Today in History......May 31

On this day in …

* 1889, more than 2,000 people perished when a dam break sent water rushing through Johnstown, Pa.

* 1916, during World War I, British and German fleets fought the naval Battle of Jutland off Denmark; there was no clear-cut victor, although the British suffered heavier losses

* 1962, World War II Gestapo official Adolf Eichmann, ym"sh, was hanged in Israel for his role in the Holocaust.

* 1970, tens of thousands of people died in an earthquake in Peru

* 1977, the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, three years in the making, was completed

* 1994, the United States announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union

* 1996, Binyamin Netanyahu claimed victory in Israel's election for prime minister, defeating incumbent Shimon Peres by nine-tenths of one percent

* 2001, veteran FBI agent Robert Hanssen pleaded innocent to charges of spying for Moscow. (He later changed his plea to guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.)

* 2005, breaking a silence of 30 years, former FBI official W. Mark Felt stepped forward as "Deep Throat," the secret Washington Post source that helped bring down President Nixon during the Watergate scandal. ALSO: President Bush, faced with a string of setbacks on Capitol Hill, shrugged off questions about his political clout and promised during a news conference to keep pushing Congress for a Social Security overhaul. Oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, was convicted of charges including fraud and tax evasion and sentenced to nine years in prison