This Day in History

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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