Today is Saturday, May 3, the 124th day of 2008. There are 242 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight in History:

On May 3, 1948, the Supreme Court, in Shelley v. Kraemer, ruled that covenants prohibiting the sale of real estate to blacks or members of other racial groups were legally unenforceable.

On this date:

• In 1654, a bridge in Rowley, Mass., was permitted to charge a toll for animals, while people crossed for free.

• In 1802, Washington, D.C., was incorporated as a city.

• In 1916, Irish nationalist Padraic Pearse and two others were executed by the British for their roles in the Easter Rising.

• In 1933, Nellie T. Ross became the first female director of the U.S. Mint.

• In 1944, U.S. wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended.

• In 1945, during World War II, Allied forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.

• In 1947, Japan's postwar constitution took effect.

• In 1986, in NASA's first post-Challenger launch, an unmanned Delta rocket lost power in its main engine shortly after liftoff, forcing safety officers to destroy it by remote control.

Ten years ago: Space shuttle Columbia and its crew returned to Earth, ending two weeks of lab work that advanced brain research. After a daylong squabble that had stretched past midnight, European leaders meeting in Brussels, Belgium, agreed on Wim Duisenberg of the Netherlands as the chief of the new European Central Bank, but with the proviso that he step down in 2002. "The Sevres Road," by 19th-century landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, was stolen from the Louvre.

Five years ago: President Bush told a news conference in Crawford, Texas, it was a matter of when—not if—weapons of mass destruction would be found in Iraq. Pope John Paul II urged hundreds of thousands of young people outside Madrid to be "artisans of peace." New Hampshire awoke to find its granite symbol of independence and stubbornness, the Old Man of the Mountain, had collapsed into rubble. Funny Cide rolled to victory in the Kentucky Derby. Model and actress Suzy Parker died in Montecito, Calif., at age 69.