On this day, May 31: Atlanta Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph arrested

At this date in history:

In 1790, President George Washington signed a bill creating America's first copyright law.

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In 1859, construction was completed and bells tolled for the first time from the Big Ben clock tower in London.

In 1889, a flood in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, killed more than 2,200 people.

In 1902, Britain and South Africa signed a peace treaty ending the Boer War.

In 1916, the Battle of Verdun exceeded the 100-day mark. This will continue for another 200 days, producing a casualty list estimated at 800,000 soldiers dead, wounded or missing.

In 1921, the Tulsa Race Massacre was sparked when a mob of white residents attacked black residents and businesses in the Greenwood District. The total number of people killed in the violence is unknown, with an Oklahoma commission created in 2001 estimating between 75 and 100 people killed. The number of displaced black residents was much greater.

In 1940, thick fog hovering over the English Channel prevented the German Luftwaffe from carrying out missions against the evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk.

In 1985, seven federally insured banks in Arkansas, Minnesota, Nebraska and Oregon were closed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. It was the most closures in a single day since the FDIC was established in 1934.

In 1996, Israeli voters elected opposition Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister.

In 2003, Eric Robert Rudolph, the long-wanted fugitive in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing and attacks on abortion clinics and a gay nightclub, was arrested while searching through a dumpster in North Carolina. Rudolph, whose bombings killed two people and injured many others, was sentenced to four life terms in prison.

In 2005, Mark Felt admitted that although he was the FBI's No. 2 man, he was “Deep Throat,” the shadowy contact who aided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein during the he Watergate break-in of 1972 led to US President Richard. Nixon's resignation.

In 2012, John Edwards of North Carolina, a former U.S. senator and presidential candidate, was acquitted of accepting illegal campaign contributions, and a judge declared a mistrial for five others charges brought against him.

In 2014, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, 28, captured in Afghanistan almost five years earlier, was released by the Taliban in exchange for five detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. In March 2015, the Army announced that Bergdahl had been charged with desertion.

In 2019, a shooting at a civic center in Virginia Beach, Virginia, left 12 victims and the shooter – a disgruntled former employee – died.

In 2021, China announced plans to allow couples to have a third child, abandoning its controversial two-child policy amid falling birth rates and an aging population.