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Today is Sunday, May 4, the 125th day of 2008. There are 241 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 4, 1945, during World War II, German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed to surrender.

On this date:

• In 1626, Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day Manhattan Island.

• In 1886, at Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor demonstration for an eight-hour work day turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.

• In 1904, the United States took over construction of the Panama Canal.

• In 1932, mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion, entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. (Capone was later transferred to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay.)

• In 1961, a group of “Freedom Riders” left Washington, D.C., for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation on interstate buses and in bus terminals.

• In 1970, Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on anti-war protesters at Kent State University, killing four students and wounding nine others.

• In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female prime minister as the Tories ousted the incumbent Labour government in parliamentary elections.

• In 2001, Bonny Lee Bakley, wife of actor Robert Blake, was shot to death as she sat in a car in Los Angeles. (Blake, accused of the killing, was acquitted in a criminal trial but was found liable by a civil jury and ordered to pay damages.)

Today’s Birthdays: The president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak, is 80. Jazz musician Ron Carter is 71. Singer Jackie Jackson (The Jacksons) is 57. Rhythm-and-blues singer Oleta Adams is 55. Country singer Randy Travis is 49. Actress Mary McDonough is 47. Contemporary Christian singer Chris Tomlin is 36.

Thought for Today: “Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope.”—Reinhold Niebuhr, American theologian (1892-1971).