Thursday, May 31, 2012

31st of May

Today is the 151st day of the year, with only 214 days remaining until the end of the year.

1279 BC - Rameses II becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.

526 AD - A devastating earthquake strikes Antioch, Turkey, killing 250,000 people.

1578 - Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London, England.

1859 - The clock tower at the Houses of Parliament, which houses Big Ben, starts keeping time.

1862 - Battle of Seven Pines or the Battle of Fair oaks, Confederate forces under Joseph E. Johnston and G. W. Smith engage Union forces under George B. McClellan outside Richmond, Virginia.

1889 - Over 2,200 people die after a dam break sends a 60-foot wall of water over the town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania.

1927 - The last Ford Model T rolls off the assembly lne after a production run of 15,007,003 vehicles.

1929 - The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, "The Karnival Kid" is released.

1962 - Adolph Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, is hanged in Israel.

1970 - The Ancash earthquake causes a landslide that buries the town of Yungay, Peru, more than 47,000 people are killed.

2005 - Vanity Fair magazine, reveals that Mark Felt was Deep Throat.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

30th of May

It is the 150th day of the year and there are only 215 days remaining.

70 - Titus and his Roman legions breach the Second Wall of Jerusalem.  The Jewish defenders retreat to the First Wall.  The Romans build a circumvallation, cutting down all tree within fifteen kilometers.

1431 - In Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake by an English-dominated tribunal.

1539 - In Florida, Hernando de Soto lands at Tampa Bay with 600 soldiers with the goal of finding gold.

1806 - Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy.

1842 - John Francis attempts to murder Queen Victoria as she drives down Constitution Hill, London with Prince Albert.

1854 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act becomes law, establishing the United States territories of both Nebraska and Kansas.

1859 - Westminster's Big Ben rang for the first time in London, England.

1868 - Decoration Day, now known as Memorial Day is observed in the United States for the first time.

1879 - The Gilmores Garden is renamed Madison Square Garden by William Henry Vanderbilt and is opened to the public at 26th Street and Madison Avenue.

1899 - Female old West outlaw Pearl Hart robs a stage coach 30 miles southeast of Globe, Arizona.

1941 - Manolis Glezos and Apostolos Santas climb on the Athenian Acropolis, and tear down the Nazi swastika.

1958 - The remains of two unidentified American servicemen, killed in action during World War II and the Korean War respectively, are buried at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.

1971 - Mariner 9 is launched by NASA to map 70% of the surface, and to study temporal changes in the atmosphere and surface, of Mars.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012

29th of May

It is the 149th day of the year with only 216 days remaining.

1780 - At the Battle of Waxhaws, Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals allegedly after the surrender.  110 Americans die.

1790 - Rhode Island becomes the last of the original United States' colonies to ratify the Constitution and is admitted as the 13th U.S. state.

1848 - Wisconsin is admitted to the 30th U.S. state.

1886 - Chemist John Pemberton places his first advertisement for Coca-Cola, the ad appearing in the Atlanta Journal.

1919 - Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity is tested by Arthur Eddington's observation of a total solar eclipse in Principe and by Andrew Crommelin in Sobral, Ceara, Brazil.

1932 - Veterans begin to assemble in Washington, D.C. in the Bonus Army to request cash bonuses promised to them to be paid in 1945.

1940 - It is the first flight of the American F4U Corsair plane.

1942 - Bing Crosby, the Ken Darby Singers and the John Scott Trotter Orchestra recording Irving Berlin's "White Christmas," the best-selling Christmas single in history, for Decca Records in Los Angeles.

1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1973 - Tom Bradley is elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles, California.

1988 - President Ronald Reagan begins his first visit to the Soviet Union, when he arrives in Moscow for a superpower summit with leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

1999 - Space Shuttle Discovery completes the first docking with the International Space Station.

2001 - U.S Supreme Court rules that disabled golfer Casy Martin, can use a cart to ride in tournaments.

2004 - The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

Monday, May 28, 2012

28th of May

It is the 148th day of the year, with only 217 days remaining until the end of the year.

1588 - The Spanish Armada, with 130 ships and 30,000 men, sets sail from Lisbon heading for the English Channel.  It will take two day for all ships to leave.

1754 - In the first engagement of the war, Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeat a French reconnaissance party in the Battle of Jumonville Glen in what is now Fayette County in southwestern Pennsylvania.

1863 - The 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, the first African-American regiment, leaves Boston, Massachusetts, to fight for the Union.

1937 - The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, California, is officially open when President Franklin Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. pushes a button signaling the start of vehicle traffic.

1942 - In retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Nazis kills over 1,800 people in Czechoslovakia.

1987 - 19-year-old West German pilot Mathias Rust evades Soviet Union air defenses and lands a private plane in the Red Square in Moscow.  He is immediately detained and will not be release for one year and six days.

1999 - In Milan, Italy, after 22 years of restoration work, Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece The Last Supper, is put back on display.

Sunday, May 27, 2012

27th of May

It is the 147th day of the year, with only 218 days remaining until the end of the year.

1703 - Tsar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.

1863 - First assault on the Confederate works at the Siege of Port Hudson.

1927 - The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make the Ford Model A.

1930 - The 1,046 foot Chrysler Building in New York City, opens to the public.

1933 - The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon Three Little Pigs, with its hit song " Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"

1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County, California.

1941 - The German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic killing almost 2,100 men.

1942 - In Operation Anthropoid, Reinhard Heydrich is assassinated in Prague.

1962 - An underground mine fire in Centralia, Pennsylvania begins.

1967 - The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy is launched by Jacqueline Kennedy and hre daughter Caroline.

1995 - In Culpeper, Virginia, actor Christopher Reeve is paralyzed from the neck down after falling from his horse in a riding competition.

1997 - The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office.

1998 - Michael Fortier is sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the terrorist plot/

Saturday, May 26, 2012

26th of May

It is the 146th day of the year, with only 219 days remaining.

1293 - An earthquake strikes Kamakura, Kanagawa, Japan killing about 30,000 people.

1637 - A combined Protestant and Mohegan force under English Captain John Mason attacks a Pequot village in Connecticut, massacring approximately 500 Native Americans.

1647 - Alse Young, hanged in Hartford, Connecticut, becomes the first person executed as a witch in the British American colonies.

1828 - Feral child Kaspar Hauser is discovered wandering the streets of Nuremberg.

1857 - Dred Scott is emancipated by the Blow family, his original owners.

1864 - Montana is organized a a United States territory.

1865 - Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, is the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender, at Galveston, Texas.

1868 - The impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ends with him being found not guilty by one vote.

1896 - Nicholas II becomes Tsar of Russia.

1897 - Dracula, a novel by Irish author Bram Stoker is published.

1940 - In France, Allied forces begin a massive evacuation from Dunkirk, France because of the ensuing Battle of Dunkirk.

1948 - Congress passes Public Law 557, which permanently establishes the Civil Air Patrol as an auxiliary of the United States Air Force.

1998 - The Supreme Court rules that Ellis island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.

2004 - The United States Army veteran Terry Nichols is found guilty of 161 state murder charges for helping carry out the Oklahoma City bombing.

Friday, May 25, 2012

25th of May

It is the 145th day of the year, with only 220 days remaining until the end of the year.

1738 - A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conjocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.

1895 - Playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

1925 - John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

1935 - Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1953 - At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conduct their first and only nuclear artillery test.

1961 - President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.

1977 - Star Wars is released in theaters, inspiring the Jediism religion and Geek Pride Day holiday.

1985 - Bangadesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.

2001 - 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

24th of May

Today is the 144th day of the year, with only 221 days remaining until the end of the year.

1626 - Peter Minuit purchases Manhattan Island for local natives.

1738 - John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement.

1844 - Samuel Morse sends the message, "What hath God wrought?" from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the U.S. Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail in Baltimore, Maryland to inaugurate the first telegraph line.

1846 - General Zachary Taylor captures Monterrey, Mexico.

1856 - John Brown and his men kill five slavery supporters at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas.

1883 - The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.

1895 - Henry Irving becomes the first person from the theatre to be knighted.

1921 - The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti begins.

1935 - The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio, with the Cincinnati Reds beating the Philadelphia Phillies by a score of 2 to 1 at Crosley Field.

1943 - Dr. Josef Mengele becomes chief medical officer of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

1980 - The International Court of Justice calls for the release of United States embassy hostages in Tehran, Iran.  They would not be released until the following January.

1988 - The fourth fame of the Stanley Cup Finals between the Edmonton Oilers and the Boston Bruins had to end in a tie because of a power failure.  The Oilers went on to win the Cup with a 6 to 3 victory in game 5.

1991 - Eritrea gains its independence from Ethiopia.

2001 - 15-year-old Sherpa Temba Tsherri becomes the youngest person to climb to the top of Mount Everet.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

23rd of May

Today is the 143rd day of the year, with only 222 days remaining until the new year.

1430 - Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiegne.

1568 - The Netherlands declare their independence from Spain.

1701 - After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London, England.

1829 - A patent is granted to Cyrill Demian in Vienna, Austria for the accordion.

1900 - Sergeant Willliam Harvey Carney becomes the first African-American to be awarded the Medal of Honor, for his heroism in the Assault on the Battery Wagner in 1863.

1934 - American bank robbers Bonnie And Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana.

1945 - Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, commits suicide while in Allied custody.

1995 - The first version of the Java programming language is released.

2002 - The "55 parties" clause of the Kyoto protocol is reached after its ratification by Iceland.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

22nd of May

Today is the 142nd day of the year, with only 223 days remaining.

334 BC - The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of Granicus.

1807 AD - A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason.

1819 - The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, Georgia, on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean.  The ordeal is completed June 20 when they arrive in Liverpool, England.

1843 - Thousands of people and their cattle head west via wagon train from Independence, Missouri to what would later becomes the Oregon Territory.  It is part of the Great Migration.  They follow what is known as the Oregon Trail.

1856 - Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, beats Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the Senate, for a speech the latter had made attacking Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

1872 - President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act into law, restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers.

1906 - The Wright brothers are granted U.S. patent number 821,393 for their "Flying-Machine."

1915 - Three trains collide in the Quintinshill rail crash near Gretna Green, Scotland.  The event kills 227 people and injures 246, it is the result of non-standard operating practices during a shift change at a busy junction.

1942 - Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlists in the United States Marine Corps as a flight instructor.

1947 - In an effort to fight the spread of Communism, President Harry Truman signs an act into law that will later be called the Truman Doctrine.  The act grants $400 million in military and economic aid to Turkey and Greece, each battling an internal Communist movement.

1964 - President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the goals of his Great Society social reforms to bring an "end to poverty and racial injustice in America."

1980 - Namco releases the highly influential arcade game, Pac-Man.

1990 - Microsoft releases the Windows 3.0 operating system.

1992 - After 30 years, 66-year-old Johnny Carson hosts The Tonight Show for the last time.

1998 - A federal judge rules that United States Secret Service agents can be compelled to testify before a grand jury concerning the scandal, involving President Bill Clinton.

2002 - In Washington, D.C., the remains of the missing Chandra Levy are found in Rock Creek Park.

2002 - A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry, of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing ot the 16th Street Baptist Church.

2003 - In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sorenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years.

Monday, May 21, 2012

21st of May

It is the 141st day of the year, with only 224 days remaining.

1758 - Mary Campbell is abducted from her home in Pennsylvania by Lenape Indians during the French and Indian War.

1856 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.

1863 - The Union Army succeeds in closing off the last escape route from Port Hudson, Louisiana, in preparation for the coming siege.

1871 - French troops invade the Paris Commune and engage its residents in street fighting.  By the close of Bloody Week, some 20,000 communards have been killed and 38,000 arrested.

1881 - The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.

1934 - Oskaloosa, Iowa, becomes the first municipality in the United States to fingerprint all of its citizens.

1946 - Physicist Louis Slotin is fatally irradiated in a criticality incident during an experiment with the Demon core at Los Alamos National Laboratory.

1972 - Michelangelo's Pieta, in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome is damaged by a vandal, the mentally disturbed Hungarian geologist Laszlo Toth.

2005 - The tallest roller coaster in the world, Kingda Ka opens at Six Flags Great Adventure.

Sunday, May 20, 2012

20th of May

It is the 140th day of the year, with only 225 days remaining until the new year.

526 - An earthquake kills about 300,000 people in Syria and Anitochia.

1570 - Cartographer Abraham Ortelius, issues the first modern atlas.

1609 - Shakespeare's sonnets are first published in London.  Some say illicitly, by the publisher Thomas Thorpe.

1802 - By law, Napoleon Bonaparte reinstates slavery in the French colonies.

1861 - The State of North Carolina secedes from the Union.

1862 - Abraham Lincoln signs the Homestead Act into law.

1864 - Battle of Ware Bottom Church, in the Virginia Bermuda Hundred Campaign, 10,000 troops fight fight in the Confederate victory.

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

1891 - The first public display of Thomas Edison's prototype kinetoscope.

1902 - Cuba gains its independence from the United States.

1916 - The Saturday Evening Post publishes its first cover with a Norman Rockwell painting, the Boy with Baby Carriage.

1927 - A 7:52, 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 first prisoners arrive at a concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1956 - In Operation Redwing, the first United States airborne hydrogen bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

1983 - In the journal, Science, it is the first publication of the discovery of the HIV virus that causes AIDS, by Luc Montagnier.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

19th of May

It is the 139th day of the year, with only 226 days remaining.

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

1828 - President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff Act into law, protecting wool manufacturers in the United States.

1848 - Mexico ratifies the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo thus ending the war and ceding California, Nevava, Utah and parts of four other modern-day U.S. states to the country for $15 million.

1921 - Congress passes the Emergency Quota Act establishing national quotas on immigration.

1943 - British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt set Monday, May 1, 1944 as the date for the Normandy landings.  It would later be delayed over a month due to bad weather.

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

Friday, May 18, 2012

18th of May

Today is the 138th day of the year, with only 227 days remaining.

1631 - In Dorchester, Massachusetts, John Winthrop takes the oath of office and becomes the first Governor of Massachusetts.

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

1804 - Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed Emperor of the French by the French Senate.

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

1896 - The Supreme Court rules in Plessy Vs. Ferguson that the "separate but equal" doctrine is constitutional.

1910 - The Earth passes through the tail of Halley's Comet.

1933 - President Franklin Rossevelt signs an act creating the Tennessee Valley Authority.

1955 - Operation Passage to Freedom end, as the evacuation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers, and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from communist North Vietnam to South Vietnam following the end of the First Indochina War.

1958 - An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph (2.259.82 km/h).

Thursday, May 17, 2012

17th of May

It is the 137th day of the year, with only 228 days remaining.

1673 - Louis Joliet and Jacques Marquette begin exploring the Mississippi River.

1792 - The New York Stock Exchange is formed.

1902 - Greek archaeologist Valerios Stais discovers the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient mechanical analog computer.

1939 - The Columbia Lions and Princeton Tigers, play in the first televised sporting event in the U.S., a collegiate baseball game in New York City.

1943 - The United States Army contracts with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the ENIAC.

1954 - The Supreme Court hands down a unanimous decision in Brown Vs. Board of Education, of Topeka, Kansas.

1973 - Televised hearings begin in the United States Senate, about the Watergate scandal.

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

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

2007 - Trains from North and South Korea cross the 38th Parallel in a test-run agreed by both governments.  This is the first time that trains have crossed the Demilitarized Zone in 54 years.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

16th of May

It is the 136th day of the year, with only 229 days remaining.

1770 - 14-year-old Marie Antoinette marries 15-year-old Louis-Auguste who later becomes king of France.

1843 - The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trail by one vote in the United States Senate.

1929 - In Hollywood, California, the first Academy Awards are handed out.

1943 - The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is put down, and ends.

1953 - American journalist William N. Oatis is released after serving 22 months of a ten-year prison sentence for espionage in Czechoslovakia.

1960 - Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser, at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1988 - A report by United States' Surgeon General C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

15th of May

Today is the 135th day of the year, with only 230 days remaining until the new year.

1252 - Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition.

1618 - Johannes Kepler confirms his previously rejected discovery of the third law of planetary motion.

1718 - James Puckle, a London lawyer, patents the world's first machine gun.

1755 - Laredo, Texas is established by Spanish settlers.

1811 - Paraguay declares its independence from Spain.

1817 - Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1862 - President Abraham Lincoln signs a bill into law creating the United States Bureau of Agriculture.

1864 - At the Battle of New Market, Virginia, students from the Virginia Military Institute flight alongside the Confederate Army to force Union General Franz Sigel ot of the Shenandoah Valley.

1869 - Susan B. Anthonty and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

1905 - Las Vegas, Nevada, is founded when 110 acres, in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.

1928 - Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1940 - McDonald's opens it first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.

1942 - In The United States, a bill creates the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps is signed into law.

1945 - The final skirmish in Europe is fought near Prevalje, Slovenia.

1969 - California Governor Ronald Reagan has an impromptu student park owned by University of California, Berkeley fenced off from student anti-war protestors, sparking a riot called Bloody Thursday.

1990 - Portrait of Doctor Gachet by Vincent van Gogh is sold for a record $82.5 million, the most expensive painting at the time.

1997 - The United States government acknowledges this existence of the "Secret War" in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong fighters and other veterans.

2010 - Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.

Monday, May 14, 2012

14th of May

It is the 134th day of the year, with only 231 days remaining.

1607 - Jamestown, Virginia is settled as an English colony.

1796 - Edward Jenner administers the first smallpox vaccination.

1804 - The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Cam Dubois  and begins up the Missouri River.

1913 - New York Governor William Sulzer, approves the charter for the Rockefeller Foundation, which begins operations with a $100 million donation from John D. Rockefeller.

1939 - Lina Medina becomes the youngest confirmed mother in medical history at the age of five.

1948 - Israel is declared to be an independent state and a provisional government is established.  Immediately after the declaration, they are attacked by the neighboring Arab states.

1963 - Kuwait joins the United Nations.

1973 - Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

13th of May

Today is the 133rd day of the year, with only 232 days remaining until the end of the year.

1846 - The United States declares war on Mexico.

1861 - Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a proclamation of neutrality which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.

1865 - It is the end of the Battle of Palmito Ranch, in far south Texas, more than a month after Confederate General Robert E. Lee's surrender, the last land battle of the Civil War ends with a Confederate victory.

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

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

1940 - Germany's conquest of France begins as the German army crosses the Meuse.  Winston Churchill makes his "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" speech to the House of Commons.

1958 - The trade mark Velcro is registered.

1960 - Hundreds of University of California, Berkeley students congregate for the first day of protest against a visit by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  31 students are arrested, and the Free Speech Movement is born.

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

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

Saturday, May 12, 2012

12th of May

Today is the 132nd day of the year, with only 233days remaining until the new year.

1551 - National University of San Marcos, the oldest university in the Americas, is founded in Lima, Peru.

1864 - Thousands of Union and Confederate soldiers die at the "Bloody Angle" during the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

1865 - The first day of the last major land action to take place during the Civil War, resulting in a Confederate victory at the Battle of Palmito Ranch.

1932 - Ten weeks after his abduction Charles Lindbergh Jr., is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey.

1941 - Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin, Germany.

1942 - 1,500 Jews are sent to gas chambers in Auschwitz.

2002 - Former US President Jimmy Carter arrives in Cuba for a five-day visit with Fidel Castro, becoming the first President to visit the island since the 1959 revolution.

2008 - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducts the largest-ever raid of workplace and arrest nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.

Friday, May 11, 2012

11th of May

Today is the 130th day of the year, with 234 days remaining.

1310 - In France, 54 members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake as heretics.

1502 - Christopher Columbus leaves for his fourth and final voyage to the West Indies.

1820 - Launch of HMS Beagle, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his scientific voyage.

1858 - Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.

1867 - Luxembourg gains its independence.

1910 - An act of Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana.

1924 - Mercedes-benz is formed by Gottlied Daimler and Karl Benz merging their two companies.

1945 - Off the coast of Okinawa, the aircraft carrier USS Bunker Hill, is hit by two kamikazes, killing 346 of her crew.  The ship returns to the U.S. under her own power.

1973 - Citing government misconduct, Daniel Ellsberg has charges for his involvement in releasing the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times dismissed.

1987 - Klaus Barbie goes on trial in Lyon, for war crimes committed during the Second World War.

1987 - In Baltimore, Maryland, the first heart-lung transplant takes place.  The surgery is performed by Dr. Bruce Reitz of the Stanford University School of Medicine.

1997 - Deep Blue, a chess-playing supercomputer, defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player in a classic match format.

Thursday, May 10, 2012

10th of May

It is the 130th day of the year, with only 235 days remaining until the new year.

70 - Titus, son of Emperor Vespasian, opens a full-scale assault on Jerusalem and attacks the city's Third Wall to the northwest.

1775 - A small colonial militia led by Ethan Allen and Colonel Benedict Arnold, captures Fort Ticonderoga.

1775 - Representatives from the 13 colonies, begin the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia.

1865 - Jefferson Davis is captured by Union troops near Irwinville, Georgia.

1865 - In Kentucky, Union soldiers ambush and mortally wound Confederate raider William Quantrill.

1869 - The First Transcontinental Railroad, linking the eastern and western United States, is completed at Promontory Summit, Utah with the driving of a golden spike.

1893 - Under the Tariff Act of 1883, the Supreme Court rules in Nix Vs. Hedden, that a tomato is a vegetable, not a fruit.

1908 - mother's Day is observed for the first time in the U.S., in Grafton, West Virginia.

1924 - J. Edgar Hoover is appointed the Director of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, and remains so until his death almost 48 years later.

1933 - In Germany, the Nazis stage massive public book burnings.

1940 - Winston Churchill is appointed Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1941 - Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland to try to negotiate a peace deal between the United Kingdom and Nazi Germany.

1946 - It is the first successful launch of an American V-2 rocket at White Sands Proving Ground.

1954 - Bill Haley & His Comets release "Rock Around the Clock," the first rock and roll record to reach number one on the Billboard charts.

1969 - The Battle of Dong Ap Bia begins with an assault on Hill 937.  It will become known as Hamburger Hill.

1994 - Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa's first black president.

2002 - FBI agent Robert Hanssen is sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for selling United States secrets to Moscow for $1.4 million in cash and diamonds

Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson - The famous Confederate General and Lee's Second-in-Command, dies in 1863 after being wounded eight days prior by friendly fire.  His left arm needed to be amputated and later suffered pneumonia.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

9th of May

It is the 129th day of the year, with only 236 days remaining until the new year.

1671 - Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England's Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

1868 - The city of Reno, Nevada is founded.

1877 - An earthquake off the coast of Peru kills 2,541, including some as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

1887 - Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show opens in London, England.

1941 - The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy.  On board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers use to break coded German messages.

1942 - The SS murders 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv.  The Zoludek Ghetto in Belarus, is destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered or deported.

1945 - Ratification in Berlin-Karlshorst of the German unconditional surrender, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower's deputy, and Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen Stmpff of the Luftwaffe, and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.

1955 - West Germany joins NATO.

1955 - Sam and Friends debuts on a local United States television channel, marking the appearance of both Jim Henson and what would become Kermit the Frog and The Muppets.

1961 - Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles becomes the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings.

1974 - The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

8th of May

Today is the 128th day of the year, with only 237 days remaining.

1541 - Hernando de Soto reaches the Mississippi River and names it Rio de Espiritu Santo.

1794 - Branded a traitor during the Reign of Terror by revolutionists, French chemist Antoine Lavoisir, who was also a tax collector with the Ferme Generale, is tried, convicted, and guillotined all on the same day in Paris.

1846 - The Battle of Palo Alto, Zachary Taylor defeats a Mexican force north of the Rio Grande in the first major battle of the war.

1886 - Pharmacist John Styth Pemberton first sells a carbonated beverage named Coca-Cola as a patent medicine.

1902 - In Martinique, Mount Pelee erupts, destroying the town of Saint-Pierre and killing over 30,000 people.  Only a handful of residents survive the explosion.

1912 - Paramount Pictures is founded.

1945- V-E Days is declared, as combat ends in Europe.  German forces agree in Rheims, France, to an unconditional surrender.

1973 - A 71-day standoff between federal authorities and the American Indian Movement members occupying the Pine Ridge Reservation at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, ends with the surrender of the militants.

1976 - The rollercoaster Revolution, the first steel coaster with a vertical loop opens at Six Flags Magic Mountain.

1980 - The eradication of smallpox is endorsed by the World Health Organization.

Monday, May 7, 2012

7th of May

Today is the 127th day of the year, with only 238 days remaining until the new year.

1429 - Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orleans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning, wounded, to lead the final charge.  The victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years' War.

1718 - The city of New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.

1846 - The Cambridge Chronicle, America's oldest surviving weekly newspaper, is published for the first time in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1847 - The American Medical Association is founded in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1915 - German submarine SM U-20 sinks RMS Lusitania, killing 1,198 people including 128 Americans.  Public reaction turns many in the U.S. against the German Empire.

1945 - General Alfred Jodl signs unconditional surrender terms at Reims, France, ending Germany's participation in the war.

1946 - Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering, later renamed Sony, is founded with around 20 employees.

1960 - Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers.

1992 - Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the Constitution,making the 27th Amendment law.  This amendment bars Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise.

1998 - Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history.

2004 - American businessman Nick Berg is beheaded by Islamic militants.  The act is recorded on videotape and released on the Internet.  It was released from London to a Malaysian-hosted homepage by the Islamic organization known as al-Ansars. 

2007 - Israeli archaeologists discover the tomb of Herod the Great, south of Jerusalem.

Sunday, May 6, 2012

6th of May

Today is the 126th day of the year, with only 239 days remaining.

1527 - Spanish and German troops sack the city of Rome, some consider this the end of the Renaissance.  147 Swiss Guards, including their commander, die fighting the forces of Charles V in order to allow Pope Clement VII to escape into Castel Sant'Angelo.

1835 - James Gordon Bennett Sr., publishes the first issue of the New York Herald.

1844 - The Glaciarium, the world's first mechanically frozen ice rink, opens.

1861 - Arkansas decides to secede from the Union.

1877 - Chief Crazy Horse of the Oglala Sioux surrenders to United States troops in Nebraska.

1882 - The United States Congress passes the Chinese Exclusion Act.

1889 - The Eiffel Tower is officially opened to the public at the Universal Exposition in Paris.

1935 - It is the first flight of the American Curtiss P-36 Hawk.

1937 - The German zeppelin, Hindenburg catches fire and is destroyed within a minute while attempting to dock at Lakehurst, New Jersey.  Thirty-six people are killed.

1940 - John Steinbeck is awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Grapes of Wrath.

1941 - The first flight of the Republic P-47 Thunderbolt.

1945 - Axis Sally delivers her last propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.

1954 - Roger Bannister becomes the first person to run the mile in under four minutes.

1981 - A jury of architects and sculptors unanimously selects Maya Ying Lin's design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial from 1,421 other entries.

1989 - Cedar Point opens the Magnum XL-200, the first roller coaster to break the 200 ft height barrier, therefore spawning what is considered to be the "coaster wars."

1998 - Kerry Wood strikes out 20 Houston Astros to tie the major league record. held by Roger Clemens.  He threw a one-hitter and did not walk a batter in his 5th career start.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

5th of May

Today is the 125th day of the year, with only 240 days remaining.

1260 - Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire.

1809 - Mary Kies becomes the first woman awarded a U.S. patent, for a technique of weaving straw with silk and thread.

1860 - Giuseppe Garibaldi sets sail from Genoa, leading the expedition of the Thousand, to conquer the Kingdom of Two Sicilies and gives birth to the Kingdom of Italy.

1864 - The Battle of the Wilderness begins in Spotsylvania County, Virginia.

1866 - Memorial Day first celebrated in United States at Waterloo, New York.

1877 - Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the United States Army under Colonel Nelson Miles.

1891 - The Music Hall in New York City, later known as Carnegie Hall, has its grand opening and first public performance, with Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor.

1904 - Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans throws the perfect game in the modern era of baseball.

1920 - Authorities arrest Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti for alleged robbery and murder.

1946 - The International Military Tribunal for the Far East, begins in Tokyo with twenty-eight Japanese military and government officials accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

1987 - The start of Congressional televised hearings in the United States, for the Iran-Contra affair.

Napoleon Bonaparte - French general who was famous for He passes away on this date in 1821, at the age of .  The ruler died in exile on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean.

Friday, May 4, 2012

4th of May

It is the 124th day of the year, with only 241 days remaining.

1863 - The Battle of Chancellorsville ends with a Union defeat and retreat.

1871 - The National Association, the first professional baseball league, opens its first season in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

1886 - A bomb is thrown at policemen trying to break up a labor rally in Chicago, Illinois, killing eight and wounding 60.  It is known as the Haymarket Sqaure Riot.

1932 - In Atlanta, Georgia, mobster Al Capone begins serving an eleven-year prison sentence for tax evasion.

1953 - Ernest Hemingway wins the Pulitzer Prize for The Old Man and the Sea.

1959 - The 1st Grammy Awards are held.

1970 The infamous Kent State Shootings occur.  The Ohio National Guard, sent to Kent State University after disturbances in the city of Kent the weekend before, opens fire killing four unarmed students and wounding nine others.  The students were protesting the United States' invasion of Camobida.

1979 - Margaret Thatcher becomes the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

1989 - Former White House aide Oliver North is convicted of three crimes and acquitted of nine other charges.  The convictions are later overturned on appeal.

Thursday, May 3, 2012

3rd of May

Today is the 123rd day of the year, with only 242 days remaining until the new year.

1715 - Edmund Halley's total solar eclipse, the last one visible in London, United Kingdom for almost 900 years.

1802 - Washington, D.C. is incorporated as a city.

1877 - Labatt Park, the oldest continually operating baseball grounds in the world has its first game.

1915 - The famous poem, In Flanders Fields, is written by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.

1921 - West Virginia imposes the first state sales tax.

1933 - Nellie Tayloe Ross becomes the first woman to head the United States Mint.

1937 - Gone with the Wind, a novel by Margaret Mitchell, wins the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

1951 - The Kentucky Derby is televised for the first time.

1952 - Lieutenant Colonels Joseph O. Fletcher and William P. Benedict of the United States, land a plane at the North Pole.

1957 - Walter O'Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, agrees to move the team to Los Angeles, California.

1963 - The police force in Birmingham, Alabama switches tactics and responds with violent force to stop protestors.  Images of the suppression are transmitted worldwide, bringing newfound attention to African-American Civil Rights Movement.

1978 - The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail, later known as spam, is sent by a Digital Equipment Corporation marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the United States.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

2nd of May

Today is the 122nd day of the year, with only 243 days remaining.

1536 - Anne Boleyn, Queen of England, is arrested and imprisoned on charges of adultery, incest, treason, and witchcraft.

1611 - King James Bible is published for the first time in London, England, by printer Robert Barker.

1670 - King Charles II of England grants a permanent charter to the Hudson's Bay Company to open up the fur trade in North America.

1863 - Confederate General Stonewall Jackson is wounded by friendly fire while returning to camp after reconnaissance during the Battle of Chancellorsville.

1918 - General Motors acquires the Chevrolet Motor Company of Delaware.

1920 - The first game of the Negro National League baseball is played in Indianapolis, Indiana.

1945 - The Soviet Red Army announces the capture of Berlin and Soviet soldiers hoist their red flag over the Reichstag building.

1945 - General Heinrich von Vietinghoff signs the official instrument of surrender of all Wehrmacht forces in Italy.

1945 - The U.S. 82nd Airborne Division liberates Wobbelin concentration camp finding 1000 dead inmates, most starved to death.

2000 - President Bill Clinton announces that accurate GPS access would no longer be restricted to the United States military.

2011 - Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind behind the September 11 attacks and the FBI's most wanted man, is killed by U.S. special forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

1st of May

Today is the 121st day of the year, with only 244 days remaining.

It is the beginning of the fifth month of the year.

1751 - The first cricket match is played in America.

1776 - It is the establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt, Upper Bavaria, by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt.

1840 - The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, is issued in the United Kingdom.

1863 - The Battle of Chancellorsville begins.

1884 - Moses Fleetwood Walker, becomes the first black person to play in a professional baseball game in the United States.

1915 - The RMS Lusitania departs from New York City on her two hundred and second, and final, crossing of the Atlantic.

1927 - The first cooked meals on a scheduled flight are introduced on an Imperial Airways flight from London, England to Paris, France.

1930 - The planet Pluto is officially named.

1931 - The Empire State Building is dedicated in New York City.

1945 - A German newsreader officially announces that Adolf Hitler has "fallen at his command post in the Reich Chancellery fighting to the last breath against Bolshevism and Germany."

1950 - Guam is organized as a United States commonwealth.

1956 - The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public.

1971 - Amtrak, the National Railroad Passenger Corporation, takes over operation of U.S. passenger rail service.

1989 - Disney-MGM Studios opens at Walt Disney World near Orlando, Florida.

1991 - Rickey Henderson of the Oakland Athletics steals his 939th base, making him the all-time leader in this category.  It is overshadowed later that evening by Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers, when he pitches his seventh career no-hitter.