On June 5, 1794, Congress passed the Neutrality Act, prohibiting Americans from enlisting in the service of a foreign power.
In 1850 lawman Pat Garrett, who fatally shot Billy the Kid, was born in Chambers County, Ala.
In 1883 economist John Maynard Keynes was born in Cambridge, England.
In 1884 Civil War Gen. William Sherman told the Republican Party convention as it considered nominating him for president: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.”
In 1917 nearly 10 million men began registering for the U.S. draft in World War I.
In 1933 the U.S. abandoned the gold standard.
In 1939 novelist Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield, England.
In 1940 the Battle of France began in World War II.
In 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall outlined a program of aid for postwar Europe that would come to be known as the Marshall Plan. Also, singer Laurie Anderson was born in Chicago.
In 1967 the Six-Day War began between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
In 1968 Sen. Robert Kennedy (D-N.Y.) was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in a Los Angeles hotel shortly after winning the California presidential primary. (He died the next day.)
In 1975 the Suez Canal was reopened to international shipping for the first time since the Six-Day War in 1967.
In 1981 the Centers for Disease Control reported that five homosexuals in Los Angeles had come down with a rare kind of pneumonia — the first recognized cases of what later became known as AIDS.
In 1986 a federal jury in Baltimore convicted Ronald Pelton of selling secrets to the Soviet Union. (Pelton was sentenced to three life prison terms plus 10 years.)
In 1993 country music star Conway Twitty died at 59 in Springfield, Mo.
In 1994 at least 264 Indonesian villagers in East Java were killed by an earthquake.
In 2002 Elizabeth Smart, 14, disappeared from her Salt Lake City home. (She was found safe the following March.) Also, Dee Dee Ramone, bass player for the seminal punk band the Ramones, died at 50 in Los Angeles.
In 2003, speaking to U.S. soldiers in Qatar, President George W. Bush argued that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was justified and pledged that “we’ll reveal the truth” on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Also in 2003 the United States agreed to pull ground troops away from the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea.
In 2004 Ronald Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, died at 93 in Los Angeles after a long battle with Alzheimer’s disease.
In 2005 “Monty Python’s Spamalot” won three Tony Awards, including best musical; the musical “The Light in the Piazza” won six prizes.
