By The Associated Press
                - Today is Monday, May 3, the 123nd day of 1999. There are 242 days
                  left in the year.

                - On May 3, 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 1921, West Virginia imposed the first state sales tax.
                - In 1944, U.S. wartime rationing of most grades of meats ended.
                - In 1945, Indian forces captured Rangoon, Burma, from the Japanese.
                - In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled covenants prohibiting the sale of
                  real estate to blacks or members of other racial groups were legally
                  unenforceable.
                - In 1971, anti-war protesters began four days of demonstrations in
                  Washington, D.C., aimed at shutting down the nation's capital.
                - In 1978, "Sun Day" fell on a Wednesday as thousands of people
                  extolling the virtues of solar energy held events across the
                  country.
                - In 1979, Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher was chosen to
                  become Britain's first female prime minister as the Tories ousted
                  the incumbent Labor government in parliamentary elections.
                - 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: PLO leader Yasser Arafat, ending a two-day visit to
                  France, said the PLO charter calling for the destruction of Israel
                  had been "superseded" by a declaration urging peaceful coexistence
                  of the Jewish state and a Palestinian state.
                - Five years ago: President Clinton presided over a televised forum
                  from Atlanta, during which he denied suggestions he'd vacillated on
                  foreign policy, but said global problems were more difficult than
                  he'd imagined.
                - One year ago: Space shuttle Columbia and its crew returned to Earth,
                  ending two weeks of lab work that advanced brain research. After a
                  daylong squabble, 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 to make way for Frenchman Jean-Claude Trichet. "The Sevres
                  Road," by landscape painter Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, was stolen
                  from the Louvre.

                *Happy Birthday*
                - Broadway librettist Betty Comden is 80.
                - Folk singer Pete Seeger is 80.
                - Country singer Dave Dudley is 71.
                - Singer James Brown is 66.
                - Singer Engelbert Humperdinck is 63.
                - Singer Frankie Valli is 62.
                - Sports announcer Greg Gumbel is 53.
                - Magician Doug Henning is 52.
                - Singer Christopher Cross is 48.
                - Country musician Cactus Moser (Highway 101) is 42.
                - Actress Jill Berard ("Hiller and Diller") is 9.