Today is Thursday, May 27, the 148th day of 2004. There are 218 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlight in History:

On May 27, 1937, the newly completed Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco and Marin County, Calif., was opened to the public.

On this date:

In 1647, the first recorded American execution of a “witch” took place in Massachusetts.

In 1896, 255 people were killed when a tornado struck St. Louis, Mo., and East St. Louis, Ill.

In 1933, Walt Disney’s Academy Award-winning animated short “The Three Little Pigs” was first released.

In 1935, the Supreme Court struck down the National Industrial Recovery Act.

In 1936, the Cunard liner Queen Mary left England on its maiden voyage.

In 1941, amid rising world tensions, President Franklin D. Roosevelt proclaimed an “unlimited national emergency.”

In 1941, the British navy sank the German battleship Bismarck off France, with a loss of 2,300 lives.

In 1964, independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died.

In 1985, in Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.

In 1993, five people were killed in a bombing at the Uffizi museum of art in Florence, Italy; some three dozen paintings were ruined or damaged.

Ten years ago: Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia to the emotional cheers of thousands after spending two decades in exile.

Five years ago: A U.N. tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic for crimes against humanity, holding the Yugoslav president personally responsible for the horrors in Kosovo and brutal purge of ethnic Albanians. The space shuttle Discovery blasted off on a mission to carry supplies to the new international space station. In Milan, Italy, the latest restoration of “The Last Supper” by Leonardo da Vinci, an effort that took 22 years, went on display during a VIP-only showing.

One year ago: Two Iraqis shot and killed two American soldiers in Fallujah, a hotbed of support for Saddam Hussein. Derrick Todd Lee, a suspected serial killer of women in Louisiana, was arrested in Atlanta. A study was released that showed women who took hormones for years ran a higher risk of Alzheimer’s or other types of dementia.

Today’s Birthdays: Novelist Herman Wouk is 89. Actor Christopher Lee is 82. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is 81. Actress Lee Meriwether is 69. Musician Ramsey Lewis is 69. Actor Louis Gossett Jr. is 68. Rhythm and blues singer Raymond Sanders (The Persuasions) is 65. Country singer Don Williams is 65. Actor Bruce Weitz is 61. Singer Cilla Black is 61. Sen. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) is 60. Singer Bruce Cockburn is 59. Actor Richard Schiff is 49. Singer Siouxsie Sioux (The Creatures, Siouxsie and the Banshees) is 47. Rock musician Eddie Harsch (The Black Crowes) is 47. Rock singer-musician Neil Finn (The Finn Brothers) is 46. Actress Peri Gilpin is 43. Actress Cathy Silvers is 43. Actor Todd Bridges is 39. Rock musician Sean Kinney (Alice In Chains) is 38. Actor Dondre Whitfield is 35. Actor Paul Bettany is 33. Rock singer-musician Brian Desveaux (Nine Days) is 33. Rapper Andre 3000 (Outkast) is 30. Actor Ethan Dampf (“American Dreams”) is 10.

Thought for Today: “Great wisdom is generous; petty wisdom is contentious. Great speech is impassioned, small speech cantankerous.” – Chuang-Tzu, Chinese essayist (c.369-c.286 B.C.).