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On this day, May 15 …
2014: President Barack Obama dedicates the National September 11 Memorial & Museum deep beneath Ground Zero, calling it a symbol that says of America: "Nothing can ever break us."
Also on this day:
- 1862: President Abraham Lincoln signs an act establishing the Department of Agriculture.
- 1930: Registered nurse Ellen Church, the first airline stewardess, goes on duty aboard an Oakland-to-Chicago flight operated by Boeing Air Transport, a forerunner of United Airlines.
- 1972: Alabama Gov. George C. Wallace is shot and left paralyzed while campaigning for president in Laurel, Md.
- 1988: The Soviet Union begins withdrawing its troops from Afghanistan, more than eight years after Soviet forces entered the country.
- 1991: President George H.W. Bush takes Queen Elizabeth to a Major League Baseball game between the Baltimore Orioles and Oakland Athletics.
- 2008: California's Supreme Court declares same-sex couples in the state can marry -- a victory for the gay rights movement that would be overturned the following November by the passage of Proposition 8 (which would ultimately be struck down by the courts).
- 2013: An international team of scientists announces the first successful cloning of human cells.
- 2018: Seattle Mariners' second baseman Robinson Cano is suspended for 80 games for violating baseball's drug agreement, becoming one of the most prominent players disciplined under the sport's anti-doping rules.