Wednesday, May 12
The 132 day of 2010.
There are 233 days left in the year.
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Today's Highlights in History
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On May 12, 1943, during World War II, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered. (Go to article.)
On May 12, 1820, Florence Nightingale, the Englishwoman who established nursing as a trained profession for women, was born. Following her death on Aug. 13, 1910, her obituary appeared in The Times. (Go to obit. | Other Birthdays)
Editorial Cartoon of the Day
On May 12, 1877, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about Chancellor Otto von Bismarck of Germany. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)
On this date in:
1820 Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, was born in Florence, Italy.
1870 Manitoba entered the confederation as a Canadian province.
1907 Actress Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Conn.
1932 The body of the kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was found in a wooded area of Hopewell, N.J.
1937 Britain's King George VI was crowned at Westminster Abbey.
1949 The Soviet Union announced an end to the Berlin blockade.
1965 West Germany and Israel established diplomatic relations.
1970 The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Harry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice.
1972 The album "Exile on Main St." by the Rolling Stones was released.
1982 Pope John Paul II was assaulted by a knife-wielding Spanish priest while visiting the shrine of Fatima in Portugal. (In 2008, the pope's longtime private secretary revealed that the pontiff had been lightly wounded.)
2002 Jimmy Carter became the first present or former U.S. president to visit Cuba since Fidel Castro seized power in 1959.
2003 Suicide bombers in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killed 26 people, including nine U.S. citizens.
2003 Fifty-nine Texas House Democrats fled to Ardmore, Okla., to prevent passage of a congressional redistricting bill.
2008 A devastating earthquake in China's Sichuan province killed some 70,000 people.
2008 Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg died at age 82.
2009 Five Miami men were convicted in a plot to blow up FBI buildings and Chicago's Sears Tower.
2009 Suspected Nazi death camp guard John Demjanjuk was deported from the United States to Germany.
Current Birthdays
Gabriel Byrne turns 60 years old today.
AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actor Gabriel Byrne ("In Treatment") turns 60 years old today.
85 Yogi Berra
Baseball Hall of Famer
82 Burt Bacharach
Singer, songwriter
72 Millie Perkins
Actress
62 Lindsay Crouse
Actress
62 Dave Heineman
Governor of Nebraska
62 Steve Winwood
Rock musician (Traffic)
60 Bruce Boxleitner
Actor
60 Billy Squier
Rock musician
55 Kix Brooks
Country singer (Brooks and Dunn)
51 Ving Rhames
Actor
48 Emilio Estevez
Actor
47 Vanessa Williams
Actress
44 Stephen Baldwin
Actor
42 Tony Hawk
Skateboarder
41 Kim Fields
Actress ("The Facts of Life")
40 Samantha Mathis
Actress
32 Malin Akerman
Actress
32 Jason Biggs
Actor ("American Pie" movies)
31 Steve Smith
Football player
18 Malcolm David Kelley
Actor ("Lost")
Historic Birthdays
Florence Nightingale
5/12/1820 - 8/13/1910
English nurse; reformed nursing profession and medical care for soldiers
(Go to obit.)
75 Edward Lear
5/12/1812 - 1/29/1888
English landscape painter and poet
53 Dante Gabriel Rossetti
5/12/1828 - 4/9/1882
English painter and poet
70 Jules Massenet
5/12/1842 - 8/13/1912
French composer; best remembered for his operas
79 Gabriel Faure
5/12/1845 - 11/4/1924
French composer
74 Henry Cabot Lodge
5/12/1850 - 11/9/1924
American statesman; Massachusetts senator from 1893 to 1924
54 Baron Clemens von Pirquet
5/12/1874 - 2/28/1929
Austrian physician; devised a skin test for tuberculosis
71 Lincoln Ellsworth
5/12/1880 - 5/26/1951
American explorer, engineer and scientist
85 Leslie Charteris
5/12/1907 - 4/15/1993
English novelist
84 Dorothy Hodgkin
5/12/1910 - 7/29/1994
English Nobel Prize-winning chemist (1964)
35 Julius Rosenberg
5/12/1918 - 6/19/1953
American engineer;executed with his wife for espionage in 1953
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