Following are some of the major events to have occurred on June 5:
1916 – Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum, Irish soldier, statesman and conqueror of Sudan, was lost at sea when his ship struck a mine off the Orkneys.
1945 – The Allied Control Commission took control of Germany, dividing it into four occupation zones.
1947 – U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall announced his plan to help Europe recover financially from the effects of World War Two.
1968 – U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy was shot in Los Angeles by Palestinian-Arab Sirhan Sirhan. He died the next day.
1975 – The Suez Canal, closed in the 1967 Middle East war, reopened to all but Israeli shipping.
1999 – U.S. jazz singer Mel Torme died at age 73.
2000 – U.S. President Bill Clinton became the first major Western leader to address the Russian State Duma.
2002 – Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political ally, took the symbolic top job in Belfast when a hardline republican won the post of lord mayor in the face of bitter Protestant opposition.
2003 – Pope John Paul arrived on the Adriatic island of Krk to begin the 100th foreign trip of his papacy, a five-day visit to Croatia.
2004 – Ronald Reagan, U.S. president from 1981-89, died of Alzheimer’s disease. As the 40th U.S. president, he is credited with helping end the Cold War with the former Soviet Union. He was 93.
2007 – Lewis “Scooter” Libby, a former top aide to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, was sentenced to 30 months in prison for lying and obstructing a probe into the handling of the Iraq war.
