On this day
Revisit the music, news, notable people, and historical moments connected to this date.
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Mixing politics and financial speculation, Russia's fledgling futures market is wheeling and dealing over next month's presidential election. The bets are not on who will win, but on the percentage of the vote that the candidates will receive. With a crowded field of contenders and ever-shifting electoral alliances, betting opportunities abound.
The body of a 10-year-old boy who slipped off a rock into the whitewater of the Rockaway River on Saturday was found early yesterday, the police said. The boy, Rick Metzgar, had been walking along the river with two friends, ages 8 and 10, and had apparently tried to clean the mud off his shoes when the accident occurred, said Sgt. Curtis A. James, a spokesman for the Boonton Police Department.
In the 1940's, "midnight fliers" would appear on doorsteps on Election Eve, anonymously accusing candidates of such sins as having Communist friends, dating Negroes, or conspiring with the Pope. Politics marches on, and today's technique for anonymously spreading accusations is a fake public opinion survey, intended not to elicit information from voters but to push them away from supporting a particular candidate.
In other action today, the Assembly Judiciary Committee is expected to take up legislation that would make major changes in the state's divorce laws for the first time in 25 years. One bill would allow New Jerseyans to cite "irreconcilable differences" as a legal ground for divorce instead of requiring more specific causes.
Since school officials here disclosed that achievement tests at a nationally praised elementary school had been tampered with, former F.B.I. agents have been hired to find the culprit, parents have accused the superintendent of changing the answers herself and the school's pupils have been taunted by children from other areas. In a community that is passionate about its children and its schools, the feelings unleashed by the disclosure have ranged from the ferocious to the heartbreaking. Parents are in disbelief that any adult at their beloved Stratfield School would change answers on test sheets, and they are in anguish over their children innocently taking on the burden of blame for something they do not understand and did not do.
Music on My Birthday
The Top 50 albums for the chart week of May 15, 1996, covering May 20, 1996.
Hootie & The Blowfish
Dave Matthews Band
Fugees
The Cranberries
Alanis Morissette
1996Brian Kelly, Australian rugby league player[†]
Brian Kelly is an Australian professional rugby league footballer who plays as a centre for the Gold Coast Titans in the National Rugby League (NRL).
1996Jon Pertwee, English actor, portrayed the Third Doctor (born 1919)[†]
John Devon Roland Pertwee, known professionally as Jon Pertwee, was an English actor. Born into a theatrical family, he became known as a comedy actor, playing Chief Petty Officer Pertwee in the BBC Radio sitcom The Navy Lark (1959–1977) and appearing in four films in the Carry On series (1964–1992).
1996Civil rights: The Supreme Court of the United States rules in Romer v. Evans against a law that would have prevented any city, town or county in the state of Colorado from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of gays and lesbians.[†]
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) rights in the United States are among the most advanced in the world, with public opinion and jurisprudence changing significantly since the late 1980s. Even though strong protections for same-sex couples remain in place, the rights of transgender people have faced significant erosion since the beginning of Donald Trump's second presidency.
In 1996, the world population was approximately 5,842,055,734 people[†]