Wed, May 19

2017—Big game hunter Theunis Botha, 51, dies in Zimbabwe when an elephant shot by a client falls on him.

1956—A 15-megaton bomb test in the South Pacific raises radiation levels in the U.S. to 10 times normal.

1954—The U.S.P.O. OKs a CIA mail-opening project.

1953—Fallout from our dirtiest-ever nuke test, Upshot-Knothole Harry, hits St. George, Utah—H. Hughes’s location for The Conqueror a year later.

1950—Four barges carrying 467 tons of ammo explode in South Amboy, N.J., killing 30 and injuring 350.

1945—U-234 arrives at Portsmouth carrying cargo the Nazis intended for Japan; 1,232 lbs. of uranium eventually does arrive—at Hiroshima, on 8/6.

1941—Founding of the Viet Minh.

1932—Rep. Claude Fuller (D-Ark.) introduces a bill requiring that Civil Service employees be able to “sing, write or recite the words to the Star Spangled Banner” from memory.

1925—Malcolm Little, later Malcolm X, is born in Omaha, Neb.

1920—In Matewan, W. Va., seven coal company stooges and four locals die in a main street shootout.

1918—For protesting her husband’s lynching the day before, Mary Turner, eight months pregnant, is lynched in Lowndes County, Ga.

1890—Ho Chi Minh is born.

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