On Sunday, at 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffered a massive eruption, killing 57
people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness.

USGS geologist Don Swanson (in red) and his colleague, Jim Moore, view a car filled with ash deposits from the May 18, 1980, eruption
of  Mount St. Helens. (USGS photo)

Harold R. "Harry" Truman (October 30, 1896 – May 18, 1980)
Truman was the owner and caretaker of Mount St. Helens
Lodge at Spirit Lake.

The mountain as it looks today.

TIM MAGUIRE

Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev speaking at the UN Assembly in 1960.

ROSS SIMPSON

Hurricane Katrina slams into New Orleans, Louisiana.

President George W. Bush spoke on the Hurricane Katrina aftermath from Jackson Square in New Orleans. He discussed the devastation
and recovery efforts in response to the hurricane.

ROSS SIMPSON

Clinton (Clint) Eastwood Jr. is 89 today.

Clint Eastwood gained fame as an iconic actor in such classic
Western films as A Fistful of Dollars and The Good, the Bad
and the Ugly (1967) and as Detective Harry Callahan in the
Dirty Harry franchise beginning in 1971. He later became a
renowned director, receiving the Academy Awards for Best
Director and Best Picture for his films Unforgiven (1992) and 
Million Dollar Baby (2004). 

ROSS SIMPSON

Under the Indian Ocean, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent 500-mph
waves across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal on this day in
2004. The tsunami killed more than 200,000 people in a dozen
countries, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sumatra, Thailand and
India.

On this day in 1996, six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey
was found beaten and strangled to death in the basement of her
family’s home in Boulder, CO. It was reported in September 2016
that the investigation into JonBenét’s death continues to be an
active homicide case, per Boulder Police Chief Greg Testa.

Patsy Ramsey and her husband John Ramsey, parents of JonBenet.

John Mark Karr, 41, was being charged by police for child porn in
California when out of nowhere, he confessed to killing JonBenet,
but his DNA didn’t match the DNA found on JonBenet Ramsey,
and he wasn’t charged with her death.