Today’s Highlights

On May 7, 1915, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.

On this date

1945: Nazi Germany signed an unconditional surrender at Allied headquarters in Rheims, France, ending its role in World War II.

1954: The 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces; it would be the last major battle of the First Indochina War.

1975: President Gerald R. Ford formally declared an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City — formerly Saigon — the Viet Cong celebrated its takeover.

1984: Monsanto and six other chemical companies agreed to pay a $180 million settlement to Vietnam veterans who were exposed to the chemical herbicide Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.

2020: Georgia authorities arrested a white father and son and charged them with murder in the February shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, a Black man they had pursued in a truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood near the port city of Brunswick. (The two men and a third white man would be convicted of murder in state court and hate crimes in federal court.)

Today’s birthdays

Singer Thelma Houston is 82. Actor/former boxer Randall “Tex” Cobb is 75. Actor Breckin Meyer is 51. Reggaeton musician J Balvin is 40. Actor-comedian Aidy Bryant is 38.