May 4
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Today is:
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1654: K'ang-hsi, fourth emperor of the Ch'ing dynasty.
1655: Bartolommeo di Francesco Cristofori, Italian harpsichord
manufacturer, born. He was credited with designing the first pianoforte.
1796: Educator Horace Mann
1825: Thomas Henry Huxley, British naturalist and humanist and
originator of the word agnostic
1826: American landscape painter Frederick Church
1827: John Hanning Speke, British explorer. He was the first European to
see Lake Victoria, which he claimed was the source of the Nile. 1852: The inspiration for
the character in ``Alice in Wonderland,'' Alice Liddell, was born, the daughter of British
scholar Henry Liddell.
1882: Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst, British painter and suffragette. She was
the third member of her family to fight for votes for women.
1889: New York Roman Catholic Cardinal Francis Spellman
19??: H.D. Pearce (Brush Arbor)
19??: Steve Easter (Jeff and Sheri Easter)
1909: Actor Howard DaSilva
1918: Kakuei Tanaka, Japanese prime minister 1972-74. Disgraced later in
the Lockheed bribery scandal, he was sentenced to four years in jail.
1925: Luis Herrera Campins, Venezuelan president from 1978-84.
1928: The president of Egypt, Hosni Mubarak
1929: Actress Audrey Hepburn
1928: Jazz musician Maynard Ferguson
1929: Audrey Hepburn (Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Rusten) near Brussels,
Belgium. Her first major movie role in "Roman Holiday" (1953) won her an Academy
Award. She starred in such films as ``Roman Holiday,'' ``Breakfast at Tiffany's'' and ``My
Fair Lady.''
1930: Opera singer Roberta Peters
1931: Jazz musician Ed Cassid
1937: Rock musician Dick Dale
1937: Jazz musician Ron Carter
1938: Singer Tyrone Davis
1941: ABC-TV political commentator George F. Will
1942: Singer-songwriter Nick Ashford
1943: Rock musician Ronnie Bond (Bullis)
1944: Pop singer Peggy Santiglia (The Angels)
1944: Actor Paul Gleason ("The Thin Red Line")
1949: Country singer Stella Parton
1950: Actor-turned-clergyman Hilly Hicks
1951: Singer Jackie Jackson (The Jacksons)
1955: Jazz musician Danny Brubeck
1956: Actress-singer Pia Zadora
1959: Country singer Randy Travis
1959: Football punter Rohn Stark
1961: Actress Mary McDonough ("The Waltons")
1961: Rock singer Jay Aston (Bucks Fizz)
1972: Rock musician Mike Dirnt (Green Day)
1976: Rock musician Jose Castellanos (Save Ferris)
1979: Singer Lance Bass ('N Sync)
0387: Death of St. Monica
1038: Death of St. Gothard
1291: The King of Cyprus arrives at Acre with
reinforcements
1328: Treaty of Northhampton ratified by the English
Parliament
1429: The Bastard of Orleans attacks the English besiegers
of Orleans
1471: The Yorkists defeated the Lancastrians at the Battle
of Tewkesbury in the Wars of the Roses. (defeat of Queen Margaret of England by Edward IV)
1483: Edward V, King of England, arrives in London
1493: Columbus given a Spanish Coat-of-Arms
1493: Pope Alexander VI, a Spaniard, decreed that all new
lands discovered west of the Azores were Spanish.
1493: Line of Demarcation drawn; non-Christian world
divided between Spain and Portugal by the Pope
1626: Dutch explorer Peter Minuit landed on present-day
Manhattan Island. He later 'bought' the island from the Wappinger Indians for trinkets
said to be worth $24. The Indians thought they were merely granting "share"
rights.
1640 Charles I prorogues the "Short Parliament"
after 22 days
1776: Rhode Island declared its freedom from England, two
months before the Declaration of Independence was adopted.
1780: The first Derby horse race was run at Epsom in
England over a distance of one and a half miles.
1799: During the Fourth Mysore War, Sultan Tippu of Mysore
was killed at Seringapatam.
1839: The Cunard shipping line was founded by Samuel
Cunard of Halifax, Nova Scotia.
1851: 1st of the major San Francisco fires.
1860: Verdi wrote to his publisher asking for a loan to
renovate his home.
1866: Woodward's Gardens opens to public.
1874: Wagner named his brand new home in Bayreuth
"Wahnfried," which can be translated as "Dream Peace."
1875: The running of the Kentucky derby, "America's
premier" thoroughbred horse race, was inaugurated.
1878: Phonograph shown for 1st time at the Grand Opera
House.
1886: The first, practical phonograph, better known as the
gramophone, was patented.
1886: At Haymarket Square in Chicago, a labor
demonstration for an eight-hour work day turned into a riot when a bomb exploded.
1904: The United States took possession of the Panama
Canal Zone.
1916: Responding to a demand from President Wilson,
Germany agreed to limit its submarine warfare, thereby averting a diplomatic break with
Washington.
1919: Students demonstrated in China against the
Versailles Peace Conference decision to hand Germany's possessions in Shantung Province to
Japan. Known as the May Fourth Movement, it led to the birth of the Chinese Communist
Party.
1926: The first general strike in British history began.
It was called by the Trades Union Congress and troops were called in to man essential
services.
1927: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was
founded.
1932: Mobster Al Capone, convicted of income-tax evasion,
entered the federal penitentiary in Atlanta.
1938: Dr. Douglas Hyde became the first president of
Ireland under its new constitution.
1942: The Battle of the Coral Sea began. It was a turning
point in World War II, with Japan losing 39 ships and the United States, one.
1945: During World War II, Field Marshall Montgomery
announced German forces in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany agreed to
surrender unconditionally.
1946: A two-day riot at Alcatraz prison in San Francisco
Bay ended, the violence having claimed five lives.
1959: The winners of the first Grammy Awards were: Domenic
Modugno's "Volare," as record of the year. Henry Mancini's "Peter
Gunn" won album of the year. The Champs "tequila won best R&B performance.
1961: A group of "Freedom Riders" left
Washington for New Orleans to challenge racial segregation in interstate buses and bus
terminals.
1964: The Moody Blues were formed in Birmingham, England.
Members included Denny Laine, Mike Pinder, Ray Thomas, Graeme Edge and Clint Warwick. The
band reorganized in 1967 with Justin Hayward as lead vocalist.
1964: The Pulitzer Prize jury failed, for the first time,
to award winners in the areas of fiction, drama and music.
1970: National Guardsmen killed four students at Kent
State University in Ohio during a demonstration against the Vietnam war.
1976: Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser announced
that "Waltzing Matilda" would serve as his country's national anthem at the
upcoming Olympic Games.
1980: Marshal Josip Broz Tito, president of Yugoslavia,
died three days before his 88th birthday.
1982: An Argentine jet fighter sank the British destroyer
H.M.S. Sheffield during the Falkland Islands war.
1983: William D. Ruckleshaus, nominated by President
Ronald Reagan to again head the Environmental Protection Agency, told a Senate hearing
there would be no "hit lists," "political decisions" or
"sweetheart deals" under his leadership.
1984: Poland's premier, General Wojciech Jaruzelski and
Soviet President Konstantin Chernenko signed a 15-year economic cooperation agreement in
Moscow.
1985: Western leaders wrapped up a summit in Bonn by
urging a "substantial reduction" in barriers to free trade.
1985: "Spend A Buck" won the 115th Kentucky
Derby at Churchill Downs.
1986: As heads of the leading industrial democracies
gathered in Tokyo for their annual economic summit, saboteurs fired five homemade rockets
at the state guest house; no injuries resulted.
1987: Pope John Paul II ended his five-day visit to West
Germany, with a call for religious freedom in the Soviet bloc and praise for those who had
opposed the "mass hysteria and propaganda" of the Nazi era.
1987: For the first time, live models were used for
Playtex bra ads. This time, models didn't have to be mannequins or women wearing the
undergarments OVER dresses. The use of live models crossed a previously taboo line.
1988: A year-long amnesty program for illegal aliens in
the United States who met certain conditions was coming to a close, with thousands of
applicants lining up nationwide on the last day.
1988: Three French hostages -- Marcel Carton, Marcel
Fontaine and Jean-Paul Kauffmann -- were released in Beirut by pro-Iranian kidnappers.
1989: Fired White House aide Oliver North was convicted of
shredding documents and two other crimes and acquitted of nine other charges stemming from
the Iran-Contra affair.
1990: The South African government and the African
National Congress concluded talks in Cape Town with a joint statement agreeing on a
"common commitment toward the resolution of the existing climate of
violence.""
1991: President Bush suffered shortness of breath while
jogging at Camp David; he was rushed to Bethesda Naval Hospital, where doctors found he
was experiencing an irregular heart beat.
1991: Strike the Gold won the 117th Kentucky Derby.
1992: Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton
toured riot-ravaged Los Angeles streets, blaming the destruction on what he called 12
years of Republican neglect.
1992: About 70,000 Thais protested against the appointment
of Suchinda Kraprayoon, an unelected general, as prime minister.
1993: The United States handed over control of the relief
effort in Somalia to the United Nations.
1993: The final performance of the current New York
Philharmonic program. Michael Torke said his new fanfare "Run" has a jogging
rhythm and a positive feel. Bartok's "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta"
dates from 1936 but has a modern, action-movie sound even today.
1994: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader
Yasser Arafat signed a historic accord on Palestinian autonomy that granted self-rule in
the Gaza Strip and Jericho.
1994: The European Parliament overwhelmingly approved
European Union plans to admit Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden to the 12-nation bloc.
1995: An Iranian nuclear official said spent fuel from
Iran's Russian-made reactors, potential raw material for nuclear bombs, would be returned
to Russia for safeguarding.
1996: A 13-year era of Socialist rule ended in Spain when
conservative leader Jose Maria Aznar was appointed prime minister.
1996: "Grindstone" won the Kentucky Derby,
giving trainer D. Wayne Lukas an incredible sixth straight victory in a Triple Crown race.
1997: IBM's Deep Blue computer defeated world chess
champion Garry Kasparov, evening their six-game series at one game apiece.
1997: Cerefino Jimenez Malla became the first Gypsy
beatified in the history of the Roman Catholic Church.
1997: Wijayananda Dahanayake, former prime minister of Sri
Lanka, died.
1998: Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was given four life
sentences plus 30 years by a federal judge in Sacramento, California, under a plea
agreement that spared him the death penalty.
1998: In Vatican City, the commander of the Swiss Guard,
Alois Estermann, and his wife were found shot to death in their apartment; a Vatican
inquiry concluded that a corporal, Cedric Tornay, had shot the couple and then turned the
gun on himself.
1999: Tornadoes roared across the Plains for a second
straight day.
1999: Work crews struggled to restore electricity across
Serbia after NATO strikes on major power grids left Belgrade and other cities in the dark.
1999: Five New York police officers went on trial for the
torture of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima. (One officer later pleaded guilty; a second was
convicted; three were acquitted.)
2000: The "ILOVEYOU" e-mail virus infected computer networks and hard drives across the globe, spawning various imitations.
2000: Londoners chose political maverick Ken Livingstone to be their first elected mayor.
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