Today in history:
On May 27, 1937, the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, California, was opened to pedestrian traffic (vehicles began crossing the next day).
Also on this date:
In 1896, 255 people were killed when a devastating F4 tornado struck St. Louis, Missouri, and East St. Louis, Illinois.
In 1930, New York’s Chrysler Building, at the time the world’s tallest building, opened to the public.
In 1941, the British Royal Navy sank the German battleship Bismarck off France, killing over 2,000 German sailors.
In 1942, Doris “Dorie” Miller, a cook aboard the USS West Virginia, became the first African-American to receive the Navy Cross for displaying “extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety” during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.
In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court, in United States v. O’Brien, upheld the conviction of David O’Brien for destroying his draft card outside a Boston courthouse, ruling that the act was not protected by freedom of speech.
In 1993, a bomb set by the Sicilian mafia exploded outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy; 5 people were killed and 48 wounded, and dozens of centuries-old paintings were destroyed or damaged.
In 1994, Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia to the emotional cheers of thousands after spending two decades in exile.
In 1998, Michael Fortier, the government’s star witness in the Oklahoma City bombing case, was sentenced to 12 years in prison after apologizing for not warning anyone about the deadly plot. (Fortier was freed in January 2006.)
In 2006, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the Indonesian island of Java near the city of Yogyakarta, killing more than 5,700 people.
