May 1
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May 1
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Today is:
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Born on this Day
1218: Rudolf I, Count of Habsburg, King of the Romans
1672: Joseph Addison, English poet, essayist and politician. Together
with Richard Steele, he founded the Spectator in March 1711.
1769: Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington
1830: Mary Harris Jones (Mother Jones)
1895: Composer Leo Sowerby
1896: General Mark Clark, American army general. With Eisenhower during
the invasion of North Africa, he also commanded the 5th Army at Salerno, Anzio, and Rome.
19??: Sheri Shaw (Deitiphobia)
1909: Singer Kate Smith
1916: Actor Glenn Ford
1917: Actor John Beradino
1918: Television personality Jack Paar
1919: Actor Dan O'Herlihy
1919: Sportscaster Harry Caray (Carabini)
1923: Author Joseph Heller. His satirical novel ``Catch 22'' was
published in 1955.
1925: Mercury astronaut Scott Carpenter
1929: Country singer Sonny James
1939: Singer Judy Collins
1942: Actor Stephen Macht ("Knots Landing;" "Cagney and
Lacey")
1945: Singer Rita Coolidge
1949: Actor-director Douglas Bar. ("Designing Women")
1954: Singer-songwriter Ray Parker Junior
1960: Former jockey Steve Cauthen
1965: Country singer Wayne Hancock
1966: Rock musician Johnny Colt (The Black Crowes)
1966: Actor Charlie Schlatter ("Diagnosis Murder")
1967: Country singer Tim McGraw
1968: Rock musician D'Arcy (Smashing Pumpkins)
1976: Actor Darius McCrary ("Family Matters;" "Don King:
Only in America")
0408: Theodosius II suceeds to the Eastern Roman throne
0474: Massacre of 300 English nobles on Salisbury Plain
0686: Death of St. Ultan
1006: Supernova observed by Chinese & Egyptians in
constellation Lupus
1169: First Normans land in Ireland
1171: Dermot MacMurrough, last Irish King of Leinster,
dies
1187: The death of Jacques de Mailly, Marshal of the
Templars, and Roger des Moulins, Master of the Hospitalers. Gerard de Ridefort, Master of
the Templars, and two others flee the battle
1229: Frederick II Hohenstaufen leaves the Holy Land from
Acre
1308: King Albert of Germany murdered by his disinherited
nephew
1316: Coronation of Edward Bruce as King of Ireland
1345: Death of St. Peregrine Laziosi
1402: Jean de Bethencourt sails from La Rochelle for the
Canary Islands
1486: Columbus persuades Queen Isabella to finance his
expedition
1543: Copernicus circulates "The Little
Commentary," showing the heliocentricity of the Solar System
1572: Death of Pope Pius V
1590: King James VI lands at Leith with his bride, the
Princess of Denmark
1625: Charles I, King of England, marries Henrietta Marie
of France by proxy
1654: "Under penalty of death, no Irish man, woman,
or child, was to let himself, herself, itself be found east of the River Shannon" An
Order from the Parliament of England
1683: In England a patent was awarded for extracting salt
from sea wate.
1700: John Dryden, English poet and Poet Laureate from
1668-88, died.
1707: Scotland and England were joined together under the
name of Great Britain.
1761: Haydn was hired by Prince Esterhazy. Haydn worked
for the Esterhazys for most of his long life, and was billed as being the music director
of the family after the orchestra was disbanded and Haydn pensioned off.
1786: Vienna was talking about what a hothead Mozart was.
He threatened to burn "The Marriage of Figaro" unless it was performed ahead of
another composer's latest opera. Mozart prevailed.
1808: After only a few days in power, Ferdinand
relinquished the Spanish throne in favor of Napoleon of France.
1840: 1st adhesive postage stamps ("Penny
Blacks" from England) issued.
1851: Queen Victoria opened the first Great Exhibition in
the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park, London.
1855: Feminist Lucy Stone married Henry Blackwell. A
marriage contract written by the couple at their wedding omitted the word "obey"
and disavowed the gross inequity married women suffered under American law.
1866: A hailstorm broke 20-thousand panes of glass in
Baltimore.
1873: David Livingstone, Scottish missionary and explorer,
was found dead at Chitambo, now in Zambia.
1876: The Royal Titles Bill was passed by the British
Parliament, entitling Queen Victoria to call herself Empress of India.
1883: Buffalo Bill (William F. Cody) staged his first Wild
West Show.
1884: Work began on a 10-story building in Chicago using a
unique steel-framed interior, making it the world's first ``skyscraper.''
1893: The World's Columbian Exposition was officially
opened in Chicago by President Cleveland.
1898: Commodore George Dewey gave the command, "You
may fire when you are ready, Gridley," as an American naval force destroyed a Spanish
fleet in Manila Bay.( During the Spanish-American war.)
1904: Czech composer Antonin Dvorak, noted for his ninth
symphony ``From the New World,'' died.
1915: The liner Lusitania left New York on the same day
the German Embassy took out advertisements warning anyone traveling on ships carrying a
British flag that they did so at their own risk. It was sunk six days later.
1920: The longest baseball game (by innings) was played as
the Boston Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers played 26 innings with the same pitchers, Leon
Cadore of Brooklyn and Boston's Joe Oeschger. The game was a 1-1 tie.
1922: Charlie Robertson of Chicago pitched a perfect
no-hit, no-run game as the Chicago White Sox shut out the Detroit Tigers 3-0. This would
be the last perfect game in an American League regular season for 46 years.
1925: Cyprus officially became a British colony. It had
been leased to Britain by Turkey in 1878 and was annexed to the British Empire in 1914.
1931: New York's 102-story Empire State Building was
dedicated. It remained the world's tallest building for 40 years.
1931: Singer Kate Smith began her long-running radio
program on CBS. The 22-year-old Smith started out with no sponsors and a paycheck of $10 a
week for the program. Within 30 days, her salary increased to $1,500 a week.
1937: Spanish painter Pablo Picasso produced the first
sketch of his masterpiece ``Guernica,'' five days after the Basque town had been bombed by
the Germans.
1941: The Orson Welles motion picture "Citizen
Kane" premiered in New York.
1945: A day after Adolf Hitler committed suicide, it was
announced that Admiral Karl Doenitz had succeeded Hitler as leader of the Third Reich.
1948: The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North
Korea) was proclaimed.
1960: The Soviet Union shot down an American U2 spy plane
flown by Francis Gary Powers, who was captured.
1961: Tanganyika achieved internal self-government with
Julius Nyerere as prime minister.
1961: Cuban leader Fidel Castro declared the country a
socialist nation and abolished elections.
1963: Sir Winston Churchill announced his retirement from
the House of Commons.
1963: James W. Whittaker of Redmond, Washington, became
the first American to conquer Mount Everest as he and a Sherpa guide reached the summit.
1967: Anastasio Somoza Debayle became president of
Nicaragua.
1967: Elvis Presley married Priscilla Beaulieu in Las
Vegas. (They divorced in 1973.)
1969: Leonard Tose, a trucking executive from
Philadelphia, PA, bought the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League for
$16,155,000. It was the largest price paid to date for a pro football franchise.
1971: Amtrak -- which combined and streamlined the
operations of 18 intercity passenger railroads -- went into service.
1975: Hank Aaron, then playing for the Milwaukee Brewers,
drove in two runs, breaking Babe Ruth's lifetime RBI record of 2,209. He achieved a final
record of 2,297.
1978: Ernest Morial was inaugurated as the first black
mayor of New Orleans.
1978: Naomi Uemura, a Japanese explorer, became the first
man to reach the North Pole alone.
1981: Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr., D-NJ, was convicted
in New York of charges related to the FBI's "ABSCAM" probe.
1982: In Poland, 50,000 supporters of ``Solidarity''
demonstrated in Warsaw against military rule.
1983: President Reagan paid his first visit to the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial, placing a bouquet of yellow and pink flowers in front of the monument's
dark granite walls.
1985: Arriving in West Germany, President Reagan began a
four-nation European visit by clamping a trade embargo on Nicaragua.
1986: The Soviet Union announced that the situation at the
damaged Chernobyl nuclear plant was under control. However, Soviet Embassy official Vitaly
Churkin said the problem was "not over yet.""
1986: Race car driver Bill Elliott set a stock car speed
record with his Ford Thunderbird in Talladega, Alabama. Elliott recorded a speed of
212.229 miles per hour .
1987: During a visit to West Germany, Pope John Paul II
beatified Edith Stein, a Jewish-born Carmelite nun who was gassed in the Nazi death camp
at Auschwitz.
1988: "Newsweek" magazine reported that,
according to a memoir by former White House chief of staff Donald Regan, astrology had
influenced the planning of President Reagan's schedule.
1989: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that an employer has
the legal burden of proving that its refusal to hire or promote someone is based on
legitimate and not discriminatory reasons.
1990: Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and other
Kremlin leaders were jeered by thousands of people during the annual May Day parade in Red
Square.
1990: Chinese troops began withdrawing from the Tibetan
capital of Lhasa as martial law was lifted.
1991: Nolan Ryan of the Texas Rangers threw his seventh
no-hitter at age 44, shutting out the Toronto Blue Jays 3-0.
1991: Rickey Henderson of the Oakland A's set a
major-league record by stealing his 939th base during a game against the New York Yankees.
1991: The government of Angola and U.S.-backed guerrillas
initialed agreements ending their civil war.
1992: On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, beaten
motorist Rodney King appeared in public to appeal for calm, asking, "Can we all get
along?" President Bush delivered a nationally broadcast address in which he vowed to
"use whatever force is necessary" to restore order.
1992: Turkmenistan announced it would switch to a
Latin-based Turkish alphabet from the Cyrillic script.
1993: France's former Socialist prime minister Pierre
Beregovoy died after shooting himself.
1993: President Ali Abdullah Saleh's ruling party won the
most seats in united Yemen's first general elections.
1993: President Clinton held a strategy session with top
military and foreign policy advisers on Bosnia.
1993: Violence erupted during a May Day protest in Moscow.
1993: The president of Sri Lanka (Ranasinghe Premadasa)
was assassinated by a suicide bomber.
1993: "Sea Hero" won the Kentucky Derby.
1994: Israeli and PLO delegates opened a final round of
talks in Cairo, Egypt, on Palestinian autonomy prior to the signing of an agreement on
self-rule.
1994: Ayrton Senna, three times world F-1 auto racing
champion, died after a high-speed crash in the San Marino Grand Prix.
1995: Croatia recaptured the rebel Serb enclave of Western
Slavonia it lost in 1991.
1995: Charges that Qubilah Shabazz, the daughter of
Malcolm X, had plotted to murder Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan were dropped as
jury selection for the trial was about to begin in Minneapolis.
1995: President Clinton defended his choice for Surgeon
General, Henry Foster, as a "pro-life, pro-choice doctor.""
1996: Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Sheila Copps
announced she was resigning over the government's failure to abolish a controversial sales
tax.
1996: PLO leader Yasser Arafat received a statesman's
welcome at the White House, where he met with President Clinton for 45 minutes, then
lashed out at Israel for keeping its borders closed to Palestinian workers.
1997: Britons went to the polls in a national election
that gave the Labor Party a resounding victory over the ruling Conservatives.
1997: John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of slain child
beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, publicly declared their innocence in the case, and asked for
the public's help in finding the killer of their six-year-old daughter.
1998: Eldridge Cleaver, the fiery Black Panther leader who
later renounced his past and became a Republican, died in Pomona, California, at age 62.
1998: Former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda pleaded
guilty to charges stemming from the 1994 genocide of more than half a million Tutsis.
1999: Despite protests, the National Rifle Association
held its annual meeting in Denver 11 days after the Columbine High School shootings.
1999: The "Liberty Bell 7," the Mercury space
capsule flown by Gus Grissom, was found in the Atlantic 300 miles southeast of Cape
Canaveral, 38 years after it sank.
1999: An amphibious boat sank at Hot Springs, Ark.,
killing 13. Charismatic, a 30-1 shot, charged to victory in the 125th Kentucky Derby.
2000: Joerg Haider, leader of Austria's far-right Freedom Party, stepped down after 14 years as party leader.
2000: Actor Steve Reeves died in Escondido, California, at age 74.
2000: About three and a-half million Time Warner cable subscribers temporarily lost access to seven Disney-owned ABC stations in a quarrel over transmission rights.
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