On May 3, 1802, Washington was incorporated as a city.
In 1916 Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.
In 1921 West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.
In 1933 Nellie Taylor Ross was sworn as the U.S. Mint’s first female director.
In 1944 U.S. wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended.
In 1948 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that covenants barring the sale of real estate to minority group members are legally unenforceable.
In 1997 world chess champion Garry Kasparov won the first game of his much-anticipated rematch with IBM’s Deep Blue computer (however, Kasparov ended up losing the six-game match).
In 2000 the archbishop of New York, Cardinal John O’Connor, died in New York; he was 80.
In 2001 the United States lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission for the first time since the commission was formed in 1947.
In 2002 the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston backed out of a settlement agreement with 86 people who had accused defrocked priest John Geoghan of child molestation, saying the deal was becoming too expensive. (The archdiocese later agreed to a $10 million settlement.)
In 2004 the U.S. military said it had reprimanded seven officers in the abuse of inmates at Baghdad’s notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the first known punishments in the case; two of the officers were relieved of their duties.
In 2006 a federal jury in Alexandria, Va., rejected the death penalty for Al Qaeda conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, deciding he should spend life in prison for his role in 9/11. Also in 2006 Earl Woods, father of golfer Tiger Woods, died in Cypress, Calif., at 74.
