Today in history

On May 28, 1934, the Dionne quintuplets — Annette, Cecile, Emilie, Marie and Yvonne — were born to Elzire Dionne at the family farm in Ontario, Canada.

In 1533, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, declared the marriage of England's King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn valid.

In 1892, the Sierra Club was organized in San Francisco.

In 1912, the Senate Commerce Committee issued its report on the Titanic disaster that cited a "state of absolute unpreparedness," improperly tested safety equipment and an "indifference to danger" as some of the causes of an "unnecessary tragedy."

In 1929, the first all- color talking picture, "On with the Show!" produced by Warner Bros., opened in New York.

In 1937, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed a button in Washington signaling that vehicular traffic could begin crossing the just- opened Golden Gate Bridge in California. Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Britain.

In 1940, during World War II, the Belgian army surrendered to invading German forces.

In 1945, the novel "Brideshead Revisited" by Evelyn Waugh was published in London by Chapman & Hall.

In 1959, the U. S. Army launched Able, a rhesus monkey, and Baker, a squirrel monkey, aboard a Jupiter missile for a suborbital flight which both primates survived.

In 1961, Amnesty International had its beginnings with the publication of an article in the British newspaper The Observer, "The Forgotten Prisoners."

In 1977, 165 people were killed when fire raced through the Beverly Hills Supper Club in Southgate, Kentucky.

In 1985, David Jacobsen, director of the American University Hospital in Beirut, Lebanon, was abducted by pro- Iranian kidnappers ( he was freed 17 months later).

In 1998, comic actor Phil Hartman of "Saturday Night Live" and "NewsRadio" fame was shot to death at his home in Encino, California, by his wife, Brynn, who then killed herself.

Ten years ago: Pope Benedict XVI visited the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland as "a son of the German people" and asked God why he had remained silent during the "unprecedented mass crimes" of the Nazi Holocaust. Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run during the San Francisco Giants' 6- 3 loss to the Colorado Rockies to slip past Babe Ruth and pull in right behind Hank Aaron's long- standing record of 755.

“The bravest thing you can do when you are not brave is to profess courage and act accordingly.” — Corra May Harris, American writer ( 1869- 1935).