May 10
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May 10
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Today is:
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Born on this Day
1788: Augustin-Jean Fresnel, pioneered in optics.
1838: British statesman and scholar James Bryce
1850: Sir Thomas Lipton was born. At age 26, Lipton opened a grocery
store in Glasgow and eventually created the world's first grocery chain with over 400
stores.
1855: The Russian composer Anatol Liadoff was born.
1886: Swiss theologian Karl Barth
1899: Actor/dancer Fred Astaire
1902: Movie producer David O. Selznick ("Gone With The Wind")
1908: One time Speaker of the House, Carl Albert
1916: Milton Babbitt, was born. He was the composer of the first
composition for synthesizer.
1921: Actress Nancy Walker
1930: Sportscaster Pat Summerall
1936: TV and radio personality Gary Owens
1937: Playwright Arthur Kopit
1938: Rhythm-and-blues singer Henry Fambrough (The Spinners)
1941: Singer Danny Rapp (Danny & The Juniors)
1944: Singer Jackie Lomax
1944: Writer-producr-director Jim Abrahams
1945: Singer-musician Graham Gouldman
1946: Singer Donovan Leitch
1946: Singer Dave Mason
1946: Jazz musician Jimmy Ponder
1951: Rhythm-and-blues singer Ron Banks (The Dramatics)
1957: Olympic medalist skiers Phil and Steve Mahre -- twin brothers.
1960: Rock singer Bono (U2)
1965: Rock musician Chris Novoselic (Nirvana)
1966: Actor Jason Brooks ("Days of Our Lives")
1967: Rapper Young MC
1980: Rhythm-and-blues singer Jason Dalyrimple (Soul For Real)
1130: Death of St. Isidore the Farm-Servant
1285: Philip IV "the Fair" succeeds to French
throne
1289: Othon de Grandson and William Hotham leave for Italy
1291: Edward I, King of England, invites the Scots clergy
and nobility to meet with him at Norham, to discuss who shall be King of Scots
1374: Chaucer given a home, rent-free, over Aldgate, in
London
1459: Death of St. Antonio
1497: Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sailed on his
first voyage to the New World. America was named for him.
1501: An expedition left Europe to explore Brazil
1510: Death of Botticelli
1521: Cortes begins the siege of Tenochtitlİn (Mexico
City)
1529: Suleiman, "the Lawgiver," leaves Istanbul
to besiege Vienna
1534: Jacques Cartier sights Newfoundland
1550: John Knox's sermon launches Scottish Reformation
1559: The Reformation preachers are summoned to Stirling
1580: Death of Luis de Camoes, author and historian
1607: The first permanent English colony in North America,
Jamestown Settlement, was founded near what is today Williamsburg, Virginia.
1624: Dutch sieze Bahia, Brazil
1774: Louis the 16th ascended the throne of France.
1775: Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys captured the
British-held fortress at Ticonderoga, New York.
1775: Continental Congress issues paper currency for 1st
time.
1818: American patriot Paul Revere died in Boston.
1865: Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured
by Union troops and spent the next two years in prison.
1869: The "golden spike" was driven at
Promontory Point, Utah, joining the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific lines to form
America's first transcontinental railway.
1872: Victoria Claflin Woodhull became the first woman
nominated for the U.S. Presidency. She was nominated by the National Equal Rights Party.
1905: Three horses made up the field of the Kentucky Derby
at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. Agile was the winner.
1908: The first Mother's Day observance took place during
church services in Grafton, West Virginia, and Philadelphia.
1924: J. Edgar Hoover was given the job of FBI director.
1930: The first US planetarium opens, in Chicago.
1933: The Nazis staged massive public book burnings in
Germany.
1940: British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned,
and Winston Churchill formed a new government.
1941: Adolf Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess, parachuted into
Scotland on what he claimed was a peace mission. (Hess ended up serving a life sentence at
Spandau prison until 1987, when he apparently committed suicide.)
1960: The U.S. nuclear-powered submarine Triton completed
its 84-day submerged voyage around the world.
1963: Pope John XXIII received the Balzan Peace Prize, the
first peace prize ever awarded to a pope.
1968: Preliminary Vietnam peace talks began in Paris.
1973: A federal grand jury investigating the Watergate
scandal indicted former Attorney General John Mitchell and former Commerce Secretary
Maurice Stans on perjury charges.
1977: Actress Joan Crawford died in New York.
1978: Britain's Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon
announced they were divorcing after 18 years of marriage.
1981: Socialist Francois Mitterrand defeated incumbent
Valery Giscard d'Estang in the second round of the country's presidential election.
1983: A federal appeals court in Washington reinstated the
ABSCAM bribery conviction of former U.S. Rep. Richard Kelly of Florida.
1984: A federal judge in Salt Lake City, Utah, ruled the
government was negligent in its 1950s open-air nuclear weapons testing, and ordered it to
pay $2.6 million in ten cancer cases (the award was later overturned).
1984: The International Court of Justice said the U.S.
should halt any actions to blockade Nicaragua's ports (the U.S. had already said it would
not recognize World Court jurisdiction on this issue).
1985: President Reagan was greeted by Vice President
George Bush as he returned to Washington from his four-nation tour of Europe.
1986: Soviet official Valentin Falin was quoted by the
West German magazine "Der Spiegel" as saying two more people had died from the
Chernobyl nuclear disaster, bringing the reported death toll to four.
1986: Navy Lt. Commander Donnie Cochran became the first
black pilot to fly with the celebrated "Blue Angels" precision aerial
demonstration team.
1986: 500 witnessed Motley Crue's Tommy Lee wed actress
Heather Locklear.
1987: President Reagan visited Tuskegee University, one of
the nation's oldest black educational institutions, where he told graduating seniors his
administration "won't be satisfied until every American who wants a job has a job and
is earning a decent living."
1988: An eight-day strike by workers at the Lenin Shipyard
in Gdansk, Poland, ended without an agreement.
1989: In Panama, the government of General Manuel Antonio
Noriega announced it had nullified the country's elections, which independent observers
said the opposition had won by a 3-1 margin.
1990: The government of China announced the release of 211
dissidents who had been involved in pro-democracy demonstrations a year earlier.
1991: Alexander Bessmertnykh became the first Soviet
foreign minister to visit Israel as he met with Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign
Minister David Levy.
1992: Astronaut Pierre Thuot tried but failed to snag a
wayward satellite during a spacewalk outside the shuttle "Endeavour" (however, a
trio of astronauts succeeded in capturing the Intelsat-Six three days later).
1993: Minneapolis Mayor Donald Fraser vetoed a resolution
by a Minneapolis agency that would have shut down the Minnesota Opera Company's
presentation of "Pirates of Penzance." Union musicians had been on strike
against the operate company since April 29
1993: Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee
visited the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia for a hearing on the issue of homosexuals in
the military; most of the sailors said they favored keeping the ban on gays.
1993: At least 188 workers were killed in a doll factory
fire in Bangkok, Thailand.
1994: Nelson Mandela took the oath of office to become
South Africa's first black president.
1994: An annular, or "ring," eclipse cast a
moving shadow across the United States.
1994: The state of Illinois executed convicted serial
killer John Wayne Gacy for the murders of 33 young men and boys.
1995: In Orkney, South Africa, 104 miners were killed in
an elevator accident.
1995: Terry Nichols was charged in the Oklahoma City
bombing.
1995: Former President Bush's office released his letter
of resignation from the National Rifle Association in which Bush expressed outrage over
its reference to federal agents as "jack-booted government thugs.""
1996: Two Marine helicopters collided in the dark and
crashed in a piney swamp at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, during a US-British training
exercise, killing 14 people.
1998: Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams won full backing for
the Northern Ireland peace accord in a fundamental reversal of decades-old policy.
1998: The FAA grounded older models of the Boeing 737
after mandatory inspections of some aircraft found extensive wear in power lines running
through their wing fuel tanks.
1999: A military jury at Camp Lejeune, N.C., sentenced
Captain Richard Ashby, a Marine pilot whose jet clipped an Italian gondola cable and sent
20 people plunging to their deaths, to six months in prison and dismissed him from the
corps for helping hide a videotape shot during the flight. (Ashby was acquitted earlier of
manslaughter.)
1999: China broke off talks on arms control with the
United States, and allowed demonstrators to hurl stones at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for
a third day to protest NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia.
1999: Cartoonist, playwright and songwriter Shel
Silverstein was found dead in his Key West, Fla., apartment; he was 66.
2000: High wind drove what began as a deliberately set fire into a New Mexico canyon, forcing the evacuation of the entire town of Los Alamos and its 11,000 residents. (The fire had been set to contain an earlier blaze intended to clear brush.)
2000: Actor Craig Stevens, who'd starred in the 1950's TV series "Peter Gunn," died in Los Angeles at age 81.
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