Portal:United States/On this day/May 11
On this day for the United States
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Events
- 1792 – Captain Robert Gray becomes the first documented white person to sail into the Columbia River.
- 1841 – Lt. Charles Wilkes lands at Fort Nisqually in Puget Sound.
- 1858 – Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.
- 1862 – American Civil War: The ironclad CSS Virginia is scuttled in the James River northwest of Norfolk, Virginia.
- 1864 – American Civil War: Battle of Yellow Tavern – Confederate General JEB Stuart is mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern, Virginia.
- 1894 – Pullman Strike: Four thousand Pullman Palace Car Company workers go on a wildcat strike in Illinois.
- 1907 – A derailment outside Lompoc, California kills 32 Shriners when their chartered train jumps off the tracks at a switch near Surf Depot.
- 1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana.
- 1911 – The United States becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty.
- 1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded.
- 1934 – Dust Bowl: A strong two–day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl in North America.
- 1942 – William Faulkner's collections of short stories, Go Down, Moses, is published.
- 1953 – The 1953 Waco tornado outbreak: An F5 tornado hits downtown Waco, Texas, killing 114.
- 1969 – Vietnam War: Operation Apache Snow – Near the Laos border, American and South Vietnamese forces fight North Vietnamese troops for Ap Bia Mountain (aka Hill 937 or "Hamburger Hill").
- 1970 – Henry "Dickie" Marrow is murdered in a violent racially–motivated crime in Oxford, N.C..
- 1970 – The Lubbock Tornado: An F5 tornado hits downtown Lubbock, Texas, killing 26.
- 1973 – Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has his charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.
- 1987 – The first heart–lung transplant takes place (Baltimore, Maryland). The surgery is performed by Dr. Bruce Reitz, of Stanford University School of Medicine.
- 1995 – In New York City, more than 170 countries decide to extend the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty indefinitely and without conditions.
- 1996 – After taking–off from Miami, a fire started by improperly handled oxygen canisters in the cargo hold of Atlanta–bound ValuJet Flight 592 causes the Douglas DC-9 to crash in the Florida Everglades killing all 110 on board.
- 1997 – IBM 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.