Today in HistoryToday is Monday, May 21, the 141st day of 2007. There are 224 days left in the year.

ON THIS DATE<$>:

In 1542, Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto died while searching for gold along the Mississippi.

In 1861, the Confederate Congress, meeting in Montgomery, Alabama, voted to move the capital of the Confederacy from Montgomery to Richmond, Virginia.

In 1927, Charles A. Lindbergh landed his Spirit of St. Louis near Paris, completing the first solo airplane flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

In 1956, the US exploded the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

In 1969, Palestinian immigrant Sirhan B. Sirhan was sentenced to death for the 1968 murder of US presidential candidate Robert Kennedy. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.

In 1982, during the Falklands War, British amphibious forces landed on the beach at San Carlos Bay.

In 1991, Rajiv Gandhi, former Indian prime minister, was killed by a bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers while campaigning for elections in the southern state of Tamil Nadu.

THOUGHT FOR TODAY

“Originality does not consist in saying what no one has ever said before, but in saying exactly what you think yourself.” — James Stephens, Irish poet and novelist (1882-1950).