May 16
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Today is: Nickel's Birthday - The U.S. nickel was first coined in 1866. |
1867: William Seward, secretary of state whose purchase of
Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million was called "Seward's Folly"
1824: Banker Levi Morton, U.S. vice president under
Benjamin Harrison
1831: David Hughes, inventor of the microphone
19??: Scott Wenzel (Whitecross)
19??: Jerry McPherson
1905: Actor Henry Fonda in Grand Island, Nebraska. Fonda
won an Oscar for best actor in "On Golden Pond." In 1940, he was nominated for
his performance in "Grapes of Wrath.""
1912: Author Studs Terkel
1913: Band leader Woody Herman
1917: Actor George Gaynes
1919: Entertainer Liberace
1921: Actor Harry Carey Junior
1930: Jazz singer Betty Carter
1944: Jazz musician Billy Cobham
1953: Actor Pierce Brosnan
1955: Actress Debra Winger
1955: Soviet gymnast Olga Korbut
1959: Actress Mare Winningham
1961: Tennis star Yannick Noah
1966: Singer Janet Jackson
1968: Rhythm-and-blues singer Ralph Tresvant (New Edition)
1969: Actress Tracey Gold
1970: Tennis player Gabriela Sabatini
1971: Country singer Rick Trevino
1971: Actor David Boreanaz ("Buffy the Vampire
Slayer")
1971: Musician Simon Katz (Jamiroquai)
1973: Actress Tori Spelling
0578: Death of St. Brendan the Voyager
1160 Death of St. Ubaldo
1164: Death of HÇloise, at about 63
1265: Death of St. Simon Stock
1291: Moslems take the Maudite Tower of Acre
1527: The Medici government in Florence is overthrown; the
Republic is re-established
1532: Thomas More resigns as Lord Chancellor of England
1605: Death of Pope Paul V
1620: Death of William Adams, "Anjin-sama", the
first Englishman in Japan
1661: Delivery of the lead ballast for Charles II's yacht,
the first built in England in the 'modern' fashion
1763: The English lexicographer, author and wit Samuel
Johnson first met his future biographer, James Boswell.
1770: Marie Antoinette, age 14, married the future King
Louis the 16th of France, who was 15.
1792: Venice, already a cultural center in the 18th
century, opened a new opera house. The first performance at the "Teatro La
Fenice" was an opera by Paisiello.
1804: The French Senate declared Napoleon Bonaparte
emperor.
1849: Richard Wagner was in some serious trouble, when a
warrant was issued for his arrest. The authorities in Dresden had gotten wind of the fact
that Wagner, then running the local opera house, was hanging out with revolutionaries.
Wagner fled.
1866: Congress authorized minting of the 5-cent piece. On
its face was a shield, while on the reverse was the number 5. (the silver half-dime was
used up to this point).
1868: The US Senate failed by one vote to convict
President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on one of eleven articles of
impeachment against him.
1871: U.S. Marines landed in Korea in an unsuccessful
attempt to open the country to foreign trade.
1881: The first electric tram went into public service in
German, near Berlin.
1888: Emile Berliner gave the first demonstration of flat
disc recording and reproduction before the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
1903: George Wyman of San Francisco became the first
person to cross the United States in a motorized vehicle -- a 1.5 horsepower motorcycle
(most lawn mowers have more power than that.)
1910: the U.S. Bureau of Mines was authorized by Congress.
1920: Joan of Arc was canonized in Rome.
1929: The first Academy Awards were presented during a
banquet at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. The movie "Wings" won "best
production" while Emil Jannings and Janet Gaynor were named best actor and best
actress.
1946: The musical "Annie Get Your Gun" opened on
Broadway.
1948: The body of CBS News correspondent George Polk was
found in Solonika Bay in Greece, a week after he'd disappeared.
1955: American author and critic James Agee died in New
York.
1960: A Big Four summit conference in Paris collapsed on
its opening day as the Soviet Union leveled spy charges against the United States in the
wake of the U-2 incident.
1963: U.S. astronaut Gordon Cooper in his Mercury-Atlas
craft splashed down near Midway in the Pacific after orbiting the Earth 22 times in a
mission lasting just over 34 hours.
1965: The musical play "The Roar of the Greasepaint
-- the Smell of the Crowd," by Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, opened on
Broadway.
1969: The unmanned Soviet spacecraft Venus-5 landed on the
surface of Venus.
1971: First Class Mail raised from 6 cents to 8 cents.
1974: Helmut Schmidt was sworn in as the new chancellor of
West Germany, after the resignation of Willy Brandt.
1975: Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman
to reach the summit of Mount Everest.
1977: Five people were killed when a New York Airways
helicopter, idling atop the Pan Am Building in midtown Manhattan, toppled over, sending a
huge rotor blade flying.
1980: "Keep Music Live!" With that slogan,
musicians boycotted the British Broadcast Corporation. The BBC scaled back plans to
disband several regional orchestras after two months of broadcasting only records. Europe
still has a lot of state-sponsored radio orchestras.
1983: The Lebanese Parliament and the Israeli Knesset
voted to approve a U.S.-sponsored accord calling for the withdrawal of foreign troops,
including Israeli forces, from Lebanon. (Agreement signed the next day.)
1984: The U.S. House of representatives approved a
compromise allowing production of only 15 of the 40 MX missiles which President Reagan had
called for -- and only if the Soviet Union failed to return to arms talks by the following
April.
1985: The president of El Salvador, Jose Napoleon Duarte,
visited President Reagan at the White House to talk about attempts to negotiate peace with
leftist rebels.
1985: Michael Jordan was named Rookie of the Year in the
National Basketball Association. Jordan, of the Chicago Bulls, had been chosen as the
number three draft pick.
1986: The Labor Department reported that the Producer
Price Index fell six-tenths of 1 percent in April 1986, to its lowest level in nearly
two-and-a-half years.
1987: Kentucky Derby winner "Alysheba" captured
the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore. (However, Alysheba fell short in the Belmont Stakes,
failing to become the first Triple Crown champion since "Affirmed.")
1988: Surgeon General C. Everett Koop released a report
declaring nicotine was addictive in ways similar to heroin and cocaine. The Supreme Court
ruled that police can search discarded garbage without a search warrant.
1988: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled police can search
discarded garbage without a search warrant.
1989: During his visit to Beijing, Soviet President
Mikhail S. Gorbachev met with Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, formally ending a 30-year rift
between the two Communist powers.
1990: Death claimed entertainer Sammy Davis Jr. in Los
Angeles at age 64
1990: Muppets creator Jim Henson died at the age of
53.
1990: Hungarian prime minister-designate Jozsef Antall
named a center-right coalition cabinet after 40 years of Communist rule.
1991: Secretary of State James A. Baker III wrapped up his
latest Mideast visit in Israel without an agreement for Arab-Israeli peace talks.
1991: Queen Elizabeth the Second became the first British
monarch to address the United States Congress.
1992: The space shuttle "Endeavour" completed
its maiden voyage with a safe landing in the California desert. Actress Marlene Dietrich,
who had died in Paris at age 90, was buried in Berlin. America3 ("America
Cubed"), skippered by Bill Koch, won the 28th defense of the America's Cup.
1992: "America3" ("America Cubed"),
skippered by Bill Koch, won the 28th defense of the America's Cup.
1993: A two-day Bosnian Serb referendum on a UN-backed
peace plan ended, with voters rejecting the proposai by a wide margin.
1994: Israel began its final withdrawal from the Gaza
Strip, shutting down the prison and military headquarters where Israeli soldiers had been
in charge since the 1967 Middle East War.
1995: The Clinton administration threatened punitive
tariffs that would double the prices for Japan's most popular luxury cars.
1995: Japanese police arrested doomsday cult leader Shoko
Asahara, holding him in connection with the nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's subways two months
earlier.
1996: Admiral Jeremy "Mike" Boorda, the nation's
top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military
awards were called into question.
1997: President Clinton publicly apologized for the
notorious Tuskegee experiment, in which government scientists deliberately allowed black
men to weaken and die of treatable syphilis. The space shuttle "Atlantis" docked
with Russia's "Mir" station. In Zaire, President Mobutu Sese Seko ended 32 years
of autocratic rule, giving control of the country to rebel forces.
1998: "Silver Charm" won the Preakness, two
weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby. (However, Silver Charm subsequently lost the
Belmont Stakes to "Touch Gold.")
1999: The Justice Department said preliminary figures from
the FBI indicated a decline in serious crime in 1998 for the seventh consecutive year.
2000: The Federal Reserve raised its federal funds rate by one-half point, the biggest increase in five years.
2000: The New York Democratic Party, meeting in Albany,
tragically nominated first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton for the US Senate.
2000: A large study in Finland found evidence
that people who ate fish less than once a week ran a 31% higher chance of
mild to severe depression than people who ate it more often. According
to psychiatrist Dr. Antti Tanskanen of the University of Kuopio in
Finland, it is possibly because fish contains omega-3 polyunsaturated fatty
acids, or PUFA.
2000: Veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas resigned from United Press International, a day after the wire service was sold to the parent firm of The Washington Times.
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