UNDATED (AP) Thursday, May 3, is the 123rd day of 2018. There are 242 days left in the year.
- Highlights in History:
- On May 3, 1978, spam email was born as Gary Thuerk, a marketing executive for the Digital Equipment Corp. of Maynard, Massachusetts, transmitted an unsolicited sales pitch for a new line of computers to 400 prospective customers on ARPANET, a precursor to the internet; the stunt generated some business, as well as complaints.
- Also oin 1978, “Sun Day” took place on a Wednesday as thousands of people extolling the virtues of solar energy held events across the country.
- On this date:
- In 1515, Pope Leo X promulgated the bull “Inter sollicitudines” allowing the Catholic Church to review and censor books.
- In 1791, the Commonwealth of Poland-Lithuania adopted a constitution.
- In 1810, English poet Lord Byron, inspired by the Greek myth of Hero and Leander, swam across the Hellespont, a strait in present-day Turkey.
- In 1916, Irish nationalists Padraic Pearse, Thomas Clarke and Thomas MacDonagh were executed by a British firing squad; they were among 16 people put to death for their roles in the Easter Rising.
- In 1937, Margaret Mitchell won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel, Gone with the Wind.
- In 1948, the Supreme Court, in Shelley v. Kraemer, ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks or members of other racial groups were legally unenforceable.
- In 1952, the Kentucky Derby was televised nationally for the first time on CBS; the winner was Hill Gail, ridden by Eddie Arcaro.
- In 1960, the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical The Fantasticks began a nearly 42-year run at New York’s Sullivan Street Playhouse.
- In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher was chosen to become Britain’s first female prime minister as the Tories ousted the incumbent Labour government in parliamentary elections.
- In 1986, in NASA’s first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff, forcing safety officers to destroy it by remote control.
- In 1999, some 70 tornadoes roared across Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 46 people and injuring hundreds.
- In 2007, British girl Madeleine McCann vanished during a family vacation in Portugal nine days before her fourth birthday; her disappearance remains unsolved.
- Ten years ago:
- Barack Obama defeated Hillary Rodham Clinton by seven votes out of more than 4,500 cast in the Guam Democratic presidential caucuses, meaning the candidates split the pledged delegate votes.
- Big Brown won the Kentucky Derby by 4 3/4 lengths. (Filly Eight Belles finished second and then broke both front ankles; she was euthanized on the track.)
- Five years ago:
- President Barack Obama cast Mexico as a nation ready to take “its rightful place in the world” and move past the drug battles and violence that had defined its relationship with the United States; the president then headed to Costa Rica, where he told a press conference he didn’t foresee any circumstance requiring the U.S. to send ground troops into Syria.
- Gunmen killed Chaudhry Zulfikar, Pakistan’s lead prosecutor investigating the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, as he drove to court in the capital.
- One year ago:
- President Donald Trump met at the White House with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, promising “to do whatever is necessary” to forge an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
- FBI Director James Comey told Congress that revealing the reopening of the Hillary Clinton email probe just before Election Day came down to a painful, complicated choice between “really bad” and “catastrophic” options, but in hindsight would have acted no differently.
- Actress Daliah Lavi, 74, died in Asheville, North Carolina.
- Birthdays:
- Actor Alex Cord is 85.
- Singer Frankie Valli is 84.
- Idaho Gov. Butch Otter is 76.
- Sen. Jim Risch, R-Idaho, is 75.
- Sports announcer Greg Gumbel is 72.
- Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., is 69.
- Pop singer Mary Hopkin is 68.
- Singer Christopher Cross is 67.
- Country musician Cactus Moser (Highway 101) is 61.
- Rock musician David Ball (Soft Cell) is 59.
- Former Sen. David Vitter, R-La., is 57.
- Country singer Shane Minor is 50.
- Actress Amy Ryan is 50.
- Actor Bobby Cannavale is 48.
- Music and film producer-actor Damon Dash is 47.
- Country musician John Driskell Hopkins (Zac Brown Band) is 47.
- Country-rock musician John Neff is 47.
- Country singer Brad Martin is 45.
- TV personality Willie Geist (TV: Today) is 43.
- Actress Christina Hendricks is 43.
- Actor Dule Hill is 43.
- Country singer Eric Church is 41.
- Actress Tanya Wright is 40.
- Dancer Cheryl Burke is 34.
- Soul singer Michael Kiwanuka is 31.
- Actress Jill Berard is 28.
- Actress Zoe De Grand Maison is 23.
- Rapper Desiigner is 21.
- Thought for the Day:
- “A man can become so accustomed to the thought of his own faults that he will begin to cherish them as charming little ‘personal characteristics.'” — Helen Rowland, American writer, journalist and humorist (1876-1950).
