THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 11

May 11 is the 131st day of the year (132nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 234 days remaining until the end of the year. 

NATIONAL TWILIGHT ZONE DAY 

868 – A copy of the Diamond Sutra is printed in China, making it the oldest known dated printed book. 

1310 – In France, fifty-four members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics. The Knights were originally tasked to protect pilgrims along the roads to Jerusalem but they eventually became an elite fighting force in the Crusades known for their propensity not to retreat or surrender. Eventually, their rules of secrecy, their power, privileges and their wealth, made them vulnerable to the King of France’s accusations, and with the Pope’s unsuccessful attempts to prevent it, their destruction.

1647 – Peter Stuyvesant arrives in New Amsterdam to replace Willem Kieft as Director-General of New Netherland, the Dutch colonial settlement in present-day New York City.

1792 – Captain Robert Gray becomes the first documented white person to sail into the Columbia River.

1846 – President James K. Polk asked for and received a Declaration of War against Mexico, starting the Mexican–American War

1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia.

1880 – Seven people are killed in the Mussel Slough Tragedy, a gun battle in California. The exact history of the incident has been the source of some disagreement, largely because popular anti-railroad sentiment in the 1880s made the incident to be a clear example of corrupt and cold-blooded corporate greed.

1889 – An attack upon a U.S. Army paymaster and escort results in the theft of over $28,000 and the award of two Medals of Honor. 

1894 – Pullman Strike: The strike and boycott shut down much of the nation's freight and passenger traffic west of Detroit, Michigan. The conflict began in Pullman, Chicago, on May 11 when nearly 4,000 factory employees of the Pullman Company began a wildcat strike in response to recent reductions in wages. They had not yet formed a union. Founded in 1893 byEugene V. Debs, the ARU was an organization of unskilled railroad workers. Debs brought in ARU organizers to Pullman and signed up many of the disgruntled factory workers. When the Pullman Company refused recognition of the ARU or any negotiations, ARU called a strike against the factory, but it showed no sign of success. To win the strike, Debs decided to stop the movement of Pullman cars on railroads. The over-the-rail Pullman employees(such as conductors and porters) did not go on strike.

1907 – Thirty-two Shriners are killed when their chartered train derails at a switch near Surf Depot in Lompoc, California.

1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana.

1918 – The Mountainous Republic of the Northern Caucasus is officially established.

1944 – World War II: The Allies begin a major offensive against the Axis Powers on the Gustav Line in Italy.

1945 – World War II: Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of its crew. Although badly damaged, the ship is able to return to the U.S. under its own power.

1949 – Siam officially changes its name to Thailand for the second time. The name had been in use since 1939 but was reverted in 1945.

1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114.

1960 – In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann who is living under the alias of Ricardo Klement. On 1 March 1960 Harel dispatched to Buenos Aires the Shin Bet chief interrogator Zvi Aharoni, who over the course of weeks of investigation was able to confirm the identity of the fugitive. As Argentina had a history of turning down extradition requests for Nazi criminals, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion made the decision that Eichmann should be captured rather than extradited, and brought to Israel for trial. Harel himself arrived in person in May 1960 to oversee the capture. Mossad operative Rafi Eitan was named leader of the eight-man team, most of whom were Shin Bet agents. Eichmann was hanged at a prison in Ramla, shortly after midnight on 31 May 1962. The execution was attended by a small group of officials, four journalists, and Canadian clergyman William Lovell Hull (who had been his spiritual counselor while in prison).

1963 – Racist bombings in Birmingham, Alabama disrupt nonviolence in the Birmingham campaign and precipitate a crisis involving federal troops.

1970 – The Lubbock tornado, a F5 tornado, hits Lubbock, Texas, killing 26 and causing $250 million in damage. At 8:10PM, an off-duty Lubbock police officer spotted a funnel cloud on the east side of the city, and grapefruit-size hail was reported. At 8:15, local radar indicated a hook echo and a tornado warning was issued for Lubbock and Crosby counties, and the first tornado to strike the city touched down seven miles south of Lubbock Municipal Airport, near the intersection of Quirt Avenue and Broadway. Since it was in a relatively sparsely populated area of the city, this first tornado caused little significant damage; however, reports of damaging hail continued to come in from around the city. At 9:15, tornado sirens in Idalou were sounded, and by 9:30 baseball-sized hail was falling in the northeastern sector of Lubbock. At about 9:35PM, a second and much more significant tornado touched down near the campus of Texas Tech University, snapping light poles at Jones Stadium, home of the Red Raider football team, then began to track northeast, carving a path of destruction that at its peak reached almost two miles in width right through the heart of the city. The devastating twister tore through several densely populated residential areas before slicing through downtown, dealing a direct blow to the First National Bank building and the Great Plains Life building. The tornado then moved north toward the airport, where at 10:00PM, anemometers were already reading winds of 77 knots (approximately 90 miles per hour (140 km/h). At 9:46, power failed at the Lubbock Civil Defense headquarters, and three minutes later, the local weather bureau lost power and its personnel took shelter from the tornado, which was now bearing down on the area and passed over the Weather Bureau building at 10:03PM.

1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.

1987 – Klaus Barbie (the "Butcher of Lyon") goes on trial in Lyon for war crimes committed during World War II.

1995 – More than 170 countries extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.

1996 – The 1996 Mount Everest disaster: on a single day eight people die during summit attempts on Mount Everest. Numerous climbers, including multiple large teams as well as some small partnerships, and even some soloists, were high on Everest during the storm. While climbers died on both the North Face and South Col approaches, the events on the South Face are better known. Journalist Jon Krakauer, on assignment from Outside magazine, was in a party led by guide Rob Hall that lost four climbers on the south side; he afterwards published the bestseller Into Thin Air (1997), which related his experience.

1997 – Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

2000 – The Second Chechen War: Chechen separatists ambush Russian paramilitary forces in the Republic of Ingushetia.

2010 – David Cameron becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom following talks between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to form the UK's first coalition government since World War II after elections produced a hung parliament.

2013 – Fifty-two people are killed in a bombing in Reyhanlı, Turkey.

2014 – Fifteen people are killed and 46 injured in Kinshasa in a stampede caused by tear gas being thrown into the stand by police officers attempting to defuse a hostile incident.


BORN TODAY 

1799 – John Lowell, Jr., American businessman and philanthropist, founded Lowell Institute (d. 1836)

1881 – Theodore von Kármán, Hungarian-American mathematician, physicist, and engineer (d. 1963)

1888 – Irving Berlin (born, Israel Isidore Baline), Belarusian-American pianist and composer (d. 1989)

1918 – Richard Phillips Feynman, American physicist and engineer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1988)

1933 – Louis Farrakhan, American religious leader, Nation of Islam

1934 – Arthur Labatt, Canadian businessman and academic, Labatt Brewery

1946 – Robert Jarvik, American cardiologist, developed the Artificial heart

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.