Today in History: May 25, death of George Floyd

Today in History Today is Wednesday, May 25, the 145th day of 2022. There are 220 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History: On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a Black man, was killed when a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee on Floyd’s neck for about 9 1/2 minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and pleading that he couldn’t breathe; Floyd’s death, captured on video by a bystander, would lead to worldwide protests, some of which turned violent, and a reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S. On this date: In 1787, the Constitutional Convention began at the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall) in Philadelphia after enough delegates had shown up for a quorum. In 1946, Transjordan (now Jordan) became a kingdom as it proclaimed its new monarch, Abdullah I. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy told Congress: ‘œI believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth.’� In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Griffin v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, ordered the Virginia county to reopen its public schools, which officials had closed in an attempt to circumvent the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka desegregation ruling. In 1968, the Gateway Arch in St. Louis was dedicated by Vice President Hubert Humphrey and Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. In 1977, the first ‘œStar Wars’� film (later retitled ‘œStar Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope’�) was released by 20th Century Fox. In 1979, 273 people died when an American Airlines DC-10 crashed just after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. In 2008, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander arrived on the Red Planet to begin searching for evidence of water; the spacecraft confirmed the presence of water ice at its landing site. In 2011, a judge in Salt Lake City sentenced street preacher Brian David Mitchell to life in prison for kidnapping and raping Elizabeth Smart, who was 14 at the time of her abduction in 2002. A judge in Tucson, Arizona, ruled that Jared Lee Loughner, the man accused of wounding U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killing six in a shooting rampage, was mentally incompetent to stand trial. (Loughner would later plead guilty; he was sentenced to seven life terms in prison.) In 2016, actor Johnny Depp’s wife, Amber Heard, filed for divorce in Los Angeles, citing irreconcilable differences after 15 months of marriage. In 2018, Harvey Weinstein was charged in New York with rape and another sex felony in the first prosecution to result from the wave of allegations against him. (Weinstein was convicted of rape and sexual assault; he is serving a 23-year prison sentence.) In 2020, a white woman, Amy Cooper, called 911 to claim she was being threatened by ‘œan African American man,’� Christian Cooper, who had confronted her for walking her dog without a leash in New York’s Central Park. (After a video of the confrontation was widely circulated, Amy Cooper lost her job with investment firm Franklin Templeton and was charged with filing a false police report; the charge was dismissed after she completed a counseling program.) Ten years ago: The private company SpaceX made history as its Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station. In Syria, more than 100 people were killed in one day in a cluster of villages in central Homs province; U.N. investigators blamed pro-government gunmen for at least some of the killings, but the Syrian regime denied responsibility and blamed rebels for the deaths.