Today’s Highlights

On May 2, 1994, Nelson Mandela claimed victory in the wake of South Africa’s first democratic elections.

On this date

1927: The U.S. Supreme Court, in Buck v. Bell, upheld 8-1 a Virginia law allowing the forced sterilization of people in order to promote the “health of the patient and the welfare of society.”

1972: A fire at the Sunshine silver mine in Kellogg, Idaho, claimed the lives of 91 miners who succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning.

1997: Tony Blair, whose Labour Party crushed John Major’s long-reigning Conservatives in a national election, became Britain’s youngest prime minister in 185 years, at age 43.

2011: Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, who’d been killed hours earlier in a raid by American forces at his Pakistan compound, was buried at sea.

2017: Michael Slager, a white former police officer whose killing of Walter Scott, an unarmed Black man running from a traffic stop, was captured on cellphone video, pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges in Charleston, South Carolina. (Slager would be sentenced to 20 years in prison.)

Today’s birthdays

Singer Engelbert Humperdinck is 89. Actor David Suchet is 79. Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., is 78. Singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin is 77. Rock singer Lou Gramm is 75. Actor Christine Baranski is 73. Basketball Hall of Famer Jamaal Wilkes is 72. Fashion designer Donatella Versace is 70. Filmmaker Stephen Daldry is 65. Country singer Ty Herndon is 63. Actor-wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is 53. Former soccer player David Beckham is 50.