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This Day in History: May 4
By Bryan Robinson
Published May 04, 2020
Theodore 'Ted' Kaczynski (Michael Macor/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
On this day, May 4 …
1998: The "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski is given four life sentences, plus 30 years, by a federal judge in Sacramento, Calif., under a plea agreement that spares him the death penalty.
Also on this day:
- 1626: Dutch explorer Peter Minuit lands on present-day Manhattan Island.
- 1886: At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an 8-hour workday turns into a deadly riot when a bomb explodes.
- 1932: Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, enters the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone would be later transferred to Alcatraz Island.)
(AP Photo/Ed Widdis)
- 1959: The first Grammy Awards ceremony is held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
(AP Photo)
- 1961: The first group of "Freedom Riders" leaves Washington, D.C., to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.
- 1968: The Oroville Dam in Northern California is dedicated by Gov. Ronald Reagan
- 1970: Ohio National Guardsmen open fire during an anti-war protest at Kent State University, killing four students and injuring nine others.
- 2006: A federal judge sentences Zacarias Moussaoui to life in prison for his role in the 9/11 terror attacks, telling the convicted terrorist: "You will die with a whimper."
- 2009: President Barack Obama promises to crack down on companies "that ship jobs overseas" and duck U.S. taxes with offshore havens.
- 2009: Jeff Kepner, of Augusta, Ga., undergoes the nation’s first double-hand transplant at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
- 2009: Actor, comedian and director Dom DeLuise, 75, dies in Santa Monica, Calif.
- 2014: Eight acrobats are injured, most of them seriously, when a carabiner clip breaks during an aerial hair-hanging stunt, sending the women plummeting to the ground during a Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus show in Providence, R.I.
- 2018: The Connecticut Supreme Court overturns the murder conviction of Kennedy cousin Michael Skakel in the 1975 bludgeoning death of his neighbor Martha Moxley in Greenwich, finding that Skakel’s trial attorney failed to present evidence of an alibi.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/this-day-in-history-may-4