Flashback

Today is Saturday, May 21, the 141st day of 2005. There are 224 days left in the year. This is Armed Forces Day.

Today’s highlight in history:

On May 21, 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his “Spirit of St. Louis” near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

Ten years ago: Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin died at a Washington, D.C., hospital after suffering a massive stroke; he was 56.

Five years ago: Nineteen people were killed when a charter plane crashed in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. Death claimed actor Sir John Gielgud at age 96 and author Dame Barbara Cartland at age 98.

One year ago: The U.N. Security Council approved a peacekeeping force of 5,600 troops for Burundi to help the African nation finally end a 10-year civil war. Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors Corp., struggling to survive, announced it would cut 11,000 jobs.

On this date:

In 1542, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto died while searching for gold along the Mississippi River.

In 1832, the first Democratic National Convention got under way, in Baltimore.

In 1840, New Zealand was declared a British colony.

In 1881, Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

In 1892, the opera “I Pagliacci,” by Ruggiero Leoncavallo, was first performed, in Milan, Italy.

In 1924, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a “thrill killing” committed by Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb, two students at the University of Chicago.

In 1956, the United States exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

In 1968, the nuclear-powered U.S. submarine Scorpion, with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. (The remains of the sub were later found on the ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)

In 1985, Patti Frustaci of Riverside, Calif., who was expecting septuplets, gave birth to six live babies, three of whom died in the following weeks.

In 1991, former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated during national elections by a suicide bomber.