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.

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