Detention Center, a jail wracked by the novel coronavirus. Metro West is where 163 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. In all three Miami jails, about 340 inmates have tested positive in the cramped quarters where social distancing is challenging.
(Miami Herald, 5/5/20)
2020 May 6, All of New York City's 472 subway stations closed early today for cleaning for the first overnight subway shutdown in at least 50 years. The subway trains will now stop running from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. local time each day.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said he would cover a fine owed by Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who is serving a seven-day jail sentence. Luther, owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced a day earlier after judge Eric Moye said she violated statewide stay-at-home orders when she reopened her business nearly two weeks ago.
(CBS News, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Bristol Myers Squibb Co said the US FDA has decided to extend the approval timeline for the drugmaker's experimental blood cancer therapy that was acquired as part of the $74 billion buyout of Celgene.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Fitbit Inc launched a virtual study to test if its wearable devices can detect irregular heart rhythms, which could identify a condition called atrial fibrillation.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) said it will loan Argentina $4 billion to help finance projects to combat the growing coronavirus impact.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Brazil, one of the world's emerging hot spots, registered a record number of cases and deaths, prompting the health minister to flag the possibility of strict lockdowns in hard-hit areas.
(Reuters, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Colombia's president said mandatory quarantine will be extended by a further two weeks.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele announced still tougher measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, including shopping trips limited to twice a week.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said they will open their borders to each others' citizens from May 15, creating a Baltic "travel bubble" within the European Union.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that European astronomers have found the closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Telescopium in the Southern Hemisphere.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The European Union predicted “a recession of historic proportions this year" due to the impact of the coronavirus as it released its first official estimates of the damage the pandemic is inflicting on the bloc’s economy.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The German government and the 16 federal states agreed at a meeting to extend until June 5 social distancing measures designed to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. Germany's confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 947 to 164,807.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Greek police said about 150 protesters prevented buses carrying 57 asylum-seekers from Lesbos to the mainland from reaching a rented hotel in the northern region of Pella. Protesters set fire to a room on the ground floor of the hotel.
(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A2)
2020 May 6, In India health authorities scrambled to contain an outbreak at a huge fruit and vegetable market in Chennai. Hundreds of Indian police tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days, raising alarm as it attempts to enforce the world's largest lockdown.
(AP, 5/6/20)(Reuters, 5/6/20)(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A6)
2020 May 6, Indian southern state of Karnataka halted trains taking stranded migrant laborers home so that work on construction sites could restart, a move widely condemned as amounting to forced labor.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that more than 60 workers at a factory run by the Indonesian unit of US tobacco giant Philip Morris have tested positive for the coronavirus after operations were suspended when two staff died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Iran warned of a "rising trend" in its coronavirus outbreak as it said 1,680 new infections brought the country's overall number of confirmed cases to 101,650. There were 78 new COVID-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours bringing that total to 6,418.
(AFP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The Israeli military said it struck three Hamas militant posts in Gaza early today, in response to the first case of rocket fire from the territory in more than a month.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, In Italy deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic climbed by 369. The total death toll now stands at 29,684. The number of confirmed cases amounted to 214,457.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Artillery shelling by Libya's eastern-based forces killed five civilians and wounded dozens in the capital, Tripoli. Children and paramedics were among the 46 civilians wounded in the shelling.
(AP, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Nigeria said it will extend a ban on all flights by four weeks as part of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Confirmed coronavirus cases in Peru have now exceeded 50,000.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Poland postponed its upcoming presidential election due to concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus. Nearly 15,000 people in Poland have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and at least 737 have died.
(AP, 5/7/20)(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A2)
2020 May 6, Russia recorded more than 10,000 new cases for the fourth day in a row, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 165,929, with 1,537 deaths. President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting to discuss a gradual withdrawal from lockdown as Russia registered the world's sixth highest total number of coronavirus cases.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, South Korea reported no new locally transmitted infections of the novel coronavirus and just two imported cases over the past 24 hours -- its lowest daily tally in 78 days.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, South Korea’s spy agency that the coronavirus pandemic has likely taken a heavy toll on North Korea, forcing leader Kim Jong Un to avoid public activities and his people into panic buying for daily necessities.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez announced that his government will declare a national state of mourning for the more than 25,000 people in the country who have died from the novel coronavirus.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, In Sudan tribal clashes over the last 24 hours between Arabs and non-Arabs in South Darfur province left at least 30 people dead and a dozen wounded.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Taiwan's health minister Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s exclusion from the upcoming World Health Assembly would harm the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and cannot be excused by mere rules of procedure. The island of more than 23 million people has recorded just 438 cases of COVID-19 and six deaths.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that Uganda's president has called on international creditors to cancel all of Africa's debts to ease the economic distress caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Yemen reported the first three cases of the novel coronavirus in the southern province of Lahaj, one of whom has died, and another infection in the southern port of Aden.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
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523 May 6, Thrasamunde, king of Vandals (496-523), died.
(MC, 5/6/02)(http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15268b.htm)
973 May 6, Henry II, German King (1002) and Holy Roman Emperor (1014-1024), was born.
(HN, 5/6/98)(MC, 5/6/02)
988 May 6, Dirk II, West Frisian count of Holland, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1124 May 6, Balak, Emir of Aleppo (Syria), was murdered.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1527 May 6, German and Spanish troops under Charles V began sacking Rome, bringing about the end of the Renaissance. Libraries were destroyed, Pope Clement VII was captured and thousands were killed. 147 of 189 of the Pope’s Swiss guard were killed.
(HN, 5/6/02)(PCh, 1992, p.174)(WSJ, 4/14/06, p.W5)
1529 May 6, Babur defeated the Afghan Chiefs in the Battle of Ghagra, India.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1536 May 6, King Henry VIII ordered a bible placed in every church.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1576 May 6, The peace treaty of Chastenoy ended the fifth war of religion.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1576 The Fifth War of Religion in France ended with the Peace of Monsieur. The Huguenots were granted freedom of worship in all places except Paris.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.22)
1581 May 6, Frans Francken, the Younger, painter, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1606 May 6, Lorenzo Lippi, [Perlone Zipoli], poet, painter, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1638 May 6, Cornelius Jansen, theologian (Jansenism), died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1642 May 6, Frans Francken, the Younger, Flemish painter, died on 61st birthday.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1648 May 6, Battle at Zolty Wody-Bohdan: Chmielricki's Cossacks beat John II Casimir.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1667 May 6-7, Johann Jakob Froberger (b.1616), German organist, singer, composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)(MC, 5/7/02)
1682 May 6, King Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles, France.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1733 May 6, 1st international boxing match: Bob Whittaker beat Tito di Carni.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1740 May 6, John Penn, signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1753 May 6, French King Louis XV observed a transit of Mercury at Mendon Castle.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1757 May 6, Battle at Prague: Frederik II of Prussia beat emperor's army.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1758 May 6, Maximilien F.M.I. de Robespierre (d.1794), a leader of the French Revolution, was born. He was known as the "Sea-Green Incorruptible" from his sallow complexion. He decreed death for all those he considered enemies of the revolution.
(V.D.-H.K.p.231)(HN, 5/6/99)(SSFC, 10/28/01, p.C5)
1794 May 6, In Haiti Toussaint Louverture (L’Ouverture), Haitian rebel leader, ended his alliance with the Iberian monarchy and embraced the French Republicans. An order followed that led to the massacre of Spaniards.
(www.travelinghaiti.com/history_of_haiti/toussaint_louverture.asp)(WSJ, 1/19/07, p.W4)
1794 May 6, Jean-Jacques Beauvarget-Charpentier (59), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1795 May 6, Dr. Pierre-Joseph Dessault visited the incarcerated 10-year-old dauphin, the heir to the French throne. He found the dying child in abject misery. The boy died June 8.
(WSJ, 10/18/02, p.W9)
1801 May 6, British Lt. Thomas Cochrane, commander of the 14-gun sloop HMS Speedy, engaged and captured the 32-gun Spanish frigate El Gamo. The climactic battle in Patrick O’Brian’s novel “Master and Commander" is based on the Speedy’s fight with El Gamo. Cochrane was later elected to Parliament, pointed out corruption and was arrested on trumped up charges. After that he served as the first commander of Chile’s navy, then Brazil’s navy and the Greek navy before returning to England. In 2000 Robert Harvey authored “Cochrane: The Life and Exploits of a Fighting Captain."
(ON, 11/04, p.1)
1806 May 6, Chapin Aaron Harris, founder of the America Society of Dental Surgeons, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1814 May 6, Wilhelm Ernst, violinist, composer, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1814 May 6, George Joseph Vogler (64), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1833 May 6, John Deere made his 1st steel plow.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1835 May 6, The 1st edition of NY Herald was priced at 1 cent. The Herald specialized in crime with an emphasis on murder. James Gordon Bennett was the Scottish-born steward of the Herald. Within a few years of the 1936 Jewett murder case, a coalition of clergymen, financiers and rival editors waged a “Moral War" against Bennett and his newspaper
(SFEM, 11/8/98, p.12)(SFEM, 8/6/00, p.45)(MC, 5/6/02)
1836 May 6, Christian Ignatius Latrobe (78), composer, died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1840 May 6, Frederick William Stowe, was born He was the son of the famous Harriet Beecher Stowe and fighter in the Civil War for the Union.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1847 May 6, The Californian newspaper of Monterey moved to San Francisco.
(SFC, 7/12/14, p.C2)
1849 May 6, Wyatt Eaton, artist, was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1851 May 6, Dr. John Gorrie patented a "refrigeration machine."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1851 May 6, Linus Yale patented his Yale lock.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1853 May 6, The 1st major US rail disaster killed 46 at Norwalk, Connecticut.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1856 May 6, Robert Peary, arctic explorer, was born. He reached the North Pole in 1909. [see 1909 &1856-1920, Peary]
(HFA, '96, p.30)(AHD, p.964) (HN, 5/6/98)
1856 May 6, Sigmund Freud (d.1939), father of psychology and the Viennese physician who discovered the unconscious, was born. He treated his hysterical patients by encouraging them to associate freely. He insisted that sexual desires and fears lay just beneath the surface of everyone’s mind. A biography of Freud was later written by Peter Gay.
(V.D.-H.K.p.281-282)(SFEC, 1/11/98, BR p.9)(HN, 5/6/98)
1856 May 6, U.S. Army troops from Fort Tejon and Fort Miller prepared to ride out to protect Keyesville, California, from Yokut Indian attack.
(HN, 5/6/00)
1859 May 6, Baron Freidrich von Humboldt (b.1769), German naturalist and explorer who made the first isothermic and isobaric maps, died. In 2015 Andrea Wulf authored “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt)(Econ, 11/7/15, p.78)
1861 May 6, Jefferson Davis approved a bill declaring War between US and Confederacy.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1861 May 6, Arkansas and Tennessee becomes 9th & 10th state to secede from US. [see Jun 8]
(AP, 5/6/97)(HN, 5/6/98)(MC, 5/6/02)
1862 May 6, Henry David Thoreau (b.1817), American writer, died of tuberculosis in Concord, Mass. In 1999 his unfinished manuscript "Wild Fruits," a catalog of his observations on local plants and fruits, was published. In 2017 Laura Dassow Walls authored “Henry David Thoreau: A Life."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau)(SFC, 9/7/99, p.A3)(Econ, 8/12/17, p.67)
1864 May 6, In the second day of the Battle of Wilderness between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate Gen. James Longstreet (d.1903) was wounded by his own men.
(HN, 5/6/99)(MC, 5/6/02)
1864 May 6, General Sherman began to advance on Atlanta.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1868 May 6, Gaston Leroux, French novelist (The Phantom of the Opera), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1877 May 6, Chief Crazy Horse surrendered to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Crazy Horse brought General Custer to his end.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1882 May 6, Over President Arthur’s veto, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred Chinese immigrants from the United States for 10 years. It was amended and passed by Congress on August 3 and was signed by Pres. Arthur. Renewals and amendments continued to 1904. The laws were repealed in 1943. In 2011 the US Senate passed a resolution expressing regret for the act.
(AP, 5/6/97)(www.u-s-history.com/pages/h739.html)(SFC, 10/11/11, p.C1)
1884 May 6, Buck Grant told his father, former Pres. Ulysses S. Grant, that a loan to Ferdinand Ward had gone bad and that Ward had absconded with the money. The Grants were wiped out, as were other trusting investors, including friends and family of the Grants. Ward’s Ponzi scheme led to the collapse of major financial institutions on Wall Street and around the country. In 2012 Geoffrey C. Ward, the grandson of Ferdinand Ward, authored “A Disposition to Be Rich: How a Small-Town Pastor’s Son Ruined an American President, Brought on a Wall Street Crash, and Made Himself the Best-Hated man in the United States.
(http://faculty.css.edu/mkelsey/usgrant/lastyears.html)(SFC, 5/21/12, p.E3)
1888 May 6, Russell Stover, candy manufacturer, was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1889 May 6, The Paris Exposition formally opened, featuring the just-completed Eiffel Tower.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1895 May 6, Rudolph Valentino, legendary silent-screen star, was born in Castellaneta, Italy.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1896 May 6, Samuel P. Langley (1834-1906), American physicist and aviation pioneer, launched the first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft.
(NPub, 2002, p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley)
1898 May 6, Daniel Gerber, baby food pioneer, was born in Freemont, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, Harry Golden, Jewish humorist, writer (2 Cents Plain, Only in America), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, Max Ophuls (d.1957), film director (La Ronde, Lola Montes), was born in the Rhine Valley of Jewish parents. He made films in Germany, France, Netherlands and the US.
(SFEC, 9/5/99, DB p.50)(HN, 5/6/01)
1902 May 6, Start of Sherlock Holmes "Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, British SS Camorta sank off Rangoon and 739 died.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1902 May 6, There was a Zulu assault at Holkrantz, South-Africa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1907 May 6, San Francisco streetcar workers of the Carmen’s Union went on strike after owner Patrick Calhoun refused to accept a $3 per 8-hour day wage. Calhoun hired James Farley to break the union.
(SFC, 9/13/02, p.D9)
1908 May 6, The Great White Fleet, sent by Pres. Roosevelt on an around-the-world voyage, arrived in SF. The fleet left San Francisco on July 7.
(SFC, 5/6/08, p.B3)
1910 May 6, Edward VII (68), Britain's King (1901-1910), died and George V ascended to the British throne.
(AP, 5/6/97)(MC, 5/6/02)
1913 May 6, Stewart Granger, [James Stewart], actor (Prisoner of Zenda, Scaramouche), was born in London.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1914 May 6, British House of Lords rejected women suffrage.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1915 May 6, Orson Welles (d.1985), actor, director, and writer, was born in Kenosha, Wisc. He is famous for his movie Citizen Kane (1941).
(HN, 5/6/99)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orson_Welles)
1915 May 6, Theodore H. White, historian, writer (Making of President), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1915 May 6, Babe Ruth (20), pitcher with the Boston Red Sox, hit his 1st HR. The Red Sox lost to the Yanks 4-3 in 13 innings.
(http://baseballguru.com/hfrommer/analysishfrommer31.html)
1915 May 6, German U-20 sank Centurion SE of Ireland.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1919 May 6, Paris Peace Conference disposed of German colonies; German East Africa was assigned to Britain & France, German SW Africa to South Africa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1919 May 6, Frank Lyman Baum (62), American author, died in Los Angeles. In 1897 he wrote and published “Mother Goose in Prose," a collection of Mother Goose rhymes written as prose stories, and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish. Baum and illustrator W. W. Denslow published “The Wonderful World of Oz" in 1900.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum)
1926 May 6, Marguerite Piazza, operatic soprano (Young Broadway), was born in New Orleans, LA.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1931 May 6, Willie Mays, the 'Say hey ' kid who played baseball for the New York Giants, was born. He made a great outfield catch in the 1954 World Series.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1935 May 6, The Works Progress Administration began operating.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1935 May 6, British King George & Queen Mary celebrated their silver jubilee.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1936 May 6, The Hindenburg airship departed Germany and on the 9th on May, it arrived at Lakehurst, N.J., having completed the first scheduled transatlantic dirigible flight.
(www.airships.net/hindenburg/flight-schedule/maiden-voyage/passenger-account)
1937 May 6, At 7:25 p.m. the giant German airship (dirigible or zeppelin) Hindenburg burst into flames and crashed to the ground as it attempted to dock with a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. Carrying 36 passengers and 61 crew, Hindenburg left Frankfurt on May 4 for its first transatlantic voyage of the 1937 season. A total of 36 died when the fire ignited the 16 hydrogen-filled cells and destroyed the zeppelin in only 34 seconds. This included 13 passengers, 22 crew members and one of the ground crew. The airship was 803 feet long and had private rooms for 50 passengers. It had an 11,000 mile range. A newsreel film of the Hindenburg Disaster was made. The true cause of the disaster remains a mystery, although crash investigators considered claims that Hindenburg was lost due to sabotage or an accidental charge of static electricity.
(Hem., 1/96, p.108)(AP, 5/6/97)(SFC,11/21/97, p.C17)(ON, 8/12, p.11)
1938 May 6, Dutch writer Maurits Dekker was sentenced to 50 days for "offending a friendly head of state" (Hitler).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1939 May 6, 1st performance of Honegger and Claudel's "Jeanne d'Arc at the Stake."
(MC, 5/6/02)
1940 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1941 May 6, Ghena Dimitrova, soprano (Nabucco), was born.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1941 May 6, Bob Hope (b. May 29, 1903) began broadcasting his first USO radio show from March Field at Riverside, Ca. The United Service Organizations (USO) began operations this year and provided free coffee, donuts, and entertainment to US military forces. The organization is supported entirely by private citizens and corporations.
(SFC, 5/28/97, p.D5)(HN, 5/6/98)(SFEC, 9/8/96, Par p.8)
1941 May 6, Dictator Josef Stalin assumed the Soviet premiership, replacing Vyacheslav M. Molotov.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1942 May 6, Ariel Dorfman, Chilean writer (Death and the Maiden), was born.
(HN, 5/6/01)
1942 May 6, On Corregidor US Gen’l. Jonathan Wainwright surrendered his forces, some 15,000 Americans and Filipinos, to the Japanese. This began a 3-year ordeal for 4 doctors as POWs under the Japanese. In 2005 John A. Glusman authored “Conduct Under Fire," and account of their survival as POWs.
(AP, 5/6/97)(SSFC, 7/10/05, p.E4)(http://tinyurl.com/736ws)
1943 May 6, British 1st army opened an assault on Tunis.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1944 May 6, The Red Army besieged and captured Sevastopol in the Crimea.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1945 May 6, Bob Seger, folk singer (Silver Bullet Band-Shake Down), was born in Dearborn, Mich.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1945 May 6, Axis Sally made her final propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
(HN, 5/6/99)
1946 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to Arthur M. Schlesinger ("Age of Jackson").
(MC, 5/6/02)
1948 May 6, 43 communist rebels were executed in Athens.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1949 May 6, P.M.B. Maurice Maeterlinck (b.1862), Belgian philosopher, playwright (Grand Fairie) and essayist, died in Nice, France. He won the 1911 Nobel Prize in Literature.
(WUD, 1994, p.861)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Maeterlinck)
1950 May 6, Liz Taylor wed Conrad Hilton Jr. in her first marriage.
(www.ew.com/ew/report/0,6115,291072~7~~,00.html)
1950 May 6, Agnes Smedley, American journalist and writer, died. She was best known for her chronicling of the Chinese revolution.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States)
1952 May 6, Maria Montessori (b.1870), Italian physician, educationist, died In Holland. She opened her 1st school in San Lorenzo, Italy, in 1907.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Montessori)(SFC, 1/6/07, p.B1)
1954 May 6, Medical student Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile during a track meet in Oxford, England, finishing in 3 minutes 59.4 seconds.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1955 May 6, West Germany joined NATO.
(WSJ, 10/8/01, p.A14)(MC, 5/6/02)
1957 May 6, Eugene O'Neill's play "Long Day's Journey into Night" won the Pulitzer Prize for drama; John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" won the Pulitzer for biography or autobiography.
(AP, 5/6/07)
1957 May 6, Last broadcast of "I Love Lucy" on CBS-TV. [see Jun 24]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1959 May 6, Iceland gunboats shot at British fishing ships.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1960 May 6, President Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
(HN, 5/6/98)
1960 May 6, Britain's Princess Margaret married Anthony Armstrong-Jones (Lord Snowdon), a commoner, at Westminster Abbey. They divorced in 1978.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1960 May 6, Jacques Mornard (Ram¢n Mercader), Trotsky's murderer, was freed in Mexico.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1961 May 6, George Clooney, actor (Dr Douglas Ross-ER, Batman), was born in Lexington, KY.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1962 May 6, In the first test of its kind, the submerged submarine USS Ethan Allen fired a Polaris missile armed with a nuclear warhead that detonated above the Pacific Ocean.
(AP, 5/6/97)(HN, 5/6/98)
1962 May 6, Pathet Lao broke cease fire and conquered Nam Tha Laos.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1963 May 6, A Pulitzer prize was awarded to Barbara Tuchman (Guns of August).
(MC, 5/6/02)
1964 May 6, Joe Orton's "Entertaining Mr. Sloan," premiered in London. [see Apr 18]
(MC, 5/6/02)
1967 May 6, 400 students seized the administration building at Cheyney State College, Pa.
(MC, 5/6/02)
1967 May 6, Gordon /Brown, Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, announced that he was giving the Bank of England the responsibility for setting interest rates. Within weeks Mr. Brown stripped the central bank of its responsibility for bank regulation and public debt management.
(Econ, 4/29/17, p.12)
1967 May 6, The body of Keith Lyon (12) of Brighton, England, was found clad in his school uniform on a grass bank near a rural bridle path between the nearby villages of Ovingdean and Woodingdean, about 56 miles south of London. He had left home to buy a geometry set and never returned. Lyon had been stabbed 11 times in the chest, back and abdomen with a serrated kitchen knife. In 2006 2 suspects were arrested.
(AP, 8/1/06)
1968 May 6, Astronaut Neil Armstrong was nearly killed in a lunar module trainer accident.
(HNQ, 7/20/99)
1968 May 6, In Paris violent fighting took place in the morning and then from 2 p.m. in the afternoon to 1 a.m. the next morning on the Boulevard Saint-Michel and Saint-Germain. Close to 600 students and police were wounded. Student strikes spread to the provinces.
(http://marxists.anu.edu.au/history/etol/writers/frank/1968/may1968/chronology.htm)
1970 May 6, Yuichiro Miura (b.1932) of Japan skied down Mt. Everest.
(http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1090978/index.htm)
1974 May 6, Bundy victim Roberta Parks disappeared from OSU, Corvallis, Ore.
(www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=6664391)
1975 May 6, In hockey the Philadelphia Flyers won the semifinal series over Boston 4 games to 1. On May 16 the Montreal Canadiens won the finals in 4 games.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1975-76_Philadelphia_Flyers_season)
1975 May 6, Bundy victim Lynette Culver disappeared from Pocatello, Idaho.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy)
1975 May 6, A tornado swept through Omaha, Nebraska, along 72nd St. the site of many motels on a weekday noon. All sorts of folks had to explain just how they wound up in a state of dishabille in a roofless motel room.
(Nat. Hist., 3/96, p.65)(www.crh.noaa.gov/oax/archive/may1975/may675.php)
1975 May 6, Hungarian Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty (b.1892) died in Vienna, Austria. The staunch foe of Communism spent more than seven years in prison in his homeland and several years in asylum at the US Embassy in Budapest. He later was granted permission by Hungarian authorities to live in exile in Vienna.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B3zsef_Mindszenty)(AP, 2/13/19)
1976 May 6, An earthquake struck Italy’s northern region at Friuli-Venezia Giulia, affecting 11 villages near the Austrian and Yugoslav borders. The earthquake killed more than 1,000 people in a 3,300-square-mile area and left 80,000 homeless.
(http://tinyurl.com/dvzp6)(SFC, 12/17/05, p.F1)
1978 May 6, On this day at 12:34, the numbers 12345678 represented the time and day: 12:34 5/6/78. The next such sequence will occur in 2078.
(SFC, 7/14/96, A1 p.2)
1980 May 6, Stanford Linear Accelerator officials announced a successful collision of matter and antimatter in their new $78 million accelerator.
(SFC, 5/6/05, p.F2)
1981 May 6, Yale architecture student Maya Ying Lin was named winner of a competition to design the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1981 May 6, The US expelled Libyan diplomats.
(www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/target/etc/cron.html)
1984 May 6, Nicolas Ardito Barletta was elected president of Panama. Gen. Manuel A. Noriega reportedly rigged the elections.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Ardito_Barletta_Vallarino)(Econ 6/3/17, p.82)
1987 May 6, Democratic presidential candidate Gary Hart held a news conference in Hanover, N.H., in which he denied ever having an affair with Miami model Donna Rice, but declined to say whether he'd ever committed adultery. Washington Post reporter Paul Taylor asked him: "Have you ever committed adultery?"
(AP, 5/6/97)(SFC, 4/14/99, p.A1)
1987 May 6, PTL's Jim Bakker and Rich Dortch were dismissed from Assemblies of God.
(http://tinyurl.com/mu4cn)
1987 May 6, William J. Casey, CIA Director (1981-1987), died at age 74.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1987 May 6, A London building that housed the congress of South African Trade Unions was bombed under orders of the apartheid government of South Africa.
(SFC, 9/18/96, p.A11)
1988 May 6, In his first comment on the matter, President Reagan said he didn't "look kindly" on reports that a memoir by former chief of staff Donald Regan painted an unflattering portrait of first lady Nancy Reagan.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1989 May 6, Sunday Silence scored an upset victory over Easy Goer in the 115th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1990 May 6, Freed American hostage Frank Reed said at a news conference in Arlington, Va., that he had been savagely beaten by his captors in Lebanon after two unsuccessful escape attempts.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1990 May 6, Former president P.W. Botha quit South Africa's ruling National Party as a protest against the apartheid reform program of his successor F.W. de Klerk.
(www.cnn.com/almanac/9805/06/)
1991 May 6, President Bush returned to work after spending two nights at Bethesda Naval Hospital because of an irregular heartbeat; he met at the White House with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze.
(AP, 5/6/01)
1991 May 6, US Steel was removed as a component of the Dow Jones.
(WSJ, 5/28/96, p. R46)
1991 May 6, Wilfrid Hyde-White (87), British actor (Peyton Place/140+ films), died.
(www.imdb.com/name/nm0405035/)
1992 May 6, Former Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev delivered a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo., where Winston Churchill had spoken of the Iron Curtain; Gorbachev said the world was still divided, between north and south and rich and poor.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1992 May 6, Actress Marlene Dietrich (b.1901), film star and singer, died at her Paris home at age 90. She was buried in Germany on May 16.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.D-2)(AP, 5/16/97)
1993 May 6, The space shuttle "Columbia" landed safely in California after a 10-day mission.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1993 May 6, The Bosnian Serb parliament, for the third time, rejected a U.N. peace plan for Bosnia-Herzegovina. The president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, ordered a blockade of all supplies, except food and medicine, to the Bosnian Serbs.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1994 May 6, Paula Jones filed a complaint of sexual harassment in US District Court in Little Rock, Ark. against Pres. Bill Clinton. According to Jones, on May 8, 1991 at the Third Annual Governor’s Quality Management Conference in Little Rock, Ark., Gov. Bill Clinton invited Ms. Jones, a state employee working at the registration desk, to a private meeting and exposed his desire for her. Jones reached a settlement with Clinton in November 1998.
(WSJ, 6/26/96, p.A18)(AP, 5/6/04)
1994 May 6, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterrand formally opened the Channel Tunnel between their countries. A first dividend to shareholders, promised in 1995, was paid in 2009.
(AP, 5/6/04)(Econ, 5/10/14, p.68)
1994 May 6, Nelson Mandela and his ANC finally were confirmed winners in South Africa.
(www.pbs.org/newshour/forum/may96/bryant_5-6.html)
1995 May 6, Long-shot Thunder Gulch, ridden by Gary Stevens, won the 121st Kentucky Derby.
(AP, 5/6/00)(WSJ, 5/5/97, p.A16)
1995 May 6, Friends and relatives of the Oklahoma City bombing victims made a pilgrimage to the site of the attack.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1995 May 6, In London, thousands of World War II veterans celebrated the 50th anniversary of V-E Day.
(AP, 5/6/00)
1996 May 6, All the nearly 16,000 public companies nationwide were required to file their financial reports electronically with the SEC. All info will go into EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system. The home page of the SEC is: http://www.sec.gov.
(SJBJ, 5/13/96, p. 7)
1996 May 6, The body of former CIA director William E. Colby was found on a riverbank near his southern Maryland vacation home, eight days after he'd disappeared.
(AP, 5/6/97)
1996 May 6, Walter Petryshyn, a Rutgers Univ. mathematics professor, author of “Generalized Topological Degree and Semilinear Equations," smashed his wife’s skull with 30 blows from a claw hammer in North Brunswick, New Jersey. He had become depressed and paranoid over an error in his book.
(SFC, 5/8/96, p.A-10)
1997 May 6, The New York Drama Critics’ Circle picked “How I Learned to Drive" as the best play for the ‘96-’97 season. “Violet" was selected as the best musical, and “Skylight" by David Hare was the best foreign play.
(SFC, 5/8/97, p.A20)
1997 May 6, World chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer played to a draw in game three of their six-game match.
(AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, Pres. Clinton made a state visit to Mexico and spent some time meeting with the leaders of Mexico’s main opposition parties. Clinton and Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo pledged closer cooperation on immigration and drug smuggling.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.c3) (AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, Sergeant Delmar Simpson received a 25 year sentence for raping 6 female trainees at the Aberdeen, Md., Proving Ground Army base.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.A3)(AP, 5/6/98)
1997 May 6, A car bomb in Algiers killed 4 students and injured 25 people.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C3)
1997 May 6, British PM Tony Blair, on the first full working day of the new Labor government, gave the Bank of England the right to set interest rates. Labor had won power pledging that it would by the party of welfare reform. The party had campaigned on the anthem “Things can only get better." In October the Bank of England lost its supervisory powers over banks to the new Financial Services Authority.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C2)(Econ, 3/25/06, p.63)(Econ, 3/10/07, p.52)(Econ, 6/14/08, p.70)(Econ, 5/1/10, p.27)
1997 May 6, It was reported that Syrian missiles were tipped with VX, a lethal chemical that kills on contact with the skin. The Syrian chemical weapons program was assisted by Anatoly Kuntsevich, former head of the Russian Army’s Chemical Troops. The existing stockpile of Sarin, the nerve gas used by the terrorists in Tokyo, was hoped to be upgraded to VX.
(WSJ, 5/6/97, p.A22)
1997 May 6, In Zaire Pres. Mobutu Sese Seko left Zaire for a 3-day visit to Gabon. He was not expected to return.
(SFC, 5/7/97, p.C2)
1998 May 6, Rep. Dan Burton, chairman of the House fund-raising inquiry, apologized to GOP colleagues for the furor over his release of selected portions of tapes of Webster Hubbell's prison conversations; Burton's top investigator departed, ordered fired by House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1998 May 6, Jurgen Schrempp of Daimler Benz and Robert Eaton of Chrysler announced in London that the German auto company will purchase Chrysler in a $38 billion merger. The takeover was later documented by Bill Vlasic and Bradley A. Stertz in their book “Taken for a Ride: How Daimler-Benz Drove Off with Chrysler."
(WSJ, 5/8/98, p.W1)(WSJ, 6/12/00, p.A28)
1998 May 6, Astronomers announced the detection of a gamma ray burst in a galaxy 12 billion light years away that was equal to the energy expended by the sun in a trillion years.
(AP, 5/6/99)
1998 May 6, In Bosnia 5 key Karadzic holdovers were arrested or suspended for political and economic illegal acts.
(SFC, 5/27/98, p.A10)
1998 May 6, The Danish government intervened to end a ten day strike by 500,000 workers. It was planned to make strikes illegal until March, 2000, and offered 2 extra vacation days and an additional 3 days of family leave for working parents with children under 14.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A16)
1998 May 6, There was a border skirmish between Ethiopia and Eritrea over the 150-square-mile area called the Badme triangle. This grew into a two-decades-long war with half a million civilians forced from their homes. Later a settlement of the border war was contingent on the borders prior to this date. An international panel in 2005, formed to resolve disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia, said Eritrea violated int’l. law when it invaded the north of Ethiopia.
(SFC, 1/30/99, p.A12)(SFC, 3/10/00, p.A12)(AFP, 12/22/05)(Econ., 11/7/20, p.14)
1998 May 6, In Peru a Boeing 737, chartered by Occidental Petroleum from the Peruvian air force, crashed in the Amazon jungle. At least 13 of 87 people survived the crash.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A1)
1998 May 6, In Serbia fighting in Kosovo continued. A Serb policeman and an ethnic Albanian separatist were killed. The bodies of 2 Albanians who backed Serb rule were pulled from a river and a local politician died in a third attack.
(WSJ, 5/7/98, p.A1)
1999 May 6, President Clinton met with Kosovo refugees in Germany, listening to accounts of murder, rape and terror and promising them, "You will go home again in safety and in freedom."
(AP, 5/6/00)
1999 May 6, The Clinton administration suspended the sale of handguns to Venezuelan companies because of concerns that the guns were ending up in the hands of narcotics gangs and guerrilla groups in Colombia.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.D3)
1999 May 6, The US House of Rep. approved a $13.1 billion emergency spending bill to pay for the air war in Yugoslavia.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A3)
1999 May 6, A US appeals court ruled that government restrictions on the export of encryption software violated free speech.
(WSJ, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Bristol-Myers announced a plan to spend $100 million over the next 5 years in 5 southern African nations to fund AIDS research trials.
(WSJ, 5/6/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Scientists reported that the salmonella bacteria becomes disabled when stripped of a gene that produces the DNA adenine methylase (Dam). The research was seen as a potent new source for vaccines.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A1,17)
1999 May 6, The storm in Oklahoma that killed 41 people moved on to Tennessee and took killed 4 people.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A3)
1999 May 6, In Germany pharmaceutical salesman Piotr Blumenstock was shot dead in Berlin. In 2019 German police offered up to 10,000 euros ($11,400) for information on the whereabouts of Polish suspect Vladimir Svintkovski of Poland.
(AP, 1/7/19)
1999 May 6, In Iraq the new vacation-resort city of Saddamiat al-Tharthar opened 85 miles west of Baghdad. Nearly every brick was engraved with the initials of Saddam Hussein.
(SFC, 5/12/99, p.C5)
1999 May 6, Russia joined NATO to back a framework for ending the conflict in Kosovo that included an international security presence to enforce peace.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A1)
1999 May 6, Electricity was restored in Belgrade as NATO air strikes continued in Yugoslavia. A main railroad bridge was destroyed near the Romanian border and oil depots in Nis were hit.
(SFC, 5/7/99, p.A15)
1999 May 6, In Scotland elections for the 129-member Edinburgh parliament were scheduled. Its powers would include control over taxes, health, transport, education, legal affairs, sports and the arts. Reversing decades of overwhelming loyalty to Britain's governing Labor Party, Scottish and Welsh voters elected strong nationalist oppositions to their first separate assemblies of modern times. The Scottish National Party won 56 of 129 seats, the Liberal Democrats won 17 and the Conservatives won 18.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A28)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A10)(AP, 5/6/00)
1999 Apr 6, In Wales the 2.2 million voters were to elect a 60-member assembly. It would be responsible for distributing a $13 million grant from London. Labor took 28 of 60 seats, the nationalist Plaid Cymru took 17, the Conservatives got 9 and the Liberal Democrats got 6.
(SFEC, 5/2/99, p.A28)(SFC, 5/8/99, p.A10)
2000 May 6, The 1st geocaching cache was found hidden outside Portland, Oregon, by Mike Teague. [see May 3]
(WSJ, 3/19/02, p.A20)
2000 May 6, Fusaichi Pegasus won the 126th Kentucky Derby. He was the first favorite to win the Kentucky Derby since “Spectacular Bid" in 1979.
(SFEC, 5/7/00, p.D1)(AP, 5/6/01)
2000 May 6, Jack Mazzan, who’d spent 20 years on death row for the murder of a judge’s son, was released on bail, three months after the Nevada Supreme Court reversed his conviction. Before he could be tried again, Mazzan pleaded guilty to killing Richard Minor Jr. and received a life sentence; Mazzan has since sought parole, unsuccessfully.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2000 May 6, It was reported that Jin Wenchao, a former soldier and head of a Chinese construction firm involved in the Three Gorges dam project, had disappeared with over $120 million.
(SFC, 5/6/00, p.A12)
2000 May 6, In Sierra Leone rebels clashed with UN peacekeepers and advanced on Freetown. Rebel leader Foday Sankoh halted the rebel advance.
(SFEC, 5/7/00, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/00, p.A12)
2000 May 6, In Sudan Pres. Omar el-Bashir dismissed Hassan Turabi as the secretary-general of the ruling National Congress Party.
(SFC, 5/8/00, p.A13)
2001 May 6, An anonymous donor pledged $100 million to Johns Hopkins Univ. to develop a vaccine and new drugs for malaria.
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)
2001 May 6, American businessman Dennis Tito ended the world's first paid space vacation as he returned to Earth aboard a Russian capsule.
(AP, 5/6/02)
2001 May 6, SF held the grand opening of the Presidio Crissy Field Park. It had once served as a dump site for the Presidio. 87,000 tons of contaminated waste had been removed following a $32 million fundraising effort.
(SFC, 5/3/01, p.G1)(SFC, 10/2/13, p.D5)(SSFC, 12/1/19, p.A13)
2001 May 6, In Sari, Iran, the Mottaqi stadium grandstand collapsed and killed several people with hundreds injured.
(WSJ, 5/7/01, p.A1)
2001 May 6, Macedonian forces lobbed shells into villages seized by ethnic Albanian rebels.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C1)
2001 May 6, In the Philippines Pres. Arroyo lifted the “state of rebellion" order.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C1)
2001 May 6, In Spain Manuel Gimenez Abad (52), a politician of the ruling Popular Party, was shot to death in Zaragoza.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.C3)
2001 May 6, In Syria Pope John Paul II prayed in the Great Umayyad Mosque, the 1st time a pontiff ever visited and prayed in a Muslim house of worship. He called for brotherhood between Christians and Muslims.
(SFC, 5/7/01, p.A1)(AP, 5/6/02)
2002 May 6, It was reported that the Bush administration planned to annul the 1998 US signature on the Rome Statute, a treaty for creating an int'l. war-crimes tribunal.
(WSJ, 5/6/02, p.A1,4)
2002 May 6, Federal regulators released documents that showed Enron Corp. had manipulated the California power system to increase profits.
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)
2002 May 6, Two mailbox pipe bombs were found in Colorado and another one in Nebraska.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A3)
2002 May 6, Otis Blackwell (70), songwriter, died in Nashville. His 1950s songs included “Don't Be Cruel," “All Shook Up," “Return to Sender," and “Great Balls of Fire."
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A31)
2002 May 6, Elon Musk founded SpaceX with the goal of reducing space transportation costs to enable the colonization of Mars.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX)
2002 May 6, In Afghanistan the CIA fired a missile from a Predator in an attempt to kill Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, head of Hezb-e-Islami, and his top aides outside Kabul.
(SFC, 5/10/02, p.A22)
2002 May 6, French Pres. Chirac appointed Jean-Pierre Raffarin (center right) as PM.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A12)(Econ, 2/12/05, p.50)
2002 May 6, Jose Luis Nieto (56) raced his pickup into a crowd of toddlers in Ecatepec, near Mexico City, and killed 2 children aged 2 and 3. A daily school ceremony had blocked access to his house.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A12)
2002 May 6, Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was freed after 19 months of house arrest.
(AP, 5/6/03)
2002 May 6, In Nepal the government reported that army air strikes had killed an additional 200 rebels in the remote districts of Rolpa and Pyuthan.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A11)
2002 May 6, In the Netherlands Pim Fortuyn (54), a right-wing populist with an anti-immigrant platform, was shot to death in Hilversum. Volkert van der Graaf (32), an environmental activist, was arrested May 7 for the murder. He was later sentenced to 18 years in prison.
(SFC, 5/7/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)(SFC, 5/8/02, p.A17)(AP, 5/6/03)
2002 May 6, Daan Goosen, South Africa scientist, passed a vial of genetically engineered bacteria to a retired US CIA officer and offered an entire collection of pathogens developed in SA bio-weapons research for $5 million and immigrations permits for 19 associates and family members. The deal collapsed.
(SSFC, 4/20/03, p.A16)
2002 May 6, Zimbabwe arrested an 8th journalist under its harsh new press law.
(WSJ, 5/7/02, p.A1)
2003 May 6, President Bush lifted Clinton-era sanctions (1993-1998) against Angola's UNITA rebels, citing the end of a quarter-century of civil war.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, White House budget chief Mitchell Daniels announced his resignation.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Florida Senator Bob Graham launched his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination by accusing President Bush of retreating from the war on terrorism to "settle old scores" between the Bush family and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Kmart Corporation emerged from bankruptcy after more than 15 months of Chapter 11 protection.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2003 May 6, Six Algerian soldiers were killed when suspected Islamic fighters bombed their vehicle and sprayed the survivors with gunfire.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, In northeastern India suspected separatist guerrillas killed 19 Bengali settlers in Tripura state.
(AP, 5/6/03)
2003 May 6, Ghazi Hammud, Baath regional chairman in the Kut district, was put in custody. He is No. 32 on Central Command's list of the 55 most-wanted members of Saddam's regime.
(AP, 5/7/03)
2003 May 6, The Liberian government announced that Sam Bockerie (39), a guerrilla RUF leader, was killed in a shootout with Liberian soldiers.
(SFC, 5/7/03, p.A1)
2003 May 6, Saudi authorities seized a weapons cache and foiled plans by suspected terrorists. At least 19 men were sought.
(SFC, 5/8/03, p.A1)
2003 May 6, It was reported that AIDS in Zambia had cut the average life expectancy to 33 years from 44 a decade ago. One in 5 adults was reported to have HIV.
(WSJ, 5/6/03, p.A1)
2004 May 6, An estimated 51.1 million people tuned in for the final first-run episode of "Friends" on NBC.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2004 May 6, Pres. Bush told King Abdullah II of Jordan that he was sorry for the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by US guards.
(SFC, 5/7/0, p.A1)
2004 May 6, The US FBI, using fingerprint evidence, arrested Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield as part of the investigation into the Madrid, Spain, train bombings. The bureau later said Mayfield's arrest had been a mistake, and apologized. In 2006 the US government agreed to pay Mayfield $2 million to settle a lawsuit.
(AP, 5/6/05)(SFC, 11/30/06, p.A7)
2004 May 6, Lea Fastow, wife of former Enron finance chief Andrew Fastow, pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and was sentenced to one year in prison.
(SFC, 5/7/04, p.C3)
2004 May 6, An audio recording attributed to Osama bin Laden offered rewards in gold for the killing of top U.S. and U.N. officials in Iraq or of the citizens of any nation fighting there.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 6, The Bank of England raised interest rates a quarter point to 4.25%.
(Econ, 5/8/04, p.53)
2004 May 6, The leader of the breakaway region of Adzharia fled after street protests, and Georgia's president flew into the restive province, vowing to pursue the integration of two other separatist regions.
(AP, 5/6/04)
2004 May 6, A suicide attacker detonated a car bomb outside the so-called Green Zone that houses the U.S. headquarters in Baghdad, killing five Iraqi civilians and a U.S. soldier. U.S. soldiers backed by tanks and armored fighting vehicles seized control of the governor's office from Shiite militiamen in the city of Najaf. As many as 41 Iraqis were killed in Najaf.
(AP, 5/6/04)(SFC, 5/7/04, p.A17)
2004 May 6, A Libyan court sentenced five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor to death on charges they intentionally infected some 393 children with the AIDS virus as part of an experiment to find a cure. 9 Libyan health workers were acquitted. Under Libyan law, death sentences generate an automatic 60-day period for appeal.
(AP, 5/6/04)(SSFC, 6/6/04, E3)
2004 May 6, A Mexican court sentenced eight drug-gang members to 40 years each in prison for their roles in the 1993 shooting of Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo and 6 others at a Guadalajara airport.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2004 May 6, In Nigeria lawmakers in the mostly Islamic Kano state approved a law calling for Muslims to be whipped and Christians to be jailed if they are caught drinking alcohol.
(AP, 5/8/04)
2004 May 6, Hundreds of Rwandan rebels attacked Kingi village in volatile eastern Congo, sparking a two-hour battle in which at least five Congolese soldiers and insurgents were killed.
(AP, 5/7/04)
2005 May 6, President Bush arrived in Riga, Latvia, as he opened a fast-paced, four-country journey to mark the 60th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2005 May 6, Joe Grant (96), pioneering Disney artist/storyman, died. He was co-story director on "Fantasia," co-writer of "Dumbo" and designer of the witch/queen character in "Snow White." Grant remained vital and active at Disney feature animation until his death.
(www.talkdisney.com/forums/printthread.php?t=27485)
2005 May 6, In Bahrain about 5,000 citizens jammed a main road in the capital, waving red and white Bahraini flags in the 2nd rally for constitutional reforms in a month.
(AP, 5/7/05)
2005 May 6, British Prime Minister Tony Blair unveiled his Cabinet, changing leadership in defense and health but keeping mostly familiar faces after a third term victory dampened by a reduced majority in Parliament.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2005 May 6, Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom Hashoah). In 1951 Israel’s Parliament set the day of commemoration for the 27th of Nissan, a few days after the end of Passover.
(WSJ, 5/6/05, p.W11)
2005 May 6, An Indian federal probe into disappearing tigers in a state-protected reserve has found the entire population of big cats has been wiped out by poachers. "The special investigation team in its preliminary assessment report has indicated that there was no evidence to prove the presence of tigers in Sariska (national park)."
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Arab television station al-Jazeera said militants holding an Australian engineer hostage have issued a 72-hour ultimatum for Australia to start pulling troops out of Iraq.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Insurgent car bombs struck a market in Suwayrah killing 17 civilians, and a police bus in Tikrit, killing at least 8 policemen.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, At least a dozen bodies were found buried at a garbage dump on the outskirts of Baghdad, some of them blindfolded and shot in the head.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, In Lebanon an explosion ravaged a shopping area and set off a fire near a Christian religious radio station in the port city of Jounieh north of Beirut.
(AP, 5/7/05)
2005 May 6, In southwestern Nepal unidentified gunmen fatally shot Narayan Pokhrel, the chief of the World Hindu Council's Nepal chapter, while he was touring villages.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas' ruling Fatah movement narrowly fended off a strong challenge by Hamas to win local elections, but the Islamic militant group captured the 3 biggest races in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, establishing itself as a major political force.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, Romania's foreign minister said his government would keep its troops in Iraq supporting postwar operations despite the kidnapping of three Romanian journalists.
(AP, 5/6/05)
2005 May 6, The UN Sec. Gen. appointed Alvaro de Soto as the Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. De Soto resigned in May, 2007.
(www.un.org/unsco/coordinator.html)
2006 May 6, Vice President Dick Cheney met with President Stipe Mesic of Croatia, the final stop of a three-nation tour dominated by the issue of political reform in countries making the post-Cold War transition toward democracy.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, Barbaro won the Kentucky Derby.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2006 May 6, Lillian Gertrud Asplund (99), the last American survivor of the sinking of the Titanic, died in Shrewsbury, Mass.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2006 May 6, Chen Li (b.1929), a Chinese journalist and former editor-in-chief of China Daily, the communist government's main English-language newspaper, died in Beijing.
(AP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, Gen. Frantisek Perina (b.1911), a Czech WWII fighter ace who fought against Nazi Germany in the French and British air forces died in Prague.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, In Athens, Greece, some 30,000 people marched in an anti-war and anti-globalization demonstration that also saw anarchist attacks on banks, shops and police vehicles. The march was organized by the European Social Forum, which was holding a four-day meeting on the outskirts of Athens.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, At least seven people, including three Iraqi army officers and two children, were killed and seven others kidnapped in a series of rebel attacks across Iraq.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, A chemical weapons expert for a major Islamic extremist group was killed by security forces in Baghdad. Ali Wali, a member of Ansar al-Islam, died during a raid on a suspected militant safe house in the western Baghdad neighborhood of Mansour.
(AP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, A British military helicopter crashed in Basra and the 5 people were killed. Flight Lieutenant Sarah Mulvihill died in the crash in the southern city of Basra along with Wing Commander John Coxen, Lieutenant Commander Darren Chapman, Lieutenant David Dobson and Marine Paul Collins. Iraqis hurled stones at British troops and set fire to at least one armored vehicle that rushed to the scene. Four Iraqi adults and a child were reported killed during in the melee when Shiite gunmen exchanged fire with British soldiers. 2 insurgents were killed in Tikrit while they were planting a roadside bomb.
(AP, 5/6/06)(AP, 5/7/06)(AFP, 5/8/06)
2006 May 6, Teachers at five schools in the West Bank city of Hebron went on strike, demanding their overdue paychecks in the first sign of unrest by public employees. Hundreds of government workers, most of them supporters of Abbas' moderate Fatah faction, also protested in the West Bank city of Nablus.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, Singaporeans voted in legislative elections. The ruling party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections. It has won every general election held in the island nation since it became independent in 1965.
(AP, 5/6/06)
2006 May 6, A local rights group said Zimbabwe state security agents have stepped up the use of torture against government opponents, with 19 cases reported in March compared with three during the previous two months.
(Reuters, 5/6/06)
2007 May 6, Carey Bell, Mississippi-born blues harmonica player, died in Chicago.
(SFC, 5/8/07, p.B5)
2007 May 6, In eastern Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed 5 police and wounded two others, while a clash in the west left eight police and at least four suspected militants dead. An Afghan soldier shot and killed two US troops and wounded 2 others outside Pul-e-Charkhi prison. The next day Defense Ministry spokesman Zahir Azimi said the Afghan soldier was mentally ill. A bus crashed in northern Afghanistan, sparking a fire that left nine people dead and 25 injured.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, In Brazil Eneas Carneiro (68), a three-time presidential candidate who was later elected to Congress with the largest number of votes ever received by a Brazilian lawmaker, died of leukemia.
(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, Britain’s Home Secretary John Reid announced that he would resign from the government within weeks, just as Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown is likely to take over from Tony Blair as prime minister.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Lord Weatherill (86), the last speaker to wear the traditional shoulder-length wig, died. He had ushered Britain's House of Commons into the television age.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 6, In Egypt a plane carrying foreign peacekeepers across the Sinai desert crashed near a stretch of highway where it had tried to make an emergency landing, killing eight French soldiers and a Canadian.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, French voters turned out in force in a presidential election offering divergent choices for the future, with conservative front-runner Nicolas Sarkozy urging the French to work more and Socialist Segolene Royal pledging to safeguard welfare protections. Nicolas Sarkozy (52), a US-friendly conservative and an immigrant's son, defeated Socialist Segolene Royal by 53% to 47% with about 85% voter turnout.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, A car bomb ripped through a wholesale food market in western Baghdad, flattening cars and shops and killing at least 30 people in the deadliest of a wave of attacks across Iraq that killed at least 95 people. A car bomb near the Ministry of Labor in Baghdad killed five people and wounded 10. Insurgents exploded another car bomb outside a police station in the Sunni town of Samarra, killing 12 officers and disabling the city’s water system. A few minutes later, militants in the town attacked a police checkpoint near the Askariya shrine, killing another police officer. US and Iraqi forces raided the Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, uncovering a weapons cache, a torture room and killing at least eight insurgents in a gunbattle. In Diyala 6 US soldiers and a Russian photojournalist were killed when a massive bomb destroyed their vehicle. Two American soldiers died in separate bombings in Baghdad.
(AP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)(SFC, 5/7/07, p.A16)(SFC, 5/11/07, p.A18)
2007 May 6, Two Israeli human rights groups charged in a report that Israel's Shin Bet security service uses torture in its interrogation of Palestinian prisoners, violating a 1999 court ruling outlawing such practices.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Italian news said a Vatican court for the first time has issued a drug conviction, giving a former employee of the Holy See a four-month suspended sentence for cocaine use.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Japan pledged $100 million in grants to the Asian Development Bank to combat global warming and promote greener investment in the region and called for a stronger international agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, More than 18,000 people stripped down and bared it all in Mexico City's vast main square for US photographer Spencer Tunick's biggest nude shoot yet.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, Pakistan's sacked top judge, declared the "era of dictatorship is over" to cheers from tens of thousands as he took his battle with President Pervez Musharraf to the eastern city of Lahore. In northwestern Pakistan a passenger bus veered off a mountain road and fell about 600 feet into a ravine, killing 21 people and injuring seven others.
(AFP, 5/6/07)(AP, 5/7/07)
2007 May 6, In Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal region Islamic militants began confiscating music cassettes from public buses and ordering shops to only sell CDs promoting jihad in the latest push to Talibanize the lawless frontier region.
(AP, 5/8/07)
2007 May 6, Palestinian militants opened fire near a children's festival at a UN-operated elementary school in the southern Gaza Strip, killing a bodyguard of a local Fatah leader and wounding seven other people. Palestinian militants shot and seriously injured an Israeli motorist who was driving west of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, In South Africa Helen Zille, mayor of Cape Town, was elected as leader of the Democratic Alliance (DA).
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.51)
2007 May 6, Spain's Supreme Court barred hundreds of Basque separatist candidates from running in regional elections later this month because of links to an outlawed party closely tied to armed group ETA.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, In eastern Sri Lanka a landmine detonated by Tamil Tigers killed three police commandos, while seven suspected rebels died elsewhere in the embattled region.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2007 May 6, Frank Hsieh, former prime minister of Taiwan, won the ballot of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), as candidate for next year’s presidential elections. Hsieh favored better relations with China.
(Econ, 5/12/07, p.44)
2007 May 6, Turkey’s Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul withdrew his candidacy for presidential elections after Parliament failed for the second time to vote him into office.
(AP, 5/6/07)
2008 May 6, Sen. Barack Obama climbed within 200 delegates of clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. In the Indiana primary Clinton won 51% to 49%. In North Carolina Obama won 56% to 42%.
(AP, 5/7/08)(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A1)
2008 May 6, In New Mexico Wayne Bent (66), the leader of an apocalyptic sect, was arrested and charged with felony sex crimes against children.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A4)
2008 May 6, In California the Vallejo City Council voted to declare bankruptcy after talks with public employee unions failed to address a $16 million shortfall.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.B1)
2008 May 6, The California Community College system announced a $50 million gift from the Bernard Osher Foundation.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.B1)
2008 May 6, In Georgia William Earl Lynd (53) was executed for the murder of his live-in girlfriend. He was the first inmate executed since the Supreme Court upheld lethal injections on April 16.
(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A2)
2008 May 6, In Afghanistan a Canadian soldier was killed and another was wounded in a gun battle with insurgents near Kandahar city.
(AFP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 6, Canadian researchers reported that suicide victims who were abused as children have clear genetic changes in their brains in a finding they said shows neglect can cause biological effects.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Chile’s Chaiten volcano spewed lava and blasted ash more than 12 miles into the sky, prompting a total evacuation of the provincial capital and other settlements.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Chinese President Hu Jintao arrived in Tokyo for a feel-good visit that will use ping pong and pandas to take the edge off more contentious problems like border disputes, historical animosity and concerns over China's rule in Tibet.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Djibouti, a key US ally in the Horn of Africa, urged the UN Security Council to take immediate action to prevent a conflict with its northern neighbor Eritrea.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Egyptian border police fatally shot a Nigerian man who was trying to cross illegally into Israel. Guards also shot three Sudanese men and one woman who were also trying to sneak into Israel.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Officials in Indonesia said at least 13 illegal gold miners were killed in a landslide in remote Papua province.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, At least four civilians were killed overnight in the Baghdad Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City. The US military announced that about 3,500 American soldiers are scheduled to leave Iraq in the coming weeks. US Hellfire missiles killed 3 militants planting a roadside bomb in the Shiite neighborhood of New Baghdad.
(AP, 5/6/08)(SFC, 5/7/08, p.A3)
2008 May 6, In Italy the data-protection authority ruled that releasing tax returns into cyberspace was illicit. Tax authorities had recently put all 38.5 million tax returns for 2005 up on the internet. A measure authorizing the released had been signed on March 5, but not enacted until the defeat of the Prodi government.
(Econ, 5/10/08, p.61)
2008 May 6, Kenya froze the assets of businessman Felicien Kabuga, the most wanted suspect in Rwanda's genocide, saying it would stop him avoiding capture or helping other fugitives. The US government has offered a $5 million bounty for Kabuga's capture.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)(AP, 9/23/09)
2008 May 6, Lebanon’s government declared Hezbollah’s military telecommunications network illegal and said it was a threat to state security. The cabinet removed Beirut airport’s security chief over alleged ties to Hezbollah.
(WSJ, 5/7/08, p.A1)(AP, 5/8/08)
2008 May 6, In northern and central Mali attacks by Tuareg rebels on several army posts left one person dead.
(AFP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Mauritania’s President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi said in a statement he had named economist Yahya Ould Ahmed Waqef (50) as prime minister.
(AP, 5/7/08)
2008 May 6, Myanmar's junta decided to postpone voting on a new constitution in areas hardest-hit by a devastating cyclone as the death toll soared above 22,500.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Niger Delta rebels said that former US President Jimmy Carter had agreed to act as a mediator if invited by Nigeria's government, and the group promised to declare a ceasefire if talks went ahead.
(Reuters, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, In northwest Pakistan a suicide bomber riding a rickshaw attacked a police checkpoint and gunmen fired on officers guarding a bank, killing five people and testing the new government's fledgling peace process.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Russia and the US signed a long awaited civilian nuclear cooperation pact that will allow firms from the world's two biggest atomic powers to expand bilateral nuclear trade.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, In Somalia hundreds of youths in Mogadishu lobbed stones at shops and cars and set tires ablaze in a second day of violence over soaring food prices. Amnesty Int’l. accused Ethiopian troops in Somalia of killing civilians and committing atrocities, including slitting people's throats, gouging out eyes and gang-raping women.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Swiss bank UBS, hard hit by the US subprime crisis, reported a first-quarter loss of $10.97 billion and said it will slash almost 7 percent of its work force.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2008 May 6, Two senior Taiwanese officials resigned over the loss of millions of dollars in a failed attempt to persuade Papua New Guinea to officially recognize Taiwan.
(AP, 5/6/08)
2009 May 6, Maine's Gov. John Baldacci signed a freshly passed bill approving gay marriage, making it the fifth state to approve the practice and moving New England closer to allowing it throughout the region.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In California a wildfire surged into Santa Barbara forcing at least 8,000 residents to evacuate.
(SFC, 5/7/09, p.B6)
2009 May 6, New H1N1 flu cases across Europe and a second US death kept health officials on alert despite signs Mexico's epidemic had passed its peak. Mexican health officials said that testing of backlogged cases has increased the confirmed swine flu death toll from 31 to 42, including three new deaths in the past two days.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Virginia police found former NASCAR driver Kevin Grubb (31) dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Grubb was suspended from NASCAR indefinitely in 2006 because he refused to submit to a random drug test following the Busch Series race at Richmond International Raceway.
(AP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 6, US scientists in the Jason submersible from Woods Hole, Mass., filmed the West Mata undersea volcano between Samoa and Fiji. The summit of the volcano now reached some 4,000 feet from the sea floor and was still some 4,000 feet below the ocean’s surface.
(SFC, 12/18/09, p.A14)(http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/06/05/undersea-eruption.html)
2009 May 6, Ben Southall (34), a bungee jumping, ostrich-riding British charity worker was named the winner of what's been dubbed the "Best Job in the World," a 150,000 Australian dollar ($111,000) contract to serve as the caretaker of Australia’s tropical Hamilton Island. He beat out nearly 35,000 applicants from around the world for assignment to swim, explore and relax in the Great Barrier Reef for six months while writing a blog to promote the area.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Bangladesh Home Minister Sahara Khatun said the UAE has given the government nearly $1.44 million to distribute among 879 Bangladeshi children who worked as jockeys at camel races after it was banned in 1993. The law was openly flouted until authorities reached an agreement in 2005 with UNICEF to help repatriate and rehabilitate child jockeys, who were mostly taken from poorer Muslim nations such as Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sudan.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Brazilian officials said at least 29 people have been killed by floods and mudslides in northern Brazil as authorities struggled to rush aid to dozens of small cities cut off from civilization by overflowing rivers in the Amazon region.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Canada and the EU signed an "open skies" pact under which airlines from the two trading partners will be able to fly freely between any airport in the 27-country EU and any in Canada.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Iraq a car bomb exploded at the entrance to a fruit and vegetable market in south Baghdad, killing 15 people and wounding about 40. Hours later, another car bomb exploded in the capital's Karradah district, killing two people and wounding six.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Malaysian officials said 2 political activists have been arrested ahead of a parliamentary showdown between the government and the opposition over control of northern Perak state.
(AFP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, NATO launched military exercises in former Soviet Georgia after heavy criticism from neighboring Russia and a brief mutiny in the Georgian military.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Nepal police clashed with protesting Maoists, who vowed to prevent a new government from being formed unless the president supports the firing of the country's army chief. The key dispute has thrown the Himalayan country into crisis.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Pakistani helicopter gunships and ground troops attacked the Taliban in the Swat valley. Pakistan said it killed more than 80 militants in heavy bombardments in an upsurge of fighting that has caused tens of thousands to flee and threatened to torpedo a northwest peace deal. There were also reports of civilian casualties in fighting in Swat.
(AFP, 5/6/09)(AP, 5/7/09)(Econ, 5/9/09, p.45)
2009 May 6, Russia said it is expelling two Moscow-based NATO employees who are Canadian diplomats in retaliation for NATO's recent expulsion of two Russian envoys from its headquarters in Belgium.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Russia retired Gen. Valentin Varennikov (85), a hawkish World War II veteran who directed the Soviet war in Afghanistan, died. He had joined the rebellion against Mikhail Gorbachev that sped the collapse of the Soviet Union.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Spanish authorities said they have arrested 29 people suspected of forging credit cards to finance an elaborate scheme to smuggle Cubans into the US from Mexico.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, South Africa's parliament has elected Jacob Zuma as the country's president. Zuma won 277 votes in the 400 member National Assembly. Zuma's African National Congress won elections last month with 65.9% of the vote. He is due to be inaugurated on May 9.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tiger rebels said intense fighting in the war zone was killing and wounding hundreds of civilians a day and asked for the UN to push for urgent food shipments to avert a hunger crisis.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, Senior Sudanese aid official Hassabo Mohammed Abdelrahman said that Khartoum was ready to allow foreign aid groups to operate in Darfur but ruled out the return of the 13 aid agencies kicked out in March.
(AFP, 5/7/09)
2009 May 6, Venezuelan prosecutors filed embezzlement and other charges against a former Caracas mayor who supports the government of President Hugo Chavez. Juan Barreto, mayor from 2004 to 2008, denied the allegations and vowed to clear his name in court.
(AP, 5/6/09)
2009 May 6, In Zimbabwe a top rights activist and 14 others were ordered freed on bail after Zimbabwe's president and prime minister forced a judge to reverse her decision to send them back to the prison where they said they had been tortured. She refused, however, to free three others she had ordered returned to prison, saying their case was more serious because they had allegedly been found with explosives. The last 3 were released on May 13.
(AP, 5/6/09)(AFP, 5/14/09)
2010 May 6, The US FCC announced a plan to classify the last mile of internet access as a telecommunications service.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.86)
2010 May 6, The Dow Jones fell nearly 1000 points in intraday trading, but recovered to close at 10,520.32, down 347.8. Unrest in Greece and a trading glitch were cited as causes. After 5 months regulators said the “flash crash" was sparked by a sloppily executed sell order of one mutual fund group when the market was already jittery over economic turmoil in Europe.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.A1)(Econ, 10/9/10, p.107)
2010 May 6, In Ramapo, NY, Pro Football Hall of Famer Lawrence Taylor (51) was charged with raping a 16-year-old runaway who police said was forced into prostitution by a man who had beaten her up. Third-degree rape is a charge levied when the victim is under the age of consent, which is 17 in New York.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, SFJazz unveiled plans for the new 3-story, $60 million SF Jazz Center to rise at the corner of Fell and Franklin streets.
(SFC, 5/6/10, p.A1)
2010 May 6, An E.coli outbreak, possibly linked to tainted lettuce, sickened at least 19 people in Ohio, New York and Michigan prompting a recall throughout much of the US. Freshway Food in Sidney, Ohio, said it was recalling lettuce sold in 23 states and Washington DC.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.A4)
2010 May 6, In California Joseph Mercado (27) shot and killed Serena Tarin, his ex-girlfriend, as well as her father and brother. 6 other family members escaped the rampage in Hawaiian Gardens, LA County. Mercado was arrested by police after a bullet grazed his head.
(SFC, 5/7/10, p.C6)
2010 May 6, Afghan officials said the Taliban have ordered mobile phone operators to shut down their networks during the night in a northern Afghan province, a sign of the militants' increasing influence in a once peaceful area. A NATO service member was killed in a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. Another died from a mortar or rocket attack in the east.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Julio Alberto Poch (57), a pilot who allegedly flew death flights for Argentina's military dictatorship, was extradited from Spain. Spain acted on Argentina's request, arresting him in front of his passengers and family during a stop in Valencia on what was supposed to be his final flight back to the Netherlands before retiring from Transavia.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Britain held national elections expected to deny all three major parties an outright majority, meaning the first so-called hung Parliament since 1974 is likely. David Cameron claimed the mantle of power after the Conservatives won the most seats in the election, though not enough to form a majority. Labour came in second, which for the first time since the 1970s produced no outright winner. Labour could still govern with the help of the Liberal Democrats.
(AP, 5/6/10)(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, In China a tornado and strong winds swept through the southwest early in the day, killing at least 58 people and injuring nearly 200. The southwestern municipality of Chongqing was the worst hit after a tornado and gale-force winds killed 29 people. 10 were left dead in Hunan province and 6 dead in Guangdong province. Torrential rain in the eastern province of Jiangxi killed seven people. 6 people died in rain-triggered landslides in the southwestern province of Guizhou.
(AP, 5/6/10)(AFP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, A Chinese media report said North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il told President Hu Jintao during his secretive trip to Beijing that he is ready to return to stalled nuclear disarmament negotiations.
(AFP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Wan Yanhai, a prominent Chinese AIDS activist, fled China for the United States with his wife and 4-year-old daughter to escape increasing government harassment of him and his organization. Wan, a former Health Ministry official, founded the Aizhixing Institute in 1994 to raise awareness and fight discrimination.
(AP, 5/10/10)
2010 May 6, In southern Ethiopia attackers hurled a bomb at a political meeting in Adaba, killing two people and wounding 14 others just over two weeks before national elections. On May 20 Tadesse Haile was sentenced to death for throwing hand grenades into the packed stadium. He was also convicted on planting bombs close to a construction site on May 5.
(AFP, 5/7/10)(AFP, 5/20/10)
2010 May 6, Israel declined to address the international pressure that's been mounting for it to join the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, saying only that its refusal to acknowledge or deny it possesses atomic weapons is a pillar of its military deterrence.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In Kashmir a fierce gunbattle between Muslim rebels and Indian security forces in the Indian-controlled portion killed six insurgents and two soldiers.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Myanmar leaders of democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party said they would continue working as a social movement after a new election law forced its dissolution as a political party at midnight.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Northern Ireland's First Minister Peter Robinson crashed to a shock defeat in the general election after a sex and cash scandal involving his wife battered his reputation.
(AFP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, Nigeria's Goodluck Jonathan (52) was sworn as president of the oil-rich African nation riven by religious and political divisions, hours after the death of the incumbent Umaru Yar'Adua (58). Jonathan vowed that electoral reform and fighting graft would be top priorities.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas accused Hamas of smuggling large amounts of weapons into the West Bank as part of the militant group's efforts to undermine his administration.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In Paraguay Jesus Ortiz, alleged EPP logistics coordinator, was captured.
(Econ, 5/15/10, p.42)
2010 May 6, Russian forces freed a hijacked Russian oil tanker and rescued its crew in a helicopter-backed operation that killed a Somali pirate. Investigators said the 10 captured pirates, who seized the China-bound MV Moscow University in the Gulf of Aden, will be brought to Moscow for prosecution.
(Reuters, 5/6/10)
2010 May 6, In southern Sudan government troops clashed with soldiers loyal to renegade General George Athor, leaving 53 dead and ending hopes of a negotiated end to his mini revolt.
(Reuters, 5/7/10)
2010 May 6, A Taiwanese fishing boat, the Tai Yuan 227, was hijacked by pirates off the Somali coast who demanded a ransom for the crew.
(AP, 5/8/10)
2010 May 6, Thailand's PM Abhisit Vejjajiva said he would dissolve Parliament in September, paving the way for new elections demanded by anti-government protesters if they end their crippling occupation of Bangkok's commercial district.
(AP, 5/6/10)
2011 May 6, Afghan police killed 10 militants in a gun battle in eastern Paktika province.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Algeria a bomb struck a military convoy on a highway linking Jijel to Constantine, killing five soldiers and injuring five others. Journalist, Ahmed Nezar, was shot dead in his hometown of Baghlia.
(AFP, 5/7/11)(Reuters, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Australia's Defense Ministry announced it will slash 1,000 civilian jobs as part of a belt-tightening exercise to bring the national budget back into surplus.
(AFP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Brazilian federal police confirmed that 16 suspected members of a Serbian gang were arrested between May1-5 across the country. The crackdown concluded a two-year operation that resulted in 35 arrests, the seizure of 1,370 pounds (620 kilograms) of cocaine and the equivalent of $1.2 million.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Brazil’s Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo launched a disarmament campaign hoping to take more than 1 million guns off the streets by the end of the year.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, The EU agreed to place sanctions on Syrian officials next week as it tries to halt a government crackdown against protesters.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, France ordered 14 diplomats loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to leave the country within 48 hours.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, A Guinean government minister said at least 25 people have been killed and a mosque has been destroyed in fighting that took place earlier this week in Galapaye.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Nearly 800 Air India pilots demanding more pay ended their 10-day-old strike, which cost the state-run airline around 12 million rupees ($2.7 million) a day.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Commuters in Italy scrambled to find the few buses and subway trains running during a one-day general strike that also affected air and rail travel, banks, public offices and schools.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Ivory Coast UN investigators headed to a soccer field in Yopougon believed to be the site of a new mass grave. 29 bodies were counted in the grave. A resident said that militants loyal to arrested strongman Laurent Gbagbo swept through the neighborhood amid celebrations over Gbagbo's April 11 arrest.
(AP, 5/8/11)
2011 May 6, Japan's PM Naoto Kan ordered the suspension of operations at an ageing nuclear power plant southwest of Tokyo because it is located close to a dangerous tectonic faultline.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Kenyan authorities said they have seized the tusks of 58 elephants, totaling one ton of ivory, after sniffer dogs led investigators to containers at the country's main airport that were bound for Nigeria.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Moamer Kadhafi's regime reacted angrily to a NATO-led decision to provide funding to the three-month-old rebellion against his rule in Libya, describing as "piracy" plans to tap its assets frozen abroad.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, A ship carrying up to 600 migrants trying to flee Libya sank off the coast of the North African country. At least three other boats that departed Libya in late March have disappeared, bringing to 800 the number of people believed to have perished at sea trying to reach European shores.
(AP, 5/9/11)
2011 May 6, Mexico authorities said they recovered 11 more bodies at a series of mass grave pits in Durango, bringing the total number of bodies found in a monthlong search of the pits to at least 157. Cartel gunmen fired on a military convoy in Monterrey with a grenade launcher and hit a bus carrying employees of a US-owned assembly plant. One attacker was killed. Prosecutors said they have detained four local policemen, five Guatemalans and one Honduran in connection with mass kidnappings of migrants in the border city of Reynosa. Police captured Jose Zarco Cardenas (22) and an accomplice in Mexico City. He had recently begun heading drug operations in Morelos state for a gang that broke off from the Beltran Leyva cartel.
(AP, 5/6/11)(SFC, 5/9/11, p.A2)
2011 May 6, In Nigeria polling opened in some parts of the state of Imo for a governorship election after irregularities marred a previous exercise. Attackers killed at least 16 people and set fire to more than a dozen houses in Tafawa Balewa, Bauchi state, a town that has been beset by years of sectarian violence.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(Reuters, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, In Pakistan a US drone attack targeted a vehicle and a compound in North Waziristan killing 16 people, including 10 Taliban militants. Hundreds of Pakistanis took to the streets in Abbottabad, Quetta, Multan and Peshawar cheering Osama bin Laden and shouting "death to America" to condemn a unilateral US raid on their soil that killed bin Laden. Assailants using rockets and guns attacked a group of people exercising at an open soccer field on the outskirts of Quetta, killing six of them and wounding 13.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/6/11)(AP, 2/25/12)
2011 May 6, In Poland one miner and one rescuer were already confirmed dead after methane ignited some 2,700 feet (820 meters) underground at the Krupinski mine near Katowice. The body of a missing rescuer was found on May 12, bringing the death toll to 3.
(AP, 5/12/11)
2011 May 6, Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin proposed creating a "broad popular front" ahead of Russia's parliamentary election, in an apparent attempt to counter growing public discontent with his political party and solidify support.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Spanish police searched for 22 African migrants missing in the Mediterranean Sea after a packed boat they were traveling in nearly sank.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, Thousands of Syrians rallied on a "Day of Defiance" even as the regime of President Bashar al-Assad deployed tanks in at least three centers of an uprising against his autocratic rule. Security forces opened fire on protesters, killing at least 30 people, as thousands joined demonstrations across the country calling for an end to Assad's regime.
(AFP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/6/11)(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, In Togo 26 people died after their bus crashed. The victims were mainly merchants from Burkina Faso who were traveling to the Togolese capital for business.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2011 May 6, In Venezuela authorities at a prison in western Tachira state found the bodies of eight inmates killed in what officials say is a conflict between rival gangs fighting for control of their cellblocks.
(AP, 5/7/11)
2011 May 6, Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis flooded a boulevard on the western edge of the capital, releasing colorful balloons to press their demand for President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down, while he denounced his opponents as "terrorists" in a speech to supporters nearby.
(AP, 5/6/11)
2012 May 6, George Lindsey (83), TV actor, died in Nashville. He spent nearly 30 years as the grinning Goober on "The Andy Griffith Show" (1964-1968) and "Hee Haw" (1971-1993). He played a jovial service station attendant on "Mayberry RFD" (1968-1971).
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Sky News Arabia, a joint venture between an Abu Dhabi royal and the British broadcaster BSkyB, launched a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel with a pledge to be impartial in a region where government influence over media is endemic.
(Reuters, 5/8/12)
2012 May 6, In northern Afghanistan a flash flood swept through a village, killing 21 people, many of them members of a wedding party in Dhy Marda village in Sari Pul province. Floods overnight in two other districts in the province killed three people.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, In Afghanistan a soldier with NATO's US-led coalition was killed by a man in Afghan army uniform, in the latest so-called "green-on-blue" attack. The individual who opened fire was killed when coalition forces returned fire. ISAF announced that one coalition service member died in a roadside bomb attack in the east of the country. 4 gunmen took over a tall building in Paktika province and started shooting down into surrounding government compounds, wounding one civilian before security forces killed them.
(AFP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/10/12)
2012 May 6, Armenians voted for a new parliament. President Serge Sarkisian's party won a majority of seats in a parliamentary election that international observers said were competitive and peaceful. The Republican Party won at least 68 of the parliament's 131 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, Chinese activist Chen Guangcheng, isolated in a Beijing hospital, appealed for official help to leave the country after a US-brokered diplomatic solution paved the way for his departure. Chen has been offered a fellowship from New York University.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In CongoDRC the March 23 Movement (M23) was created by army mutineers who were part of the former rebel National Congress for the Defense of the People (CNDP), a Congolese Tutsi force that Rwanda denied supporting when it was waging its insurgency. The M23 Tutsi leaders came from the same ethnic group as Rwanda’s Pres. Kagame.
(AFP, 5/28/12)(Econ, 11/24/12, p.57)
2012 May 6, Egypt's Islamist-dominated parliament approved a ban on the country's next president from sending civilians for trial by military tribunals, but preserving that power for the military itself.
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, France voted in a presidential run-off election. Socialist challenger Francois Hollande (51.62%) defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy (48.38%) by capitalizing on public anger over the government's austerity policies. Sarkozy became the first French one-term president since Valery Giscard d'Estaing lost his re-election bid in 1981.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, Greeks cast ballots in their most critical election in decades. Greece voters let a far-right extremist group into Parliament and gave no party enough votes to govern alone. Conservative leader Antonis Samaras began trying to form a new coalition government. New Democracy came first with 18.85% and 108 of Parliament's 300 seats. The big winner was the anti-bailout Radical Left Coalition, or Syriza, whose unprecedented second place with 16.78% gave it 52 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, It was reported that the US military has established 3 new forward bases in Honduras to interdict smugglers moving cocaine toward the US from South America.
(SSFC, 5/6/12, p.A8)
2012 May 6, A tornado ripped through eastern Japan, killing a teenager, destroying dozens of homes and cutting power to around 20,000 households. Television footage from Tsukuba showed houses swept from their foundations, overturned cars in muddy debris and fallen concrete power poles.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In Lebanon more than 1,000 people marched in Beirut calling for the establishment of a secular state in the country which is ruled by a system of power-sharing along religious lines.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Malaysian clerics issued a fatwa against demonstrations.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In northern Nigerian soldiers killed four suspected members of Boko Haram Islamist sect in a raid on their hideout in Kano. About a dozen suspected Islamists were arrested in the raid.
(AFP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, In Pakistan Taliban militants killed 9 soldiers in an ambush in Miran Shah, North Waziristan. The army retaliated with helicopter gunships, which pounded suspected militant hideouts and also hit three houses and a mosque in the town, killing 3 civilians. The military raided two houses in Miran Shah, killing a militant commander and several of his colleagues.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2012 May 6, In Russia at least 20,000 opposition demonstrators marched through Moscow, shouting "enough lies," in a final show of protest before Vladimir Putin is inaugurated once again as president.
(AP, 5/6/12)
2012 May 6, Serbs voted in a national election. The opposition Progressive Party won a narrow victory. A presidential runoff will be held on May 20 between pro-Western leader Boris Tadic, who won 26.7% of the vote, and nationalist Tomislav Nikolic, who had 25.5%. Nikolic's Progressives won 73 seats in the 250-member assembly, ahead of Tadic's Democrats, which took 68 seats. Ivica Dacic's Socialists won 45 seats.
(AP, 5/6/12)(AP, 5/7/12)(SFC, 5/8/12, p.A2)
2012 May 6, In eastern Yemen al-Qaeda leader Fahd al-Quso, who was wanted in connection with the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, was killed along with 2 bodyguards in an air strike in Rafadh, Shabwa province.
(AFP, 5/7/12)
2013 May 6, In New York 30 horses being taken to slaughter in Canada were burned alive when the tractor-trailer transporting them caught fire on an upstate highway.
(Reuters, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Cleveland 3 women, Amanda Berry (27), Gina DeJesus (23) and Michelle Knight (32), who went missing separately about a decade ago, when they were in their teens or early 20s, were found alive in a residential area just south of downtown. 3 brothers, Ariel Castro (52), Pedro (54) and Onil Castro (50) were arrested. On May 8 Ariel Castro was charged with kidnapping and rape of the 3 women. His two borthers were not charged. On July 26 Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts in a deal to avoid the death penalty.
(AP, 5/7/13)(AP, 5/8/13)(SFC, 5/8/13, p.A10)(AP, 5/9/13)(SFC, 7/27/13, p.A6)
2013 May 6, The SEC issued a long report on the financial misdeeds of Harrisburg, Pa. The state capital has been bankrupt since 2011.
(Econ, 5/11/13, p.80)
2013 May 6, US Air Force Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinsky (41), head of Air Force sexual assault prevention, was arrested on charges of groping a woman a day earlier in a suburban Virginia parking lot.
(SFC, 5/8/13, p.A8)
2013 May 6, Argentina’s Pres. Cristina Fernandez ruled out any currency devaluation while she's president, and dismissed as election-year politics a brewing scandal over allegations of money laundering by businessmen close to her and her late husband Nestor Kirchner.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, Bangladesh police banned all rallies in Dhaka for the rest of the day after at least 31 people died in clashes between police and large numbers of Islamic hardliners demanding that the government enact an anti-blasphemy law. The dead included police officers. The Awami League security crackdown on members of Hefajat-e-Islam, an extreme Islamist group, left as many as 50 people dead in Dhaka. Another 20 were reported killed in clashes in Narayanganj.
(AP, 5/6/13)(SSFC, 5/12/13, p.A4)(Econ, 5/11/13, p.54)
2013 May 6, China’s Pres. Xi Jinping met with Palestinian Pres. Mahmoud Abbas in Beijing and urged dialogue in Middle East peace negotiations.
(Econ, 5/11/13, p.52)
2013 May 6, Cuban spy Rene Gonzalez (56), who spent 13 years in a US prison, renounced his American citizenship, part of a deal that allows him to avoid returning to the US to serve out the remainder of his probation. He is one of the so-called "Cuban Five," intelligence agents convicted in 2001 of spying on US military installations in South Florida.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Germany Hans Lipschis (93), deported from the US in 1983 for lying about his Nazi past, was taken into custody after authorities concluded there was "compelling evidence" he was involved in crimes at Auschwitz while there from 1941 to 1943. Lipschis was released in December after a court concluded he was suffering from dementia. On Feb 28 the Ellwangen state court said that because of “worsening dementia" he could not be tried.
(AP, 5/6/13)(SFC, 12/7/13, p.A2)(SFC, 3/1/14, p.A2)
2013 May 6, In Iraq two car bombs blew up in a Baghdad suburb, killing 6 people in the deadlier of two attacks that left at least 10 dead. Attackers in a speeding car threw grenades at Sunni worshippers leaving al-Ihsan mosque in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, killing 7 and wounding 16.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu met with his security Cabinet and then departed to China for a scheduled visit.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Giulio Andreotti (b.1919), Italy's former seven-time premier and a symbol of post-war Italy, died at his home in Rome.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Malaysia’s PM Najib Razak appeared before the media to somberly acknowledge that his coalition had won general elections for the 13th time in a row. However the National Front polled only 5.24 million votes to the opposition's 5.62 million votes.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Nigeria two pilots were killed when their Alpha jet fighter went down 37 miles (60 km) west of Niamey.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, In Pakistan an explosion ripped through a campaign rally of the Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam party, a leading Islamist party, killing 25 people and wounding about 70 in the northwest Kurram tribal region.
(AP, 5/6/13)(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Russia about 20,000 protesters thronged Bolotnaya Square across from the Kremlin, a year after a protest at the same spot turned violent on the eve of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2013 May 6, In Syria regime warplanes pounded rebel positions inside the Mannagh air base as clashes between rebels and government forces raged on.
(AP, 5/6/13)
2013 May 6, Yemeni tribal gunmen kidnapped two Egyptian technicians working in a cement factory in the south.
(AP, 5/7/13)
2014 May 6, The Obama administration released an updated report on how climate change requires urgent action to counter impacts that touch every corner of the country.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Pablo Picasso’s 1932 oil painting “Portrait of Dora Maar" sold for $22.6 million at a Christie’s auction in NYC.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.A8)(http://tinyurl.com/mmhox85)
2014 May 6, The city council of Beverly Hills passed a unanimous resolution calling for Brunei to change its laws or divest its ownership of the iconic Beverly Hills Hotel. It has been the target of a growing Hollywood boycott since Brunei embraced its new penal code last week.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Bill Dana, one of the test pilots for NASA’s hypersonic X-15 rocket plane, died in Phoenix.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.D4)
2014 May 6, In Afghanistan a roadside bombing killed 3 policemen and wounded two in western Herat province. Afghan police fired gunshots into the air to disperse villagers who fought police and aid workers distributing emergency supplies near the remote site of the May 2 deadly landslide. A late-night roadside bombing in Herat province killed 9 people and wounded two.
(AP, 5/6/14)(Reuters, 5/6/14)(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Austrian Finance Minister Michael Spindelegger said a group of 11 European Union countries have agreed to introduce a financial transaction tax from 2016 onward.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Farley Mowat (b.1921), Canadian author, died. His 40 books included “Never Cry Wolf" (1963). His experience observing wolves in sub-Arctic Canada" was adapted into a film of the same name in 1983.
(SFC, 5/9/14, p.D7)
2014 May 6, Chinese police shot and wounded a suspect who attacked passengers at a busy railway station in the southern city of Guangzhou, leaving six people injured in the third high-profile assault on civilians at a train station in a little more than two months.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Croatian PM Zoran Milanovic sacked finance minister Slavko Linic over a property deal he said had hurt the state budget.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, An Egyptian court banned leaders of the country's former ruling party under ousted President Hosni Mubarak from running in any elections, a vague ruling that could bar former officials of that regime from returning to politics for the time being.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In France Helene Pastor, whose family built a real estate empire in Monaco with wealth rivaling that of the royal family, was shot after visiting her son in a hospital in Nice. Pastor and her chauffer died some days later. The attackers fled. Police in June detained 23 people in the case including the son-in-law and daughter of Pastor. In 2018 prosecutors called for the maximum life sentence for Wojciech Janowski, Poland's former consul in Monaco, who was on trial for ordering the murder of the billionaire heiress over an inheritance dispute. Janowski is a former partner of Pastor's daughter, Sylvia.
(AP, 6/24/14)(AFP, 10/12/18)
2014 May 6, Germany's Bayer said it has agreed to buy Merck & Co.'s non-prescription medicine and consumer care business for $14.2 billion.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, Police in India recovered 6 more bodies from a river in Assam state after the worst ethnic violence in the remote northeast in two years, raising the death toll to 39. Ten people remained missing.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Israel marked its 66th Independence Day. In the north some 10,000 protesters, many waving Palestinian flags, joined a rally to remember 530 villages from which some 760,000 people fled or were expelled following the creation of the Jewish state in 1948.
(AFP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Leaders of Kosovo's main parties agreed to dissolve parliament this week and hold an early election on June 8 after Serb minority lawmakers nixed a vote on creating a national army by failing to show up.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In eastern Malaysia a Chinese fish farm manager in Sabah state was kidnapped by gunmen and believed taken to the southern Philippines, where suspected insurgents are holding another Chinese and a Filipino also seized from Malaysia.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, The Philippines seized a Chinese fishing boat and its 11 crewmen on charges of catching endangered sea turtles in disputed South China Sea waters, prompting China to demand their release and accuse Manila of being provocative. On May 12 all nine men were charged with poaching over 500 endangered sea turtles.
(AP, 5/7/14)(SFC, 5/13/14, p.A3)
2014 May 6, In Puerto Rico 3 people including a boy (16) were killed in the central mountain town of Cayey.
(AP, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, Saudi Arabia said it had uncovered an al Qaeda militant group with links to "extremist elements" in Syria and Yemen that had been plotting to assassinate officials and attack government and foreign targets.
(Reuters, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In South Korea a civilian diver involved in searches for dozens of missing people from the April 16 Sewol ferry disaster died. Other divers picked up efforts to retrieve more bodies from the sunken ship.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In Syria a roadside bombing overnight killed Ali al-Nuaimi of the Nusra Front and his wife in Daraa province. The Nusra Front is al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria.
(AP, 5/6/14)
2014 May 6, In southern Thailand two bombs exploded in Hat Yai city, popular to local and foreign tourists, leaving nine people injured.
(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A2)
2014 May 6, Uruguay said citizens will be allowed to buy enough marijuana to roll about 20 joints a week at a price well below the black market rate, as the government detailed a new law legalizing the cannabis trade.
(Reuters, 5/7/14)
2014 May 6, The Vatican released comprehensive statistics for the first time on how it has disciplined priests accused of raping and molesting children. It said 848 priests have been defrocked and an additional 2,572 given lesser sanctions over the past decade.
(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A3)
2014 May 6, Yemeni troops killed 2 suspected militants when they shelled overnight the house of a local Al-Qaeda chief in Shabwa province. The army also seized two Al-Qaeda strongholds in Abyan province, as it pressed an eight-day-old offensive with support from tribal militias.
(AFP, 5/6/14)(SFC, 5/7/14, p.A2)
2014 May 6, In Yemen gunmen launched two attacks on the export pipeline linking the eastern oil fields to the Red Sea, sparking a fire and halting oil flow.
(AFP, 5/7/14)
2015 May 6, A US government watchdog said nearly 160 IRS workers per year have been found to have willfully evaded taxes over a 10-year period.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, At Cape Canaveral, Florida, SpaceX completed a successful test of its new launch escape system for astronauts using a dummy in a 1.5 minute test flight.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A11)
2015 May 6, Hawaii lawmakers passed a bill that puts an end to a requirement that a corn-based additive be mixed into fuel sold in the state. A 10% ethanol blend in its gas has been required since 2006.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, The Chicago City Council voted 42-0 to approve a $5.5 million reparations fund for torture victims of the notorious police commander Jon Burge and his so-called midnight crew of rogue detectives (1972-1991).
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A10)
2015 May 6, In North Dakota an oil train derailed and ten cars caught fire near Heimdal.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A8)
2015 May 6, Afghan officials said as many as 10,000 families have fled their homes as Taliban insurgents and government forces prepared for a major battle for control of the southern fringes of Kunduz city.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, An Afghan judge sentenced four men to death for the March 19 mob killing of a woman accused of burning a Koran. Eight defendants were jailed for 16 years for participating in the attack in which a crowd beat and kicked the woman, named Farkhunda (27), and set her body on fire in Kabul. Nineteen police officers were also on trial, accused of standing by and doing nothing to stop the violence. Their verdicts and sentencing are due later in the week. On July 1 An appeals court set aside death sentences for the four men convicted in the mob killing. Three of those had their sentences reduced to 20 years in jail, while the fourth was re-sentenced to 10 years.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)(Reuters, 7/2/15)
2015 May 6, The UN said nearly 40,000 refugees have fled Burundi to neighboring Rwanda, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the last month, amid protests against President Pierre Nkurunziza's bid for a third term.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Austria two local trains collided head-on in Graz, killing one of the drivers and injuring eight people, including two who were in a critical condition.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Chile’s Pres. Michelle Bachelet asked her entire cabinet to resign.
(Econ, 5/9/15, p.32)
2015 May 6, The UN mission in Congo DRC said four missing peacekeepers have been found following an attack that left 2 others dead.
(SFC, 5/7/15, p.A2)
2015 May 6, The Egyptian military shot dead 3 Palestinian gunmen who infiltrated through a smuggling tunnel in the Sinai town of Rafah. One policeman was killed and five others wounded in clashes with supporters of ousted Islamist president Mohamed Morsi in a Nile Delta city.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, German authorities conducted raids across the country, seizing explosives and arresting four people accused of founding a right-wing extremist group to attack mosques and housing for asylum seekers.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Germany a Berlin court overturned a federal entry ban on a group of nationalist Russian bikers planning to commemorate the defeat of Nazi Germany 70 years ago by riding their motorcycles through the capital to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Greece managed to make a 200 million-euro ($222 million) repayment to the International Monetary Fund, as its long-stalled bailout negotiations appeared to make some progress.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In India Bollywood star Salman Khan (49) was sentenced to five years in jail on charges of driving a vehicle over five men sleeping on a sidewalk and killing one in 2002. The hit-and-run case has dragged on for more than 12 years.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Israel approved construction of 900 settler homes in annexed east Jerusalem as PM Benjamin Netanyahu pieced together a 5-party coalition government that will include the far-right Jewish Home, which strongly backs settlement building and opposes a Palestinian state. The coalition will hold a parliamentary majority of just a single seat.
(AFP, 5/7/15)(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 May 6, The Kenya Red Cross said some 75 people have been killed in four days of cattle raids and revenge attacks in northern districts.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a gathering of leaders of Syria's Nusra Front and other insurgents in an area near Lebanon's eastern border with Syria, killing 3 of them.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Lithuania launched a military exercise to simulate an attack on its new gas terminal.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, In Macedonia violent clashes overnight between protesters and police in Skopje left 38 police officers and one protester injured after more than 1,000 people had gathered in front of the government building to protest the 2011 death of Martin Neskoski (22). He was killed in a police beating during post-election celebrations.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Nigerian troops rescued 25 more children and women from Boko Haram early today as the soldiers destroyed seven more of the extremists' camps in the northeastern Sambisa Forest stronghold.
(AP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck Yemeni provinces near the Saudi border overnight, killing at least 43 civilians. Another 9 people were killed and 18 were wounded in air strikes on a police academy in Dhamar province. Aid agencies warned that fuel shortages could halt their efforts to tackle Yemen's humanitarian crisis. Houthi fighters entered Aden's al-Tawahi district, one of the last strongholds of supporters of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Fighting across Yemen killed 120 people, mostly civilians, including at least 40 who were trying to flee Aden in a boat that was struck by Houthi shells.
(Reuters, 5/6/15)(AFP, 5/6/15)(Reuters, 5/7/15)
2015 May 6, In Syria at least 16 members of the Syrian Kurdish security forces were killed in an Islamic State group attack on a base in the northeastern province of Hasakeh.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2015 May 6, Ukraine said that 5 government soldiers were killed over the last 24 hours as fresh clashes rumbled on despite the resumption of talks between the government and rebels over a battered truce deal.
(AFP, 5/6/15)
2016 May 6, The US government said it has suspended millions of dollars in funding to several organizations providing aid for Syria after discovering they were systematically overpaying Turkish companies for basic goods with the collusion of some of their staff.
(AFP, 5/10/16)
2016 May 6, Federal authorities in Pittsburgh said two men have been charged by authorities in Belarus with receiving $1.35 million stolen in a phishing scheme from the bank account of a Pennsylvania oil and gas drilling company. Aleskey Yaroshevich (34) and Egor Pavlenko (41) reportedly received a $1.35 million transfer made in September 2012. Both men were in custody in Minsk.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, The Pentagon acknowledged for the first time it has deployed a small number of US troops to Yemen since the country's collapse last year to bolster government and Arab coalition forces battling Al-Qaeda.
(AFP, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, A SpaceX rocket landed on an ocean platform for the 2nd time following the successful launch of a Japanese communications satellite at Cape Canaveral.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, Alabama’s Judicial Inquiry Commission filed ethics charges against the state’s Chief Justice Roy Moore over his effort to block same-sex marriages.
(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In San Francisco retired public defender Marla Zamora (65) was stabbed to death at her Potrero Hill home on the 400 block of Arkansas Street. Police detained Angelo Zamora (19), a relative who was found covered in blood at the home. On May 9 Angelo was charged with murder.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A1)(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A8)(SFC, 5/10/16, p.C2)
2016 May 6, In San Diego seaman James Derek Lovelace died from drowning during a Navy Seal basic training program after his instructor pushed him underwater at least twice. On July 6 a medical examiner ruled his death a homicide.
(SFC, 7/8/16, p.A9)
2016 May 6, In Maryland Eulalio Tordil (62), a federal security officer, was arrested following the fatal shooting of 2 people. Tordil had shot and killed his wife a day earlier.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A7)(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In New York a fire in Syracuse left 6 people dead, including two men (33 and 34) a girl (7) and 3 boys (10-13).
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A6)
2016 May 6, In Afghanistan a roadside bomb killed at least four small children from the same family in the southern Zabul province. In the eastern Kunar province Afghan security forces repelled an insurgent attack, killing 26 militants.
(AP, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, Afghan special forces troops liberated more than 60 prisoners from a Taliban prison in the southern province of Helmand. Two Taliban militants were reported killed and three wounded in the ensuing battle.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto announced the launch of the next stage of a multibillion-dollar gold and copper mine in Mongolia following delays and political tension over revenue sharing and the foreign role in resource industries.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Bangladesh Sufi Muslim leader Mohammad Shahidulla (65) was found hacked to death after he disappeared this morning in a suspected Islamist killing.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Chile food and gasoline were running dangerously low on Chiloe Island, which has been blocked from the mainland by desperate fishermen demanding compensation for losing their livelihood to a toxic algae bloom. The government has declared a state of emergency in the region and offered those affected compensation.
(http://tinyurl.com/zal4wzs)(AP, 5/7/16)(SFC, 5/17/16, p.A4)
2016 May 6, In Denmark a jet ski slammed into a rental boat containing a group of students killing Leah Bell (18) of Madisonville, Louisiana, and Linsey Malia (21) of Easton, Massachusetts. On Jan. 4, 2018, a 24-year-old man was sentenced to two years in jail for aggravated manslaughter.
(AP, 1/4/18)
2016 May 6, Prosecutors in El Salvador announced they have arrested five police officers, 16 gunmen and a police administrative employee for allegedly killing street gang member and others.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Services in Greece, from garbage collection to public transport, shut down as workers kicked off three days of strikes to protest new bailout austerity measures that they say will further reduce incomes.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Iraqi security forces ramped up their presence across Baghdad, blocking most major roads and bridges to keep followers of Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from reaching the government district they stormed a week earlier.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Iraq Australia-born terrorist and former rapper Neil Prakash (24) was killed in an American air strike in Mosul.
(SSFC, 5/8/16, p.A4)
2016 May 6, Irish PM Enda Kenny won narrow re-election on his fourth try, ending 70 days of deadlock and clearing the way for an exceptionally fragile minority government.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Israeli warplanes launched new strikes against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in response to mortar fire, as the worst cross-border violence since a 2014 war entered a third day.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In southern Italy Maria Chindoma (44), the mother of three small children, disappeared. In 2020 an informant told investigators that the businesswoman had refused to sell her land to the mafia and was kidnapped, murdered and fed to pigs after her body was ground up in a threshing machine.
(The Telegraph, 1/7/21)
2016 May 6, In Kazakhstan Kuandyk Bishimbayev, chief executive of a state financial holding company, was named economy minister following the resignation of his predecessor over public protests against a planned land reform.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Myanmar hundreds of villagers protested against the resumption of operations at a Chinese-backed copper mine, in one of the first tests for the new government's ability to deal with public anger.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said it is suspending aid to Nigeria’s AIDS agency over evidence that $3.8 million was stolen by its workers and consultants.
(SFC, 5/7/16, p.A2)
2016 May 6, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (33) opened the Seventh Workers' Party Congress, the country’s biggest political gathering in 36 years.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, North Korea detained BBC journalist Rupert Wingfield-Hayes along with a BBC producer and cameraman and ordered their expulsion over his reporting as a large group of foreign reporters cover a rare congress of the country’s ruling Workers’ Party. On May 9 the three were on their way to the airport in Pyongyang.
(Reuters, 5/9/16)
2016 May 6, A Papua New Guinea court ruled that a pregnant African woman, who says she was raped at an Australia detention center for asylum seekers on the tiny South Pacific island of Nauru, cannot be forced to have an abortion in Papua New Guinea because it is unsafe and illegal.
(Reuters, 5/7/16)
2016 May 6, Romania's Pres. Klaus Iohannis approved a 150 million euro ($171 million) loan to neighboring Moldova needed to pay state sector salaries and pensions.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Syria rebels seized a village from government forces near Aleppo overnight. 43 rebels and 30 government forces were reported killed in the battle for Khan Touman, some 15 km (9 miles) southwest of Aleppo. 13 military advisers with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed as rebels seized the village of Khan Touman. 18 others wounded and five to six were captured.
(Reuters, 5/6/16)(AFP, 5/7/16)(Reuters, 5/9/16)
2016 May 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned the European Union that Ankara will not change its anti-terrorism law, despite it being a condition laid down by Brussels to ensure visa-free travel for Turks.
(AFP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, Pope Francis accepted the prestigious International Charlemagne Prize, for his "message of hope and encouragement" and warned Europeans against the selfish temptation to put up fences to ward off newcomers, saying he still dreams of a Europe where migrants are welcomed.
(AP, 5/6/16)
2016 May 6, In Yemen the governor of Aden's Mansura prison was killed in a ride-by shooting.
(AFP, 5/7/16)
2017 May 6, Two San Diego police officers shot a killed a boy (15) who pointed a handgun at them in front of Torrey Pines High School early today. The gun was found to be a BB air pistol.
(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.A10)
2017 May 6, In northeastern Afghanistan Taliban insurgents overran a district police headquarters in Kunduz province after two days of intense fighting that left scores of casualties on both sides.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In China Nicole Meyer, the sister of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law, made a pitch to attract $150 million in financing for a Jersey City housing development to more than 100 Chinese investors in Beijing. The pitch offered them the chance to get US immigrant visas if they put money in the real estate project. The controversial EB-5 program allows wealthy foreigners to, in effect, buy US immigration visas for themselves and families by investing at least $500,000 in certain development projects.
(Reuters, 5/7/17)(SSFC, 5/7/17, p.A5)
2017 May 6, China's most recent nod for a Trump trademark, covering clothing, came today, bringing to 40 the number of marks China has granted or provisionally granted to the president and a related company, DTTM Operations LLC, since his inauguration.
(AP, 5/31/17)
2017 May 6, In Denmark suspected reckless driving by jet skiers in a Copenhagen harbor caused them to crash into a small boat, killing two people.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt the decapitated bodies of a father and his two sons recently kidnapped by Islamic militants were found lying in the street in the northern Sinai town of Rafah. The mother of the two siblings was killed last week by militants from the Islamic State group when they raided the family home in the village of Yamit, west of Rafah, and kidnapped the three men. The Interior Minsitry said two armed men suspected of making bombs were killed in a shoot-out with security forces in an area north of Cairo.
(AP, 5/6/17)(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt official media reported that Ahmed Hosny, the head of Egypt's Al-Azhar university, has been replaced after describing a leading Islamic researcher as an apostate. Al-Azhar university is the 1,000-year-old seat of Sunni Muslim learning.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Egypt gunmen late today shot dead Nabil Saber Ayoub (50), a Christian man, inside a barbershop in northern Sinai. The killing in the coastal city of el-Arish came one day after IS warned it would escalate attacks against Christians.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, The French electoral commission said media should not republish information hacked from the campaign team of centrist presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso said Japan will provide $40 million to the Asian Development Bank (ADB) to promote high-level technology as part of efforts to boost quality infrastructure in Asia.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Japan and China agreed to bolster economic and financial cooperation.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In the Indian portion of Kashmir rebels attacked a police squad late today, triggering a gunbattle that left three civilians, one officer and an assailant dead.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, In Nepal a local man (85) attempting to become the oldest to climb Mount Everest died at the base camp, the second climber to die in a week while preparing to climb the world's highest mountain.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Nigeria secured the release of 82 of some 270 girls, kidnapped in Chibok in 2014, in exchange for five Boko Haram leaders.
(Reuters, 5/7/17)(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, North Korea detained Kim Hak Song, an American citizen employed at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology, over unspecified hostile acts against the country.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, The Palestinian movement Hamas elected Ismail Haniyeh to head its political office, a leadership change that comes as the Islamist group looks to reconcile with Palestinian rivals.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In the Philippines two explosions in Manila killed two people and injured six others late today, just over a week after another blast in the same area. Police said the bombings were the result of a personal feud. The Islamic State said its fighters were responsible.
(AFP, 5/6/17)(SFC, 5/8/17, p.A3)
2017 May 6, Thousands of Poles marched through Warsaw to protest the policies of the populist ruling party under Jaroslaw Kaczynski, describing them as attacks on the country's democracy.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, Russia's Defense Ministry said its military chief of staff and the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff have confirmed their readiness to restore a communications channel aimed at preventing midair incidents between Russian and US warplanes over Syria.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Syria government shelling of a suburb of the capital Damascus killed four insurgents and wounded one child south of the country as a “de-escalation" plan went into effect at midnight.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, The Syrian government pushed opposition fighters out of the village of Zalaqiyat, Hama province, following days of fighting that killed at least 14 rebels. 11 pro-government fighters were reported killed in the Zalaqiyat advance.
(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, Taiwan detained two Mainland Chinese fishermen after the island's coastguard fired rubber bullets at them and wounding them in the legs. China demanded their immediate release.
(Reuters, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In northern Tanzania 35 people were killed, most of them young children, after a bus carrying students lost control and crashed near the Mlera river in Meatu district.
(AP, 5/6/17)(AP, 5/7/17)
2017 May 6, Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency said warrants were issued for 17 judges and six prosecutors for "membership in an armed terror organization." They are suspected of being followers of US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen who the government says is behind the July 15 coup attempt.
(AP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, At the Vatican forty new Swiss Guards were sworn in, the latest halberd-clutching soldiers of the pope to serve a tradition stretching back 500 years. Applicants have to be a practicing Roman Catholic, Swiss, single, between 19 and 30 years old and at least 1.74 meters tall.
(AFP, 5/6/17)
2017 May 6, In Venezuela thousands of women dressed in white marched in Caracas to keep pressure on President Nicolas Maduro, whose authority is being increasingly challenged by protests and deadly unrest.
(AFP, 5/6/17)
2018 May 6, Hawaiian officials said nearly 2,000 people on the Big Island have been evacuated from homes after lava eruptions destroyed five houses and sulfur dioxide gas threatened to harm anyone who stayed in the residential area.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In eastern Afghanistan a bomb blast inside a Khost city mosque that was being used as a voter registration center killed at least 14 people and wounded 33. A vehicle carrying shopkeepers on their way to a market struck a roadside bomb in northern Faryab province, killing seven of them. At least five police officers were killed in a Taliban attack on their patrol in southern Kandahar province. 15 Taliban fighters were reported killed and 11 others were wounded in the gunbattle.
(AP, 5/6/18)(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, In Afghanistan seven Indian engineers and an Afghan national working for a power plant in northern Baghlan province were kidnapped.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Cambodian health officials said ten villagers have died and 120 others have been sickened after drinking water suspected to be contaminated with insecticide.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Chad six people were killed, including four government officials and a soldier, in an overnight attack by Boko Haram jihadists on an army checkpoint on an island in Lake Chad.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Khaled Mohieddin (b.1922), an Egyptian leftist opposition leader, who helped overthrow the Egyptian monarchy in the 1952 revolution, died at a Cairo hospital. He was the last surviving member of the Revolutionary Command Council, an executive body that ran Egypt till 1956, when Nasser was elected as Egypt's president.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Egypt police arrested Shady Abu Zaid, a young comedian who was working for a popular satirical television program. He was charged with joining an outlawed group and spreading false news and ordered detained for 15 days.
(AP, 5/9/18)
2018 May 6, A Tehran prosecutor said sixteen women who went to Syria to join Islamic State have been jailed in Iran.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Israeli troops shot and killed three Palestinians who tried to breach the Gaza border fence. An axe and a wire cutter were found in their possession. Israel struck a facility of the Gaza Strip's Hamas rulers overnight, with the Israeli army saying it was reacting to kite-borne fire bombings.
(AP, 5/6/18)(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Indian soldiers shot dead five Kashmir militants including a rebel university teacher in a gunfight that triggered violent protests in which five civilians were killed. A top commander of Hizbul Mujahideen, a key rebel group, was also among the dead.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Iraq carried out an airstrike in neighboring Syria targeting the Islamic State group. The strike targeted a position used by the commanders of the group, south of the town of Deshaisha.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, In Lebanon voters queued at polling stations across the country for the first general election in nine years. Hezbollah and its political allies won just over half the seats in the parliamentary election. PM Saad Hariri's group won 21 seats, 11 fewer than what it had been holding since 2009. A complex new law redrew constituency boundaries and changed the electoral system from winner-takes-all to a proportional one.
(AP, 5/6/18)(Reuters, 5/7/18)(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 5, In northwestern Nigeria as many as 40 people were killed by armed bandits in Gwaska, Kaduna state.
(SFC, 5/7/18, p.A2)
2018 May 6, North Korea said its intention to denuclearize, unveiled at a historic inter-Korean summit, was not the result of US-led sanctions and pressure, warning the United States not to mislead public opinion.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Pakistan's interior minister Ahsan Iqbal was shot in the arm in a suspected assassination attempt at a public meeting in Punjab province. Police soon identified the gunman as Abid Hussain. Iqbal was expected to survive. Police later said Abid Hussain (21) is a youth leader of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labaik party.
(AFP, 5/6/18)(AP, 5/7/18)(Reuters, 5/8/18)
2018 May 6, In southern Pakistan four people were burned alive late today when a truck collided with the motorized rickshaw they were in near at the famous shrine of Sufi saint Shahbaz Qalander.
(AP, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, In Rwanda landslides caused by heavy rains killed at least 18 people in the Northern and Western province, pushing the death toll since January to more than 200.
(Reuters, 5/7/18)
2018 May 6, Al Arabiya TV reported that Saudi Arabia's King Salman has ordered protection for employees who report financial and administrative corruption, as part of an effort to combat graft that saw dozens of royals and top businessmen detained last year.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Human Rights Watch said Saudi Arabia has detained thousands of people for years without trial, slamming the country's powerful crown prince for the "arbitrary detentions".
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Serbian police prevented ultranationalist Vojislav Seselj (63) from demonstrating in Hrtkovci, a village in the Vojvodina province home to a Croatian minority where his firebrand speeches during the Balkan War earned him a jail term.
(AFP, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Thailand environmental activists in the northern city of Chiang Mai claimed victory after the country's military government agreed in talks not to use forested land to develop luxury property.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Tunisians voted in their first free municipal elections. The Islamist Ennahda and secular Nidaa Tounis parties, which form a coalition at national level, were expected to dominate the polls for 350 municipalities.
(Reuters, 5/6/18)
2018 May 6, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan promised new military operations against Kurdish militants along its border in Syria and Iraq as he presented his election manifesto.
(AP, 5/6/18)
2019 May 6, Many Muslims around the world began fasting to mark the start of the holy month of Ramadan.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Afghanistan the Taliban stormed an army checkpoint overnight in western Farah province, killing 20 soldiers and abducting two. Insurgents struck security checkpoints in northeastern Takhar province's Khwaja Bahaudin district late today, killing eight members of the security forces — three soldiers and five policemen.
(AP, 5/06/19)(AP, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, In Brazil at least eight people died when police raided a drug-scarred Rio de Janeiro neighborhood.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, Meghan, the wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, gave birth in the early hours to a baby boy, Archie, the first mixed race child to be born into a senior position in British royalty in recent history.
(Reuters, 5/09/19)
2019 May 6, Indian voters cast ballots in the crucial fifth phase of the country’s marathon elections.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In India a panel of judges dismissed a sexual harassment complaint against chief justice Ranjan Gogoi. Protesters soon responded carrying placards demanding a new and impartial investigation.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, Officials said Cyclone Fani, that tore through parts of South Asia, has killed at least 34 people in India and 15 in neighboring Bangladesh and smashed thousands of thatched-roof huts.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, The Israeli military lifted protective restrictions on residents in southern Israel, while Gaza's ruling Hamas militant group reported a cease-fire deal had been reached to end the deadliest fighting between the two sides since a 2014 war.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Malaysia's attorney general said former Goldman Sachs executive Roger Ng has been temporarily extradited to the US to face criminal charges linked to the alleged multibillion-dollar ransacking of state investment fund 1MDB.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Niger a tanker truck explosion near the international airport in Niamey killed 55 people. The death toll soon rose to 76.
(AFP, 5/12/19)
2019 May 6, In Russia a blast at the Azot chemical plant in the region of Perm killed three people. Russian fertilizer producer Uralchem owns the plant.
(Reuters, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Seven Russian tourists on a hiking holiday in Siberia were feared dead after an avalanche on a ridge in the Altai region. Two people survived.
(Reuters, 5/08/19)
2019 May 6, Spanish courts overruled a decision by Spain's Electoral Board and determined that Carles Puigdemont and two other Catalan separatists, who had fled abroad to escape arrest, must be allowed to run in this month's European Parliament elections.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, In Sri Lanka two people were arrested and an overnight curfew lifted after mobs attacked Muslim-owned shops and some vehicles in Negombo, where a suicide bombing targeted a Catholic church last month.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Syrian pro-government media said troops have captured al-Bani village and a strategic hill from insurgents in Hama province. Intense fighting killed 20 people.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Turkey’s High Election Board ruled for a fresh Istanbul mayoral contest on June 23, scrapping the March 31 vote, which was lost by Erdogan's party candidate, in a move that drew opposition accusations of dictatorship. Former Turkish PM Binali Yildirim will again be the ruling AK Party's candidate.
(Reuters, 5/07/19)
2019 May 6, The United Nations' first comprehensive report on biodiversity said nature is in more trouble now than at any other time in human history, with extinction looming over 1 million species of plants and animals.
(AP, 5/06/19)
2019 May 6, Pope Francis said the plight of suffering immigrants and refugees was "the cross of humanity," taking up their case for the second consecutive day during a visit to Bulgaria that has put him at odds with the government.
(Reuters, 5/06/19)
2020 May 6, Pres. Donald Trump said that the COVID-19 task force would continue indefinitely, but focus more on rebooting the economy.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, President Donald Trump vetoed legislation that limited a president’s ability to wage war against Iran without the approval of Congress. Trump said that he vetoed the Iran war powers resolution because it was “insulting" to the presidency.
(AP, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos issued new regulations on sexual assault at colleges and schools designed to increase protections for people accused of sexual harassment and assault on campus. The change rolls back Obama-era guidance for schools to step up investigations.
(NY Times, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, California to date had 58,724 cases of coronavirus and 2,379 deaths. The SF Bay Area had 9,032 cases and 328 deaths. The United States recorded more than 22,000 new cases of COVID-19. Total cases nationwide reached over 1,206,886 with the death toll at 71,220.
(sfist.com, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The first immigrant in US detention died of the novel coronavirus at the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
(Reuters, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, In San Francisco a new UCSF Pandemic Workforce Training Academy opened with an $8.7 million state grant to train workers to follow the spread of the COVID-19 disease through widespread contact tracing and case investigation.
(SFC, 5/13/20, p.A1)
2020 May 5, A federal appeals court blocked, for now, a judge’s order forcing Florida's Miami-Dade County to give masks, soap and cleaning supplies to inmates at Metro West Detention Center, a jail wracked by the novel coronavirus. Metro West is where 163 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. In all three Miami jails, about 340 inmates have tested positive in the cramped quarters where social distancing is challenging.
(Miami Herald, 5/5/20)
2020 May 6, All of New York City's 472 subway stations closed early today for cleaning for the first overnight subway shutdown in at least 50 years. The subway trains will now stop running from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. local time each day.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick said he would cover a fine owed by Dallas salon owner Shelley Luther, who is serving a seven-day jail sentence. Luther, owner of Salon A La Mode, was sentenced a day earlier after judge Eric Moye said she violated statewide stay-at-home orders when she reopened her business nearly two weeks ago.
(CBS News, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Bristol Myers Squibb Co said the US FDA has decided to extend the approval timeline for the drugmaker's experimental blood cancer therapy that was acquired as part of the $74 billion buyout of Celgene.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Fitbit Inc launched a virtual study to test if its wearable devices can detect irregular heart rhythms, which could identify a condition called atrial fibrillation.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The Development Bank of Latin America (CAF) said it will loan Argentina $4 billion to help finance projects to combat the growing coronavirus impact.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Brazil, one of the world's emerging hot spots, registered a record number of cases and deaths, prompting the health minister to flag the possibility of strict lockdowns in hard-hit areas.
(Reuters, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Colombia's president said mandatory quarantine will be extended by a further two weeks.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele announced still tougher measures to fight the coronavirus pandemic, including shopping trips limited to twice a week.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania said they will open their borders to each others' citizens from May 15, creating a Baltic "travel bubble" within the European Union.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that European astronomers have found the closest black hole to Earth yet, so near that the two stars dancing with it can be seen by the naked eye. This black hole is about 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Telescopium in the Southern Hemisphere.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The European Union predicted “a recession of historic proportions this year" due to the impact of the coronavirus as it released its first official estimates of the damage the pandemic is inflicting on the bloc’s economy.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The German government and the 16 federal states agreed at a meeting to extend until June 5 social distancing measures designed to help fight the spread of the novel coronavirus. Germany's confirmed coronavirus cases increased by 947 to 164,807.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Greek police said about 150 protesters prevented buses carrying 57 asylum-seekers from Lesbos to the mainland from reaching a rented hotel in the northern region of Pella. Protesters set fire to a room on the ground floor of the hotel.
(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A2)
2020 May 6, In India health authorities scrambled to contain an outbreak at a huge fruit and vegetable market in Chennai. Hundreds of Indian police tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days, raising alarm as it attempts to enforce the world's largest lockdown.
(AP, 5/6/20)(Reuters, 5/6/20)(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A6)
2020 May 6, Indian southern state of Karnataka halted trains taking stranded migrant laborers home so that work on construction sites could restart, a move widely condemned as amounting to forced labor.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that more than 60 workers at a factory run by the Indonesian unit of US tobacco giant Philip Morris have tested positive for the coronavirus after operations were suspended when two staff died from COVID-19.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Iran warned of a "rising trend" in its coronavirus outbreak as it said 1,680 new infections brought the country's overall number of confirmed cases to 101,650. There were 78 new COVID-19 fatalities in the past 24 hours bringing that total to 6,418.
(AFP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, The Israeli military said it struck three Hamas militant posts in Gaza early today, in response to the first case of rocket fire from the territory in more than a month.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, In Italy deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic climbed by 369. The total death toll now stands at 29,684. The number of confirmed cases amounted to 214,457.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Artillery shelling by Libya's eastern-based forces killed five civilians and wounded dozens in the capital, Tripoli. Children and paramedics were among the 46 civilians wounded in the shelling.
(AP, 5/7/20)
2020 May 6, Nigeria said it will extend a ban on all flights by four weeks as part of measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Confirmed coronavirus cases in Peru have now exceeded 50,000.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Poland postponed its upcoming presidential election due to concerns about the spread of the novel coronavirus. Nearly 15,000 people in Poland have been diagnosed with COVID-19 and at least 737 have died.
(AP, 5/7/20)(SFC, 5/7/20, p.A2)
2020 May 6, Russia recorded more than 10,000 new cases for the fourth day in a row, bringing the total number of confirmed infections to 165,929, with 1,537 deaths. President Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting to discuss a gradual withdrawal from lockdown as Russia registered the world's sixth highest total number of coronavirus cases.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, South Korea reported no new locally transmitted infections of the novel coronavirus and just two imported cases over the past 24 hours -- its lowest daily tally in 78 days.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, South Korea’s spy agency that the coronavirus pandemic has likely taken a heavy toll on North Korea, forcing leader Kim Jong Un to avoid public activities and his people into panic buying for daily necessities.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez announced that his government will declare a national state of mourning for the more than 25,000 people in the country who have died from the novel coronavirus.
(ABC News, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, In Sudan tribal clashes over the last 24 hours between Arabs and non-Arabs in South Darfur province left at least 30 people dead and a dozen wounded.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Taiwan's health minister Chen Shih-chung said Taiwan’s exclusion from the upcoming World Health Assembly would harm the global response to the coronavirus pandemic and cannot be excused by mere rules of procedure. The island of more than 23 million people has recorded just 438 cases of COVID-19 and six deaths.
(AP, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, It was reported that Uganda's president has called on international creditors to cancel all of Africa's debts to ease the economic distress caused by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
2020 May 6, Yemen reported the first three cases of the novel coronavirus in the southern province of Lahaj, one of whom has died, and another infection in the southern port of Aden.
(Reuters, 5/6/20)
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