Today in history

May 5

More on Cinco de Mayo

1865
Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified, which outlawed slavery
1892
Congress passes the Geary Chinese Exclusion Act, which required Chinese in the United States to be registered or face deportation.
1925
US: Biology teacher John T. Scopes arrested for teaching the� theory of evolution in a Tennessee school, a violation of state law.
1969Draft resisters publicly burned 231 military induction orders in Los Angeles.
1979
1,500 gather in Livermore, Calif. to protest nuclear research laboratory run by the Univ. of California.
1981
Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food. He had just been elected to a seat in Parliament while still serving the last of a 14-year sentence for possession of firearms.

Read about Bobby Sands and his poetry

1983
Over 1 million Sicilians, 1/5 of the population, have signed a petition against US base at Comiso.
1991
Last U.S. cruise missile leaves Greenham Common Air Base, site of a decade of strident women’s anti-nuclear protests.
1992
Mothers of soldiers demand return of sons from extra-territorial fronts, Belgrade, Serbia.
2000
Reformers swept Iran’s run-off elections, winning control of the legislature from conservatives for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.