Today is Sunday, May 15, the 136th day of 2016. There are 230 days left in the year.

Today’s birthdays: Playwright Sir Peter Shaffer is 90. Actress-singer Anna Maria Alberghetti is 80. Counterculture icon Wavy Gravy is 80. Former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright is 79. Singer Trini Lopez is 79. Actor Chazz Palminteri is 64. Baseball Hall-of-Famer George Brett is 63. Musician-composer Mike Oldfield is 63. Actor Lee Horsley is 61. TV personality Giselle Fernandez is 55. Actress Brenda Bakke is 53. Football Hall-of-Famer Emmitt Smith is 47. Singer-rapper Prince Be (PM Dawn) is 46. Actress Jamie-Lynn Sigler is 35. Actress Alexandra Breckenridge is 34. Tennis player Andy Murray is 29.

In 1776, Virginia authorized its delegation to the Continental Congress to support independence from Britain.

In 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed an act establishing the Department of Agriculture.

In 1886, poet Emily Dickinson died in Amherst, Mass., at age 55.

In 1911, the Supreme Court ruled that Standard Oil Co. was a monopoly in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, and ordered its breakup.

In 1930, registered nurse Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard an Oakland-to-Chicago flight operated by Boeing Air Transport (a forerunner of United Airlines).

In 1940, the original McDonald’s restaurant was opened in San Bernardino, Calif., by Richard and Maurice McDonald.

In 1963, astronaut L. Gordon Cooper blasted off aboard Faith 7 on the final mission of the Project Mercury space program.

In 1970, just after midnight, Phillip Lafayette Gibbs and James Earl Green, two black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi, were killed as police opened fire during student protests.

In 1972, Alabama Governor George C. Wallace was shot and left paralyzed by Arthur H. Bremer while campaigning for president in Laurel, Md. (Bremer served 35 years for attempted murder.)

In 1988, the Soviet Union began the process of withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, more than eight years after Soviet forces entered the country.

In 1991, Edith Cresson was appointed by French President Francois Mitterrand to be France’s first female prime minister.

In 2006, in an Oval Office address, President George W. Bush said he would order as many as 6,000 National Guard troops to secure the US border with Mexico, and urged Congress to give millions of immigrants in the United States illegally a chance at citizenship. A defiant Saddam Hussein refused to enter a plea at his trial, insisting he was still Iraq’s president as a judge formally charged him with crimes against humanity.

In 2011, mobilized by calls on Facebook, thousands of Arab protesters marched on Israel’s borders with Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza in an unprecedented wave of demonstrations, sparking clashes that left at least 15 dead.

In 2015, a jury sentenced Dzhokhar Tsarnaev to death for the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing that killed three and left more than 250 wounded.