Following are some of the major events to have occurred on May 21:
1904 – FIFA, football’s international governing body, was established in Paris.
1927 – Charles Lindbergh became the first pilot to fly the Atlantic solo, from Long Island, New York, to Paris.
1932 – Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo, from Newfoundland to Ireland.
1969 – Sirhan B. Sirhan was sentenced to death by a U.S. court for the 1968 murder of Robert Kennedy. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
1972 – Michaelangelo’s statue of the Virgin Mary holding the dead Christ, known as Pieta, smashed in Rome.
1989 – One million people, a sixth of the population of Hong Kong, demonstrated in support of rebellious students in Beijing after authorities clamped martial law on the capital.
1991 – Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minister, was killed by a bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers while campaigning for elections in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.
1996 – A Tanzanian ferry capsized on Lake Victoria near the western town of Mwanza. Of the estimated 1,000 on board only 114 survived in east Africa’s worst marine disaster.
2003 – An earthquake measuring 6.7 on the Richter scale struck Algeria in the capital and nearby towns, killing 2,251 and injuring 10,243.
2004 – New Zealand’s Chris Cairns sets world record for test match sixes.
2006 – Republic of Montenegro holds referendum proposing independence from Serbia and Montenegro.
(Reuters)
