01|President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia releases three captive U.S. soldiers through the efforts of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who led an interfaith delegation to Yugoslavia to plead for their release.|
01|The Liberty Bell 7 Mercury space capsule, lost in the Atlantic Ocean on July 21, 1961, is discovered by an underwater salvage team in 3-mile- (5-kilometer-) deep waters approximately 300 miles (480 kilometers) off the Florida coast. The capsule sank during splashdown after astronaut Gus Grissom successfully completed a 15-minute space flight.|
01|Charismatic, a 31-to-1 long shot, wins the 125th running of the Kentucky Derby, beating Menifee by a neck and Cat Thief by one length. Charismatic provides his trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, with his fourth Derby victory.|
02|Mireya Moscoso is elected Panama's first woman president with 44 percent of the vote. She defeats Martin Torrijos. Moscoso is the widow of Arnulfo Arias, a former president of Panama. Martin Torrijos is the son of the late Panamanian strongman General Omar Torrijos, who deposed Arnulf Arias in a 1968 <I>coup</I> (overthrow).|
02|Pope John Paul II beatifies Padre Pio, an Italian monk who died in 1968 at the age of 81. Beatification is the next-to-final step in the process of sainthood. Padre Pio was known both for his piety and for phenomenal acts, which the Pope referred to as Padre Pio's "special gifts." The friar bore Christ-like wounds on his hands and feet on and off for more than 50 years and is credited with triggering a number of supernatural occurrences.|
03|Storms along a 100-mile (161-kilometer) front in Kansas and Oklahoma spawn tornadoes that destroy at least 1,700 buildings and leave more than 40 people dead and 500 people injured. The National Weather Service reports sightings of 45 separate tornadoes. In Moore, Oklahoma, a suburb south of Oklahoma City, a mile- (1.6-kilometer-) wide funnel with winds of more than 300 miles [483 kilometers] per hour levels 500 houses in a swath 6 blocks wide and 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) long. Weather service officials estimate that on the Fujita Scale the tornado exceeds the F5 level force, the strongest classification.|
03|A new U.S. weapon shuts down electricity in much of Yugoslavia, including the capital, Belgrade. The weapon, a warhead so new it has not yet been named, dusts power cables with graphite filaments that short circuit switching stations, causing power grids to break down.|
04|Marburg virus, a hemorrhagic fever, has killed 63 people in northeastern Congo (Kinshasa), reports Marc Biot, a researcher with Doctors Without Borders. Hemorrhagic fevers are viral diseases characterized by high fevers and massive internal bleeding. Doctors Without Borders is a charitable organization with a research team stationed in Durba, a gold mining town where most of the deaths occurred. Biot reports that the physician who treated the miners also died. The virus, for which there is no known cure, is spread by contact with blood or other bodily fluids of an infected person.|
05|The U.S. House of Representatives approves legislation by a vote of 313 to 108 that would make it more difficult to ease personal debts through bankruptcy. The legislation, which was proposed by the U.S. banking industry, is also under consideration in the Senate. Both civil rights and consumer groups oppose the bill, which a Clinton Administration spokesperson suggested the president may veto. A record 1.4 million U.S. citizens declared bankruptcy in 1998.|
06|Voters in Scotland and Wales elect representatives to new legislative bodies, the Scottish Parliament and the National Assembly of Wales. While Labor Party candidates win the largest number of seats in both legislatures, candidates from nationalist parties favoring independence come in a strong second.|
06|Men who drink eleven 8-ounce (237-milliliter) glasses of liquids a day run half the risk of men who drink five glasses per day of developing the two most common bladder cancers, according to the results of a study published in the <I>New England Journal of Medicine</I>. An estimated 310,000 people worldwide die of bladder cancer annually. The study found no correlation between bladder cancer incidence and consumption of coffee or alcohol.|
07|A NATO jet drops three cluster bombs on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, killing 3 people and wounding at least 20 others. A spokesperson for the Chinese government in Beijing characterizes the bombing as a "barbarian act" that violates the charter of the United Nations. Earlier in the day, the Chinese foreign ministry called on NATO to halt the bombing of Yugoslavia, claiming the attack was afflicting "great civilian casualties."|
08|Thousands of Chinese college students demonstrate before the U.S. embassy in Beijing, protesting the May 7 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. Shouting anti-American slogans before the watchful eyes of thousands of policemen, the students burn U.S. flags and pummel the embassy and the cars parked inside with rocks. U.S. State Department officials claim the demonstrations, the largest in Beijing since the 1989 student rallies in Tiananmen Square, are organized by the Chinese government, which appears to have bused thousands of students into the center of the capital.|
08|At NATO headquarters in Brussels, officials call the May 7 NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy an accident. The target was picked by U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) personnel, who believed the Belgrade building to be the headquarters of a Yugoslav arms agency. The maps used by the CIA may have been out of date, notes the NATO spokesperson.|
09|Americans inside the U.S. embassy in Beijing become the virtual hostages of a mob of Chinese demonstrators that has besieged the compound, protesting the May 7 bombing by a NATO warplane of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. For a second day, tens of thousands of college students and residents of Beijing vent their anger at the United States by pelting its embassy with eggs, paint-filled balloons, stones, and chunks of concrete.|
09|A chartered bus, carrying at least 46 senior citizens on a Mothers Day excursion to a Gulf Coast gambling casino, runs off a highway in New Orleans and crashes into an embankment, killing 22 people. At least 20 passengers are hospitalized from the crash, which New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial labels the worst traffic accident in the city's history.|
10|A U.S. scientist gave away top-secret information about space radar to China in 1997, report U.S. government intelligence experts. The radar, which went into operation in 1978, allows users to detect and track submarines from satellites and even commercial airplanes. The U.S. intelligence community claims the Chinese could use the radar technology to both detect and track U.S. subs and cloak their own underwater vessels.|
10|The government of China announces it is breaking off all high-level military ties and suspending all on-going talks with the United States, in light of the May 7 U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. The on-going diplomatic talks dealt with various aspects of U.S.-Chinese relations, including human rights abuses.|
11|AIDS is the world's most deadly infectious disease, according to statistics released by the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland. In 1998, AIDS killed approximately 2.28 million people worldwide. Heart disease, which killed more than 7 million people worldwide in 1998, is the most common cause of death, followed by strokes, acute respiratory infections, and AIDS.|
12|Russian President Boris Yeltsin fires a prime minister for the third time in 15 months. Yeltsin dismisses Yevgeny Primakov a day before the Duma launches impeachment charges against the 68-year-old president. The Duma is Russia's lower house of parliament. Yeltsin nominates Sergei Stepashin, interior minister and veteran of the Russian security apparatus, to replace Primakov. While Stepashin's views on economic reform are unknown, his loyalty to Yeltsin and dedication to democratic ideals remain unquestioned. Primakov, who presided over a cabinet with a number of Communist ministers, enjoyed the support of the Communist-dominated Duma. Political experts believe Yeltsin distrusted Primakov for his growing popularity and for his ties to the very politicians attempting to wrench control from the physically and politically weakened president.|
12|Secretary of the Treasury Robert E. Rubin resigns from his post in the Clinton Cabinet after steering U.S. economic policies for more than six years. Rubin's work at the treasury has been praised by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress and by bankers on Wall Street. President Bill Clinton nominates Deputy Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence H. Summers to replace Rubin. Before joining the Treasury Department, Lawrence H. Summers taught economics at Harvard University.|
13|Russia's lower house of parliament, the Communist-dominated Duma, launches impeachment proceedings against President Boris Yeltsin. He is charged with five counts of treason, including instigating the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.|
13|The Italian parliament elects Carlo Azeglio Ciampi president of Italy on the first round of voting, an unusual display of consensus. Ciampi was the treasury minister before being elected president and a former prime minister with an unblemished reputation. Italian presidents do not make policy, but have the power to dissolve parliament and appoint new prime ministers.|
14|More than 80 ethnic Albanian villagers are killed and dozens more are wounded when NATO F-16 bombers attack a Kosovo village 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Pristina the provincial capital, during a bombing raid on a Yugoslav military command post. Officials in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, claim the Kosovo village was crowded with more than 500 refugees who had stopped there for the night. A NATO spokesperson suggests that Serbian forces are herding Kosovar refugees into areas around likely NATO targets.|
15|More than 100 members of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, fail to attend a scheduled house session, thwarting the Communist Party's attempt to impeach President Boris Yeltsin on charges of treason.|
15|Charismatic, winner of the 1999 Kentucky Derby, takes the Preakness by a length and a half, completing two legs of racing's famed Triple Crown.|
16|Crime in the United States declined for the seventh consecutive year, reports the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both violent crimes and property crimes decreased by 7 percent in 1998, the largest annual reduction since crime rates began to slow in 1992. In 1998, the incidence of robbery fell by 11 percent. Motor vehicle thefts declined by 10 percent and murder by 8 percent. Criminologists equate the decline to a diminished demand for crack cocaine, which they believe drove up the incidence of crime through the 1980's.|
17|Israeli voters overwhelmingly reject Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in favor of Ehud Barak, a war hero and political moderate who heads the Labor Party. Barak, who is Israeli's most decorated soldier, receives approximately 55 percent of the vote, which political experts interpret as a ringing endorsement of the long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.|
18|Bruce Babbitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, announces a federal plan to save 68 endangered and threatened species in southern Florida's Everglades, including the manatee and American crocodile,. The plan is part of a larger proposal for the restoration of 26,000 square miles (67,340 square kilometers) of natural habitat in the Everglades. The centerpiece of the project, which needs Congressional funding, involves restoring the natural flow of water through the Everglades by building large reservoirs, above and below ground, and revamping canals and dikes built by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1950's.|
19|The Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, overwhelmingly confirms Sergei Stepashin, President Boris Yeltsin's hand-picked candidate, as prime minister. Stepashin is the fourth person to hold the office in 14 months. Stepashin, who is a loyal Yeltsin lieutenant, has held posts as Russia's interior minister, justice minister, and chief of the Federal Security Bureau.|
20|A 15-year-old student, armed with two guns, opens fire in Heritage High School in Conyers, Georgia, a suburb east of Atlanta. The boy wounds six of his fellow students before a vice principal disarms the high-school sophomore after talking him out of committing suicide. The shooting is the sixth random assault in a U.S. public school in the past 20 months.|
20|The U.S. Senate, in a bipartisan 75 to 23 vote, passes a juvenile-crime bill that includes a variety of gun-control measures, including placing restriction on the access that children under 18 have to automatic weapons. The bill mandates that every handgun sold by a licensed gun dealer be outfitted with a child safety device, and it bans the import of high-capacity ammunition clips. Earlier in the day, Vice President Al Gore, who presides over the Senate, cast a tie-breaking vote to pass a measure requiring background checks with the sale of firearms at gun shows.|
20|At least 400 Pakistanis are killed when a cyclone with winds of 170 miles (274 kilometers) per hour produces giant tidal waves that crash into a string of fishing villages approximately 25 miles (40 kilometers) east of Karachi, the capital.|
21|The luxury cruise liner <I>Sun Vista</I> sinks in the Straight of Malacca off Malaysia's western coast after a fire in the engine room spreads through the ship. All 1,104 passengers and crew members are rescued unhurt from the lifeboats and rafts to which they had been evacuated.|
22|NATO bombers mistakenly strike an important military base that has been in the hands of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) rebels for six weeks. Seven KLA members are reported killed and 25 others wounded. The base is situated near Kosare, a town in a mountainous region of Kosovo six miles (9.7 kilometers) from the Albanian border.|
23|NATO officials in Brussels, Belgium, acknowledge that there is no sign that Yugoslav forces have been withdrawn from Kosovo and reveal that fresh Serbian troops are marching into the province to reinforce troops massed along the Albanian border. The officials note that the renewed massing of troops in Kosovo may suggest President Slobodan Milosevic's resolve to hold the province despite NATO's around-the-clock bombing campaign against Yugoslavia. Milosevic's troops have driven more than 1 million ethnic Albanians from Kosovo since the NATO bombings began on March 24.|
24|The U.S. Supreme Court rules that school districts and school and university authorities are liable under federal law for ignoring student complaints of sexual harassment by other students when the harassment is so "severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it denies its victims the equal access to education." The 5-to-4 decision, written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, is labeled an intrusion into "day-to-day classroom logistics and interactions" by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, whose dissent is jointed by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.|
24|A methane gas explosion in a coal mine in western Ukraine kills 39 of the 131 miners working below ground.|
25|The universe is approximately 12 billion years old, astronomers announce at a news conference in Washington, D.C. The team of 27 scientists, who participated in an eight-year research project funded by NASA, used measurements taken from the Hubble Space Telescope to figure distances between Earth and 800 stars. These measurements were used to calculate the speed at which the galaxies of the universe are moving apart. This speed, known as the "Hubble Constant," is the critical factor in determining the age of the universe. According to the project leader Wendy Freedman of the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C., the Hubble Constant is 44 miles (70 kilometers) per second. The new figure for the Hubble Constant is challenged by astronomers who did not participate in the project.|
26|Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain presides over the opening of the National Assembly of Wales, the first political assembly to meet in the Welch capital of Cardiff in nearly 400 years. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Labor Party, which holds only 28 of 60 parliamentary seats, is unable to muster a majority without the cooperation of a Welch nationalist party, Plaid Cymru, which holds 17 seats.|
26|India launches combat jets and helicopters to dislodge 500 to 600 Pakistani guerrillas entrenched along high ridges in the Himalaya in an area of Kashmir held by India. According to India, the band of guerrillas are Pakistan-sponsored Islamic militants who crossed a 50-year-old cease-fire line to take up strategic positions. Pakistan denies knowledge of the group. The attack is the most serious incident between the two nations since India and Pakistan earned world condemnation in 1998 by conducting underground nuclear tests along each other's borders. India and Pakistan both claim sovereignty over the territory of Jammu and Kashmir, a dispute that has triggered three wars since the two nations gained independence from Great Britain in 1947.|
27|The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a panel of prosecutors established by the United Nations (UN), issues a 42-page arrest warrant indicting Slobodan Milosevic, president of Yugoslavia, on charges of crimes against humanity in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The warrant, issued in all UN member nations, charges Milosevic with ordering the forced deportation of more than 740,000 ethnic Albanians and the murder of at least 340 Kosovars since Jan. 1, 1999. Four of Milosevic's associates are also indicted. The tribunal's chief prosecutor, Canadian judge Louise Arbour, notes that Milosevic's role in three previous Balkan wars--in Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia--and his role in the 1992 deportation of 750,000 Muslims in Bosnia, remains under investigation.|
28|Police remove more than 300 crosses from land adjacent to Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp in Poland. The crosses began appearing in 1998 after various Israeli and Jewish groups demanded the removal of a large cross erected at Auschwitz in 1979 to commemorate the 152 Polish Catholics who died in the camp. Jewish groups claimed the cross, which can be seen from inside the preserved concentration camp, insults the memory of the more than 1 million Jews who died there and at other nearby camps. The commemorative cross, which is 26 feet (8 meters) high, remains standing, despite the enactment of a new law banning religious symbols within 300 feet (91 meter) of former Nazi camps in Poland.|
29|Olusegun Obasanjo, a retired army general, is sworn in as president of Nigeria. He is Nigeria's first legitimately elected head of state since a military coup (overthrow) toppled the government in 1983. Obasanjo replaces General Abdulsalami Abubakar, who is the first Nigerian leader to voluntarily relinquish power since Obasanjo himself stepped down as dictator in 1979.|
30|Fifty teen-agers and three police officers are killed when a crowd of young people attending a beer festival in Minsk, Belarus, stampede in an underground passage at the entrance to a subway station. The crowd dashed into the subway to stay dry during a storm.|
31|NATO missiles, part of an intensifying air campaign, hit a hospital complex in Surdulica, Yugoslavia, killing at least 16 Serbian civilians and wounding more than 20 others. A strike in Novi Pazar, near Serbia's border with Kosovar, kills 10 people and wounds 20 more. Another attack knocks out all electrical power in Belgrade, the capital. On May 30, NATO bombs destroyed a steel girder bridge in the Serbian market town of Varvarin, killing 11 civilians.|
