Milestones

Ten years ago: Responding to Republican attempts to pin the term liberal on him, Democrat Michael Dukakis declared on the campaign trail, “Yes, I am a liberal, in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John Kennedy.”

Five years ago: Martin Fettman, America’s first veterinarian in space, chopped the heads off six rats and performed the world’s first animal dissections in space, aboard the shuttle Columbia.

One year ago: A jury in Cambridge, Mass., convicted British au pair Louise Woodward of second-degree murder in the death of 8-month-old Matthew Eappen. The judge, Hiller B. Zobel, later reduced the verdict to manslaughter and set Woodward free.