Astronomy:
Mars passes Earth at a distance of under 55.76 million kilometers, the closest it has been in approximately 60,000 years[1][2]
Private
Jessica Lynch, whose rescue from an
Iraqi hospital has been surrounded by controversy, is honourably discharged from the United States
Army National Guard.
Separation of church and state: The controversial Ten Commandments monument in Alabama's Supreme Court building is removed from public view, following a court order stating that the monument's location in the court building breaches the separation of church and state. The monument, nicknamed Roy's Holy Rock, was installed two years ago by the conservative Christian Chief Justice
Roy Moore.[5][6] Only one in five (20%) Americans approve of the federal
court order under which workers removed the Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of
Alabama's state judicial building Wednesday, according to a new
poll.[7]
Seven people, including the gunman, are killed in a
shooting in
Chicago as a worker opens fire on his colleagues at a car parts store. The police shoot the gunman dead.[8]
A body of a woman is found in a shallow grave on a beach near
Dundalk in the
Republic of Ireland. It is suspected to be the body of
Jean McConville, a young Belfast woman and mother of ten children kidnapped and murdered by the
Provisional IRA in the mid-1970s. The IRA had suggested two years ago that McConville was buried in the vicinity. Previous attempts to find her remains had failed.[9]