May 2
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May 2
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Today is:
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Born on this Day
1519: John Jewel, witchhunter
1551: William Camden, English historian, antiquarian
1601: Athanasius Kircher, German scientist, inventor
1660: Alessandro Scarlatti, father of famous Domenico, was born in
Palermo. Alessandro Scarlatti was a pioneer of the Italian-style overture, and he
influenced German music by giving lessons to Hasse and Quantz.
1729: Catherine the Great, empress of Russia
1837: Gen. Henry Martyn Robert, author of "Robert's Rules of
Order"
1892: German air ace Manfred Richtofen - "The Red Baron" - was
born. He shot down 80 Allied planes before being hit himself. The record hit, "Snoopy
vs. The Red Baron" by Royal Guardsmen was inspired by him.
1895: Broadway composer and lyricist Lorenz Hart. He collaborated with
composer Richard Rogers on songs like "Thou Swell" and "My Funny
Valentine."
1903: Child care specialist Dr. Benjamin Spock
1904: Singer(crooner)-actor Bing Crosby (Harry Lillis) in Tacoma,
Washington
1924: Actor Theodore Bikel
1925: Actor Roscoe Lee Browne
1935: Rock musician Link Wray
1937: Comedy writer-voice actor Lorenzo Music
1941: Actor David Groh
1943: Composer Mickey Bass III
1945: Bianca Jagger
1945: Country singer R.C. Bannon
1945: Rock singer Randy Cain (The Delfonics) "Rudy"
1945: Rock musician Goldy McJohn (Steppenwolf)
1946: Singer Lesley Gore
1946: Rock singer Robert Henritt (The Kinks) "Bob"
1948: Singer-songwriter Larry Gatlin
1950: Rock singer Lou Gramm (Foreigner)
1952: Actress Christine Baranski
1950: Rock singer Lou Gramm (Foreigner)
1952: Actress Christine Baranski ("Cybill")
1962: Actress Elizabeth Berridge ("Amadeus;" "The John
Larroquette Show")
1962: Country singer Ty Herndon
1977: Actress Jenna Von Oy ("Blossom")
0373: Death of St. Athanasius
0903: Death of Boris I, Tsar of Bulgaria and Orthodox
saint
1389: Richard II, King of England, takes power from his
Council
1391: Richard Brierly and Adam Clerk fight a judicial duel
concerning the robberies in September, 1390, of Geoffrey Chaucer
1459: Death of St. Antonius
1497: John and Sebastian Cabot set sail from England
1519: Artist Leonardo da Vinci died at Cloux, France.
1526: Protestant League of German princes established
1559: John Knox returns to Scotland
1568: Escape of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, from Loch
Leven
1598: Treaty of Vervains
1641: Marriage of Princess Mary of England to Prince
William of Orange
1648: Blasphemy Act is passed at Westminster
1670: The Hudson Bay Company was chartered by England's
King Charles the Second.
1863: Confederate Gen. Thomas Jonathan
"Stonewall" Jackson was mistakenly shot by his own soldiers. He died eight days
later.
1885: Good Housekeeping magazine was first published by
Clark W. Bryan in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
1887: Hannibal W. Goodwin of Newark, New Jersey, applied
for a patent for celluloid photographic film – the film from which movies are shown.
1890: The Oklahoma Territory was organized.
1902: The first science fiction film was released: "A
Trip To The Moon" created by French magician George Melies.
1932: Jack Benny's first radio show made its debut on the
NBC Blue Network.
1933: Adolf Hitler banned trade unions in Germany.
1936: "Peter and the Wolf," a symphonic tale for
children by Sergei Prokofiev, had its world premiere in Moscow.
1939: Lou Gehrig, New York Yankees first baseman, sets a
record for being in most consecutive games. He did not play against the Detroit Tigers,
ending his streak of 2,130 consecutive games. Gehrig never played another game.
1941: The Federal Communications Commission approved the
regular scheduling of commercial television broadcasts.
1945: The Soviet Union announced the fall of Berlin, and
the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi troops in Italy and parts of Austria.
1946: Prisoners revolt at Alcatraz, 5 die.
1953: King Hussein formally acceded to the throne in
Jordan after his father, King Talal, was deposed. In Iraq, King Feisal II assumed power.
1957: Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, the controversial
Republican senator from Wisconsin, died at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland.
1957: A composer named Tadeusz Kassern, who grew to love
America while working in New York as a Polish cultural attache, committed suicide because
he had been refused permission to remain in the US.
1960: Convicted sex offender and best-selling author Caryl
Chessman was executed at San Quentin Prison in California.
1964: Northern Dancer, with jockey Bill Hartack, won the
Kentucky Derby.
1965: The "Early Bird" satellite was used to
transmit television pictures across the Atlantic.
1972: After serving 48 years as head of the FBI, J. Edgar
Hoover died in Washington at age 77.
1974: Former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew was disbarred
by the Maryland Court of Appeals, effectively preventing him from practicing law anywhere
in the United States.
1980: South African authorities banned Pink Floyd's
"Another Brick in the Wall," which had become the anthem of black's involved in
a strike against government schools.
1982: In the Falklands War, the Argentine cruiser General
Belgrano was sunk by the British submarine Conqueror; more than 350 men were killed.
1983: A 28-second earthquake measuring 6.7 struck
Coalinga, California, killing 47 people and causing damage estimated at $31 million.
1984: President Reagan, on his way back to Washington
after a six-day visit to China, met briefly in Fairbanks, AK, with Pope John Paul II, who
was on his way to South Korea; it was the second time the two men had met.
1984: Nobel laureate Andrei Sakharov (who some called the
conscience of the Soviet Union), began a hunger strike protesting the government's refusal
to let his wife, Yelena Bonner, seek medical treatment abroad.
1985: President Reagan and his host, West German
Chancellor Helmut Kohl, tried to blunt criticism of plans to lay a wreath at the Bitburg
military cemetery by inviting relatives of Nazi resisters to join in the ceremony.
1986: Soviet official Boris N. Yeltsin told West German
television that water reservoirs near the crippled Chernobyl nuclear power plant were
contaminated with radioactivity.
1986: The photo essay, "A Day in the Life of
America," began as two hundred photojournalists covered the USA to take 35,000
pictures. Only 350 pictures were selected for the coffee-table-book publication.
1987: "Alysheba" won the 113th running of the
Kentucky Derby to earn a record $618,600. "Bet Twice" came in second and
"Avies Copy" was third.
1988: Cincinnati Reds baseball manager Pete Rose was
suspended for 30 days by National League president A. Bartlett Giamatti, two days after
Rose shoved an umpire during a game won by the New York Mets 6-to-5.
1989: 60 Chinese students rode bicycles into Beijing to
present demands for democratic reforms to Chinese leaders.
1989: At a Baltimore gathering, physicists said they were
persuaded that claims of "cold fusion" were based on nothing more than
experimental errors by scientists in Utah.
1990: The African National Congress and the South African
government opened their first talks for negotiations to dismantle apartheid.
1991: U.S., British, French and Dutch forces plunged 50
miles deeper into northern Iraq.
1991: In his ninth encyclical, Pope John Paul II
acknowledged the success of capitalism, but denounced the system for sometimes achieving
results at the expense of the poor and of morality.
1992: Los Angeles began to recover from rioting that had
erupted in the wake of the Rodney King-taped beating acquittals; about 2800 National Guard
troops patrolled the city while 3200 others stood by.
1992: Former House Ways and Means Chairman Wilbur D. Mills
died in Searcy, Arkansas, at age 82.
1993: Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic approved a plan
to end the Bosnian war (however, the Bosnian Serb assembly rejected it four days later).
1993: Authorities said they had recovered the remains of
David Koresh from the burned-out Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.
1994: Nelson Mandela claimed victory in the wake of South
Africa's first democratic elections; President F.W. de Klerk acknowledged defeat.
1995: President Clinton agreed to allow some 20,000 Cubans
into the United States after months of detention at Guantanamo Bay, but said any more
Cubans who fled their country would be forcibly repatriated.
1996: The Senate passed, 97-to-3, an immigration bill to
tighten border controls, make it tougher for illegal aliens to get US jobs and curtail
legal immigrants' access to social services.
1997: President Clinton and congressional Republicans came
to terms on a plan to balance the budget over five years.
1997: A new national memorial honoring President Franklin
D. Roosevelt was officially opened in Washington DC.
1997: Tony Blair, whose new Labor Party crushed John
Major's long-reigning Conservatives in a national election, became at age 44 Britain's
youngest prime minister in 185 years.
1998: In separate radio addresses, President Clinton and
congressional Republicans lambasted the Internal Revenue Service and promised more reforms
to prevent abuses of the tax-collecting agency in the future.
1998: "Real Quiet" won the Kentucky Derby.
1999: Yugoslav authorities handed over to the Rev. Jesse
Jackson three American prisoners of war who had been held for a month.
1999: Actor Oliver Reed died in Malta at age 61.
2000: Former nurse Christina Marie Riggs was executed by injection in Arkansas for smothering her two young children.
2000: An investigating panel concluded that Texas A&M University students cut corners in construction and school officials failed to adequately supervise them before a bonfire collapse in November 1999 that killed 12 people.
2000: Jockey Julie Krone became the first female elected to thoroughbred racing's hall of fame.
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