This Day in History

[glatt]

I've walked alongside the QEII.

It was docked at the time.

[Gravdigr]

May 12

1926 – The Italian-built airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.

1932 – Ten weeks after his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Jr., is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.

1935 – Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob Smith (founders of Alcoholics Anonymous) meet for the first time in Akron, Ohio, at the home of Henrietta Siberling.

1937 – The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as King George VI and Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Westminster Abbey.

1942 – World War II: The U.S. tanker SS Virginia is torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine U-507.

1957 – Alfonso de Portago crashes during the Mille Miglia, killing himself, his co-driver, Ed Nelson and ten spectators – five of whom were children.

1981 – Francis Hughes starves to death in the Maze Prison in a Republican campaign for political prisoner status to be granted to Provisional IRA prisoners.

1982 – During a procession outside the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Fátima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan María Fernández y Krohn before he can attack Pope John Paul II with a bayonet. Krohn, an ultraconservative Spanish priest opposed to the Vatican II reforms, believed that the Pope had to be killed for being an "agent of Moscow".

1986 – NBC debuts the current well-known peacock as seen in the NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration.

1989 – The San Bernardino train disaster kills four people. A week later an underground gasoline pipeline, damaged by earth moving equipment during crash clean-up, explodes killing two more people.

2008 – An ~8.0 earthquake occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.

2015 – A train derailment in Philadelphia kills 8 people and injures over 200.

A 7.3-magnitude earthquake and six major aftershocks hit Nepal, killing over 200 people.

Births

1820 – Florence Nightingale; 1850 – Henry Cabot Lodge; 1889 – Otto Frank (father of Anne Frank); 1907 – Katharine Hepburn; 1911 – Charles Biro (Daredevil Comics); 1918 – Mary Kay Ash, Julius Rosenberg; 1925 – Yogi Berra; 1928 – Burt Bacharach; 1935 – Felipe Alou; 1936 – Tom Snyder; 1937 – George Carlin; 1942 – Billy Swan; 1945 – Ian McLagan; 1948 – Steve Winwood; 1950 – Bruce Boxleitner, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Squier; 1958 – Eric Singer (KISS drummer); 1959 – Ray Gillen, Ving Rhames; 1961 – Billy Duffy; 1962 – Emilio Estevez; 1966 – Stephen Baldwin; 1968 – Tony Hawk; 1969 – Kim Fields ('Tootie' from "Facts of Life"); 1970 – Jim Furyk, Samantha Mathis, Mike Weir; 1978 – Jason Biggs

Deaths

1864 – J. E. B. Stuart; 1925 – Amy Lowell; 1944 – Max Brand; 1957 – Erich von Stroheim; 1992 – Robert Reed (father on "The Brady Bunch"); 2000 – Adam Petty; 2001 – Perry Como, Alexei Tupolev (designed the Tu-144); 2014 – H. R. Giger

[Gravdigr]

May 13

1515 – Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk are officially married at Greenwich.

1780 – The Cumberland Compact is signed by leaders of the settlers in early Tennessee.

1787 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts (the "First Fleet") to establish a penal colony in Australia.

1861 – American Civil War: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.

The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.

1862 – The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

1880 – In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.

1912 – The Royal Flying Corps, the forerunner of the Royal Air Force, is established in the United Kingdom.

1939 – The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The station later becomes WDRC-FM.

1950 – The first round of the Formula One World Championship is held at Silverstone.

1954 – The original Broadway production of "The Pajama Game" opens and runs for another 1,063 performances.

1958 – The trademark Velcro is registered.

Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey.

1963 – The U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland is decided.

1972 – The Troubles: A car bombing outside a crowded pub in Belfast sparks a two-day gun battle involving the Provisional IRA, Ulster Volunteer Force and British Army. Seven people are killed and over 66 injured.

1985 – Police release a bomb on MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.

1989 – Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike.

1994 – Johnny Carson makes his last television appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.

1995 – Alison Hargreaves, a 33-year-old British mother, becomes the first woman to conquer Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.

2000 – In Enschede, The Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.

2012 – 49 dismembered bodies are discovered by Mexican authorities on Mexican Federal Highway 40.

2014 – An explosion at an underground coal mine in south-western Turkey kills 301 miners.

Births

1914 – Joe Louis; 1922 – Bea Arthur; 1923 – Red Garland; 1931 – Jim Jones; 1939 – Harvey Keitel; 1941 – Ritchie Valens; 1943 – Mary Wells; 1945 – Magic Dick; 1949 – Franklyn Ajaye; 1950 – Danny Kirwan, Stevie Wonder; 1952 – John Kasich; 1961 – Dennis Rodman; 1964 – Stephen Colbert; 1966 – Lee Altus, Darius Rucker; 1967 – Chuck Schuldiner; 1969 – Buckethead; 1977 – Samantha Morton; 1986 – Lena Dunham

Deaths

1884 – Cyrus McCormick (co-founded International Harvester); 1961 – Gary Cooper; 1972 – Dan Blocker; 1975 – Bob Wills; 1977 – Mickey Spillane (the mobster, not the author); 1988 – Chet Baker; 1999 – Gene Sarazen; 2000 – Paul Bartel; 2001 – Jason Miller (Father Damian in "The Exorcist"); 2005 – Eddie Barclay; 2012 – Donald "Duck" Dunn

[glatt]

1862 – The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

Cool story. I never heard this one.

[Gravdigr]

I also found that one interesting. I've read about him before, but, I keep forgetting.

[glatt]

They could make that into a screenplay and a decent movie if they threw a little background story in there too, and maybe a love interest.

It's like an episode of Horatio Hornblower.

[xoxoxoBruce]

There was a love interest, his wife and family.

[Gravdigr]

May 17

1536 – The annulment of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn’s marriage.

1590 – Anne of Denmark is crowned Queen of Scotland.

1673 – Louis Jolliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.

1792 – The New York Stock Exchange is formed under the Buttonwood Agreement.

1875 – Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby.

1943 – World War II: the Dambuster Raids by No. 617 Squadron RAF on German dams.

1954 – The United States Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas.

1967 – Six-Day War: President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt demands dismantling of the peace-keeping UN Emergency Force in Egypt.

1970 – Thor Heyerdahl sets sail from Morocco on the papyrus boat Ra II to sail the Atlantic Ocean.

1974 – The Troubles: Thirty-three civilians are killed and 300 injured when the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) detonates four car bombs in Dublin and Monaghan, Republic of Ireland. It is the deadliest attack of the Troubles and the deadliest terrorist attack in the Republic's history. There are allegations that British state forces were involved.

Police in Los Angeles raid the Symbionese Liberation Army's headquarters, killing six members, including Camilla Hall.

1983 – The U.S. Department of Energy declassifies documents showing world's largest mercury pollution event in Oak Ridge, Tennessee (ultimately found to be 4.2 million pounds), in response to the Appalachian Observer's Freedom of Information Act request.

1987 – An Iraqi Dassault Mirage F1 fighter jet fires two missiles into the U.S. Navy warship USS Stark, killing 37 and injuring 21 of her crew.

1995 – Shawn Nelson steals a tank from a military installation and goes on a rampage in San Diego resulting in a 25-minute police chase. Nelson is killed by an officer after the tank got stuck on a concrete barrier.

2004 – The first legal same-sex marriages in the U.S. are performed in the state of Massachusetts.

2006 – The aircraft carrier USS Oriskany is sunk in the Gulf of Mexico as an artificial reef.

2015 – At least nine people are killed and 18 injured, some by law enforcement and others in gunfire exchanges, in a shootout between rival biker gangs in Waco, Texas.

Births

1866 – Erik Satie; 1868 – Horace Elgin Dodge; 1931 – Marshall Applewhite (Heaven's Gate cult leader); 1934 – Ronald Wayne (co-founder Apple Inc); 1936 – Dennis Hopper; 1942 – Taj Mahal (the musician, not the tomb); 1942 – Al White (jive talker on "Airplane!"); 1944 – Jesse Winchester; 1949 – Bill Bruford; 1956 – Sugar Ray Leonard, Bob Saget; 1958 – Paul Di'Anno (Iron Maiden); 1959 – Jim Nantz; 1961 – Enya; 1962 – Craig Ferguson; 1965 – Trent Reznor; 1966 – Qusay Hussein (Saddam's boy); 1967 – Paul D'Amour (Tool); 1973 – Sasha Alexander (NCIS, Rizzoli & Isles); 1973 – Josh Homme; 1976 – Kandi Burruss

Deaths

1510 – Sandro Botticelli; 1829 – John Jay; 1875 – John C. Breckinridge; 1879 – Asa Packer (founder Lehigh University); 1886 – John Deere; 1911 – Frederick August Otto Schwarz (FAO Schwarz); 1985 – Abe Burrows; 1992 – Lawrence Welk; 1996 – Johnny "Guitar" Watson; 2004 – Tony Randall; 2005 – Frank Gorshin (The Riddler); 2011 – Harmon Killebrew; 2012 – Donna Summer; 2013 – Alan O'Day (Undercover Angel); 2013 – Ken Venturi; 2014 – Miss Beazley (GWBush's Scottish Terrier)

[Gravdigr]

May 18

1652 – Rhode Island passes the first law in English-speaking North America making slavery illegal.

1756 – The Seven Years' War begins when Great Britain declares war on France.

1860 – Abraham Lincoln wins the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward, who later becomes the United States Secretary of State.

1896 – The United States Supreme Court rules in Plessy v. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional.

1896 – Khodynka Tragedy: A mass panic on Khodynka Field in Moscow during the festivities of the coronation of Russian Tsar Nicholas II results in the deaths of 1,389 people.

1910 – The Earth passes through the tail of Comet Halley.

1933 – New Deal: President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).

1944 – World War II: Battle of Monte Cassino: Conclusion after seven days of the fourth battle as German paratroopers evacuate Monte Cassino.

1953 – Jackie Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier.

1958 – An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2,259.82 km/h).

1980 – Mount St. Helens erupts in Washington, United States, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage.

1983 – In Ireland, the government launches a crackdown, with the leading Dublin pirate Radio Nova being put off the air.

1990 – In France, a modified TGV train achieves a new rail world speed record of 515.3 km/h (320.2 mph).

2005 – A second photo from the Hubble Space Telescope confirms that Pluto has two additional moons, Nix and Hydra.

Births

1048 – Omar Khayyám; 1822 – Mathew Brady; 1850 – Oliver Heaviside (Kennelly-Heaviside Layer); 1897 – Frank Capra; 1911 – Big Joe Turner; 1912 – Richard Brooks, Perry Como; 1920 – Pope John Paul II; 1922 – Kai Winding; 1928 – Pernell Roberts; 1931 – Don Martin (cartoonist Mad Magazine); 1943 – Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka; 1946 – Reggie Jackson; 1947 – Gail Strickland (The Drowning Pool); 1949 – Rick Wakeman; 1950 – Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo); 1952 – George Strait (King George); 1955 – Chow Yun-fat; 1970 – Tina Fey; 1975 – Jack Johnson; 1993 – Jessica Watson

Deaths

1808 – Elijah Craig (May God bless and keep him); 1911 – Gustav Mahler; 1927 – Andrew Kehoe (mass murderer - Bath School Disaster, Bath, Michigan); 1955 – Mary McLeod Bethune; Harry Randall Truman (American owner and caretaker of Mount St. Helens Lodge); 1988 – Daws Butler (voice of Yogi Bear, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, and Huckleberry Hound); 1990 – Jill Ireland; 1992 – Skip Stephenson; 1995 – Elisha Cook, Jr.; 1995 – Elizabeth Montgomery ("Bewitched"); 2009 – Wayne Allwine (voice of Mickey Mouse for 32 years - yes, I sang the song as I typed 'Mickey Mouse'); 2012 – Peter Jones; 2012 – Alan Oakley (designed the Raleigh Chopper); 2013 – Steve Forrest; 2014 – Jerry Vale

[Gravdigr]

May 19

1499 – Catherine of Aragon is married by proxy to Arthur, Prince of Wales. Catherine is 13 and Arthur is 12.

1536 – Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII of England, is beheaded for adultery, treason, and incest.

1780 – New England's Dark Day: A combination of thick smoke and heavy cloud cover causes complete darkness to fall on Eastern Canada and the New England area of the United States at 10:30 A.M.

1845 – Captain Sir John Franklin and his ill-fated Arctic expedition depart from Greenhithe, England. The entire expedition, 129 men, is lost.

1848 – Mexican–American War: Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevada, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the United States for US$15 million.

1897 – Oscar Wilde is released from Reading Gaol.

1943 – World War II: British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings ("D-Day"). It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

1962 – A birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe's rendition of "Happy Birthday".

1984 – Michael Larson, a contestant on the television game show Press Your Luck exploits a bug in the prize board, and wins over US$110,000.

Births

1795 – Johns Hopkins; 1861 – Nellie Melba (Melba Toast, Peach Melba); 1870 – Albert Fish (serial killer); 1890 – Ho Chi Minh; 1925 – Pol Pot; 1925 – Malcolm X; 1928 – Colin Chapman (founded Lotus); 1934 – Jim Lehrer; 1935 – David Hartman; 1939 – Dick Scobee; 1941 – Nora Ephron; 1945 – Pete Townshend; 1946 – André the Giant; 1947 – Steve Currie; 1948 – Grace Jones; 1949 – Dusty Hill (ZZTop); 1949 – Archie Manning; 1951 – Joey Ramone; 1953 – Jimmy Thackery; 1953 – Victoria Wood; 1954 – Phil Rudd (AC/DC); 1956 – Steven Ford; 1959 – Nicole Brown Simpson; 1968 – Kyle Eastwood (one of Clint's boys)

Deaths

1536 – Anne Boleyn; 1795 – Josiah Bartlett (signatory of the Declaration of Independence); 1864 – Nathaniel Hawthorne; 1935 – T. E. Lawrence; 1946 – Booth Tarkington; 1971 – Ogden Nash; 1994 – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis; 2014 – Jack Brabham

[Gravdigr]

May 20

526 – An earthquake kills about 250,000 people in what is now Syria and Antiochia.

1498 – Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovers the sea route to India when he arrives at Kozhikode (previously known as Calicut), India.

1570 – Cartographer Abraham Ortelius issues Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, the first modern atlas.

1609 – Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London, perhaps illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1631 – The city of Magdeburg in Germany is seized by forces of the Holy Roman Empire and most of its inhabitants massacred, in one of the bloodiest incidents of the Thirty Years' War.

1861 – American Civil War: The state of Kentucky proclaims its neutrality, which will last until September 3 when Confederate forces enter the state.

The State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.

1873 – Levi Strauss and Jacob Davis receive a U.S. patent for blue jeans with copper rivets.

1883 – Krakatoa begins to erupt; the volcano explodes three months later, killing more than 36,000 people.

1891 – History of cinema: The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.

1899 – The first traffic ticket in the US: New York City taxi driver Jacob German was arrested for speeding while driving 12 miles per hour on Lexington Street.

1916 – The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting (Boy with Baby Carriage).

1920 – Montreal radio station XWA broadcasts the first regularly scheduled radio programming in North America.

1927 – Treaty of Jeddah: The United Kingdom recognizes the sovereignty of King Ibn Saud in the Kingdoms of Hejaz and Nejd, which later merge to become the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

At 07:52 Charles Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, New York, on the world's first solo non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean. He touched down at Le Bourget Field in Paris at 22:22 the next day.

1932 – Amelia Earhart takes off from Newfoundland to begin the world's first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot, landing in Ireland the next day.

1940 – The Holocaust: The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1969 – The Battle of Hamburger Hill in Vietnam ends.

1983 – First publications of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS in the journal Science by Luc Montagnier.

1989 – The Chinese authorities declare martial law in the face of pro-democracy demonstrations, setting the scene for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

2013 – An EF5 tornado strikes the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore, killing 24 people and injuring 377 others.

Births

1768 – Dolley Madison; 1799 – Honoré de Balzac; 1818 – William Fargo (co-founded Wells Fargo & AmEx); 1908 – James Stewart; 1913 – William Redington Hewlett (co-founded Hewlett-Packard); 1915 – Moshe Dayan; 1919 – George Gobel; 1925 – Alexei Tupolev (designed the Tu-144); 1936 – Anthony Zerbe; 1942 – Carlos Hathcock; 1944 – Joe Cocker; 1946 – Cher; 1946 – Dave Despain; 1958 – Ron Reagan, Jane Wiedlin; 1959 – Bronson Pinchot; 1960 – Tony Goldwyn; 1966 – Mindy Cohn ('Natalie' on "The Facts of Life", voice of 'Velma' on "Scooby Doo"); 1968 – Timothy Olyphant (Sheriff Bullock in "Deadwood"); 1971 – Tony Stewart; 1972 – Busta Rhymes

Deaths

1506 – Christopher Columbus; 1989 – Gilda Radner; 1996 – Jon Pertwee (Dr. Who); 2009 – Lucy Gordon; 2011 – Randy Savage; 2012 – Robin Gibb, Ken Lyons, Eugene Polley (invented the TV remote control); 2013 – Ray Manzarek