Today in History: May 31, the Tulsa Race Massacre begins

Today is Sunday, May 31, the 151st day of 2026. There are 214 days left in the year. Today in history: On May 31, 1921, a two-day massacre erupted in Tulsa, Oklahoma, as white mobs began looting and burning the affluent Black district of Greenwood over reports a Black man had assaulted a white woman in an elevator; though the exact number remains unknown, as many as 300 Black Tulsans were killed during the riot. Also on this date: In 1790, President George Washington signed into law the first U.S. copyright act. In 1889, over 2,200 people in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, died when the South Fork Dam collapsed, sending 20 million tons of water from Conemaugh Lake rushing through the town. In 1949, former State Department official and accused Soviet spy Alger Hiss went on trial in New York, charged with perjury (the trial ended with a hung jury, but Hiss was convicted in a second trial.)In 1970, a magnitude 7.9 earthquake struck the Ancash region of Peru; the quake, combined with the landslide it triggered, killed an estimated 67,000 people. Popular ReadsIn 1977, the 800-mile-long (1,300-kilometer) Trans-Alaska oil pipeline was completed after three years of construction.In 2005, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein confirmed a Vanity Fair magazine report naming former FBI official W. Mark Felt as the Watergate scandal informant previously known only as “Deep Throat.”In 2009, Millvina Dean, the last survivor of the 1912 sinking of the RMS Titanic, died in Hampshire, England at 97. In 2014, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the only American soldier held prisoner in Afghanistan, was freed by the Taliban in exchange for five Afghan detainees from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Bergdahl, who’d gone missing in June 2009, later pleaded guilty to endangering his comrades by walking away from his post in Afghanistan; his sentence included a dishonorable discharge but no prison time.) In 2019, a longtime city employee opened fire in a municipal building in Virginia Beach, Virginia, killing 12 people on three floors before police shot and killed him; officials said DeWayne Craddock had resigned by email hours before the shooting. Today’s Birthdays: Actor-filmmaker Clint Eastwood is 96. Football Hall of Famer Joe Namath is 83. Actor Tom Berenger is 77. Actor-comedian Chris Elliott is 66. Actor Lea Thompson is 65. Musician Corey Hart is 64. Rapper Darryl “DMC” McDaniels is 62. Actor Brooke Shields is 61. TV host Phil Keoghan is 59. Jazz musician Christian McBride is 54. Actor Archie Panjabi is 54. Actor Colin Farrell is 50. Singer Normani is 30. Tennis player Iga Świątek is 25.

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