On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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LEAD: ONE of the more curious enclaves in this Black Sea port is a turn-of-the-century French chateau, its garden now festooned with Communist Party posters and heaped with industrial racks of empty green bottles. A voluptuous stone siren presides over the arched entrance, and high above her is the oddly proletarian sign, Factory of Champagne
LEAD: Texaco Inc. filed a lawsuit yesterday against its largest shareholder, Carl C. Icahn, seeking to block the New York investor from pursuing a proxy battle to elect himself and four associates to the company's board at its annual meeting on June 7.
LEAD: A tentative truce between the New York City Police and Fire Commissioners disintegrated into a wild free-for-all yesterday, as the two began yelling at each other in City Hall and Mayor Koch yelled back, rebuking them as if they were unruly children.
LEAD: An increase in deadly weapons found on public school students in New York City this year has prompted the Board of Education to consider searching students with metal detectors as they enter school, a board official said yesterday.
LEAD: A Bronx judge, supporting prosecution charges of discrimination, ruled yesterday that defense lawyers for Larry Davis had sought to exclude white people as jurors in his latest trial.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of May 4, 1988, covering May 4, 1988.
Soundtrack
George Michael
Soundtrack
Terence Trent D'Arby
Michael Jackson
1988Radja Nainggolan, Belgian footballer[†]
Radja Nainggolan is a Belgian professional footballer who plays as a central midfielder for Challenger Pro League club Lokeren-Temse.
1988Lillian Estelle Fisher, American historian of Spanish America (born 1891)[†]
Lillian Estelle Fisher was one of the first women to earn a doctorate in Latin American history in the U.S. She published important works on Spanish colonial administration; a biography of Manuel Abad y Queipo, reform bishop-elect of Michoacan; and a monograph on the Tupac Amaru rebellion in Peru. As distinguished colonial Latin American historian John J. TePaske put it in 1968, "At least three generations of graduate students have studied the works of Lillian Estelle Fisher." Fisher is included as an example of sexual/gender discrimination in the historical profession.
1988The PEPCON disaster rocks Henderson, Nevada, as tons of Space Shuttle fuel detonate during a fire.[†]
On May 4, 1988, a fire followed by several explosions occurred at the Pacific Engineering and Production Company of Nevada (PEPCON) chemical plant in Henderson, Nevada. The disaster caused two fatalities, 372 injuries, and an estimated $100 million of damage. A large portion of the Las Vegas Valley within a 10-mile (16 km) radius of the plant was affected and several agencies activated disaster plans.
In 1988, the world population was approximately 5,141,992,542 people[†]