Today is Wednesday, May ninth, the 129th day of 2001. There are 236 days left in the year. Today's Highlight in History: On May ninth, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee opened hearings on whether to recommend the impeachment of President Nixon. On this date: In 1502, Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to the Western Hemisphere. In 1913, the 17th amendment to the Constitution, providing for the election of US senators by popular vote rather than selection by state legislatures, was ratified. In 1926, Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to fly over the North Pole. In 1936, Italy annexed Ethiopia. In 1945, US officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately. In 1960, the Food and Drug Administration approved a pill as safe for birth control use. (The pill, Enovid, was made by G.D. Searle and Company of Chicago.) In 1961, Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton N. Minow condemned television programming as a "vast wasteland" in a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters. In 1978, the bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who'd been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an automobile in the center of Rome. In 1980, 35 motorists were killed when a Liberian freighter rammed the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay in Florida, causing a 14-hundred-foot section to collapse. In 1994, South Africa's newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country's first black president. Ten years ago: President Bush met at the White House with UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who relayed Iraq's rejection of a US-backed proposal for a UN civilian force in northern Iraq. William Kennedy Smith was charged with rape, nearly six weeks after Patricia Bowman accused him of attacking her at the Kennedy family estate in West Palm Beach, Florida (he was acquitted at trial). Five years ago: In dramatic video testimony to a hushed courtroom in Little Rock, Arkansas, President Clinton insisted he had nothing to do with a 300-thousand-dollar loan at the heart of the criminal case against his former Whitewater partners. One year ago: Senator John McCain endorsed Texas Governor George W. Bush for president. Former four-term Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards was convicted of extortion schemes to manipulate the licensing of riverboat casinos. (Edwards was sentenced last January to ten years in prison and fined a quarter of a million dollars.) Today's Birthdays: CBS News correspondent Mike Wallace is 83. Actor-writer Alan Bennett is 67. Actor Albert Finney is 65. Actress-turned-politician Glenda Jackson is 65. Musician Sonny Curtis (Buddy Holly and the Crickets) is 64. Producer-director James L. Brooks is 61. Singer Tommy Roe is 59. Singer-musician Richie Furay (Buffalo Springfield and Poco) is 57. Actress Candice Bergen is 55. S inger Clint Holmes is 55. Actor Anthony Higgins is 54. Singer Billy Joel is 52. Rock singer-musician Tom Petersson (Cheap Trick) is 51. Actress Alley Mills is 50. Singer Dave Gahan (Depeche Mode) is 39. Rapper Ghostface Killah is 31. Singer Tamia is 26. Rock musician Dan Regan (Reel Big Fish) is 24. Actress Rosario Dawson is 21. "It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives." -- Dorothy Thompson, American journalist and author (1894-1961). (Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

Morning Munchkin :-) How ya felling today~? Kath > Today is Wednesday, May ninth, the 129th day of 2001. > There are 236 days left in the year. >