Today’s Highlights

Today in history:

On May 28, 1830, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, which forced nearly 50,000 Native Americans to relocate to designated territories west of the Mississippi River.

Also on this date:

1959: The U.S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight which both primates survived.

1972: Burglars working on behalf of the Nixon White House broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., installing surveillance devices on telephones and taking photos of DNC documents.

1977: 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.

1987: To the embarrassment of Soviet officials, Mathias Rust, a teenage West German amateur pilot, landed a private plane near Moscow’s Red Square without authorization. (Rust was held by the Soviets until he was pardoned and freed the following year.)

2013: Calling it perhaps the biggest money-laundering scheme in U.S. history, federal prosecutors charged seven people with running what amounted to an online, underworld bank, saying that Liberty Reserve handled $6 billion for drug dealers, child pornographers, identity thieves and other criminals around the globe.

Today’s birthdays

Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is 81. Singer Gladys Knight is 81. Musician John Fogerty is 80. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is 54.