May 12

But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble.

Psalm   59:16

is:

National Hamburger Month - Sponsor: White Castle Systems. National High Blood Pressure Month - Promotes the treatment of high blood pressure. Sponsor: High Blood Pressure Education Program National Huntington's Disease Awareness Month National Mime Month National Photo Month - Promotes the importance of photography in documenting life's events. Sponsor: Photo Marketing Association.

Today is: Fractured English Day - On the birthday of Yogi Berra, baseball player and coach who was famous for fracturing the English language, it's okay to dangle modifiers and split infinitives. Berra was born in 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri.  Limerick Day - Celebrates the birthday of Edward Lear (1812), whose Book of Nonsense popularized limericks. National Nurses Day - Florence Nightingale, founder of the nursing profession, was born in Florence, Italy in 1820. Sponsor; American Nurses Association. Prohibition of Spitting (1896) The New York City Department of Health issued an ordinance that prohibited spitting on sidewalks.  Saint Pancras Feast Day - This 14-year-old Syrian orphan was martyred in 309 A.D. He is a patron saint of children, treaties, and oaths. Women's Hurricane Liberation Day - In 1978, the Department of Commerce officially announced that hurricanes would no longer be named after women only. Contact; Department of Commerce

Born on this Day

• 1804: Robert Baldwin, Canadian statesman. With Louis Lafontaine he was joint leader of the first and second Liberal administrations in Canada.
  

• 1812: English artist, author and poet Edward Lear was born. Lear is best remembered for his limericks. A limerick has been described as the only "fixed verse form" indigenous to the English language.
  

• 1820: Nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale in Florence, Italy. She served as a nurse in Turkey and the Crimea during the Crimean War.
  

• 1842: Jules Massenet was born outside of St. Etienne, France. "La Grand' Tante" was Massenet's first opera. It was performed when he was 25. An orchestral suite went over pretty well. His delicate sensuality influenced Debussy.
  

• 1845: Composer Gabriel Urbain Faure was born in Pamiers, France.
  

• 1918: Convicted spy Julius Rosenberg
  

• 1907: Actress Katharine Hepburn
  

• 1914: Journalist Howard K. Smith
  

• 1925: Critic John Simon
  

• 1925: Baseball Hall of Fame member Yogi Berra
  

• 1929: Composer Burt Bacharach
  

• 1938: Andrei Amalrik, Soviet author, historian and political dissident. He achieved worldwide fame with the publication in 1970 of his provocative essay ``Will The Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?.''
  

• 1936: Talk show host Tom Snyder
  

• 1937: Comedian George Carlin
  

• 1938: Actress Millie Perkins
  

• 1939: Former White House press secretary Ronald L. Ziegler
  

• 1942: Country singer Billy Swan
  

• 1943: Actress Linda Dano
  

• 1945: Musician Ian McLagan (Small Faces; The Faces)
  

• 1948: Actress Lindsay Crouse
  

• 1948: Singer-musician Steve Winwood
  

• 1950: Actor Gabriel Byrne
  

• 1950: Actor Bruce Boxleitner
  

• 1950: Singer Billy Squier
  

• 1955: Country singer Kix Brooks (Brooks and Dunn)
  

• 1957: Baseball player Lou Whitaker
  

• 1958: Actress Kim Greist
  

• 1961: Rock musician Billy Duffy (The Cult)
  

• 1961: Actor Ving Rhames
  

• 1962: Actor Emilio Estevez
  

• 1965: Country musician Eddie Kilgallon (Ricochet)
  

• 1966: Actor Stephen Baldwin
  

• 1969: Actress Kim Fields Freeman
  

• 1971: Actress Jamie Luner
  

• 1973: Actor Mackenzie Astin
  

• 1976: Singer Melanie "Sporty Spice" Chisholm (Spice Girls)
  

• 1978: Actor Jason Biggs ("American Pie")
  

• 1995: Actors Sullivan and Sawyer Sweeten ("Everybody Loves Raymond")

Events in History on this day
  

• 0403: Death of St. Epiphanius of Salamis
  

• 1003: Death of Pope Sylvester II
  

• 1191: Marriage of Richard I of England and Berengaria of Navarre
  

• 1250: King Louis IX (St.) of France arrives at Acre from Egypt
  

• 1310: 54 Knights Templars burned in France
  

• 1349: The fourth new Vicar of the church in Shaftsbury, England is appointed, when predecessors die of the Plague
  

• 1364: The first University is endowed in Cracow, Poland
  

• 1539: DeSoto leaves Cuba searching for the 7 Cities of Gold
  

• 1588: Day of the Barricades, Paris, France; Henry III flees the city
  

• 1621: Marriage of Edward Winslow to Susanna White, the first to take place in Plymouth Colony, Mass.
  

• 1634: George Chapman, English poet, dramatist, translator, dies
  

• 1641: Execution of the Earl of Strafford
  

• 1647: Charles I accepts Parliament's terms, with reservations
  

• 1780: During the American War of Independence, Charles Town (later Charleston), South Carolina, fell to the British after a two-month siege.
  

• 1809: Sir Arthur Wellesley (later Duke of Wellington) defeated the French at Oporto, forcing them to retreat from Portugal.
  

• 1831: The first indicted bank robber in the United States, Edward Smith, was sentenced to five years hard labor at Sing Sing Prison.
  

• 1839: A Shawnee Indian uttered a curse on "The Great White Father" for violating Indian treaties, beginning the curious cycle of American Presidential deaths. Every president elected or re-elected at 20-year cycles died in office from 1840-1960.
  

• 1847: Mormon pioneer William Clayton invented the odometer while crossing the plains in his covered wagon.
  

• 1870: Royal assent was given to the Manitoba Act whereby Manitoba entered Confederation as the fifth Canadian province. Manitoba was purchased from the Hudson's Bay Company by the Dominion of Canada.
  

• 1871: Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber, French opera composer, died. He developed opera containing spoken as well as sung passages.
  

• 1884: Czech composer Bedrich Smetana, composer of operas including ``The Bartered Bride'' and ``The Brandenburgers in Bohemia,'' died.
  

• 1888: Charles Sherrill. of the Yale track team, became the first runner to use the crouching start for a fast break in a foot race.
  

• 1917: The first imported horse to win the Kentucky Derby was the English-bred colt, Omar Khayyam. He won $49,070 -- the top prize.
  

• 1922: The magazine "Radio Broadcast" commented, "the rate of increase in the number who spend at least part of an evening listening to radio is almost incomprehensible."
  

• 1926: Shostakovich's First Symphony was premiered by the Leningrade Philharmonic. Shostakovich was 19 years old. His symphony had been a graduation exercise. The Shostakovich First is an extremely good piece of music, full of clever ideas.
  

• 1926: Norwegian Roald Amundsen, Italian Umberto Nobile and American Lincoln Ellsworth crossed the North Pole in an airship.
  

• 1926: Marshal Jozef Pilsudski led a successful military coup against the Polish government.
  

• 1932: The body of the kidnapped son of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was found in a wooded area of Hopewell, New Jersey.
  

• 1933: The Federal Emergency Relief Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration were established to provide help for the needy and farmers.
  

• 1937: George VI was crowned king of England, succeeding his brother Edward, who abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson.
  

• 1943: During World War Two, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
  

• 1949: The Soviet Union announced an end to the Berlin Blockade.
  

• 1950: The American Bowling Congress abolished its white males-only membership restriction after 34 years.
  

• 1955: Passengers crowded in to ride the last run of the Third Avenue elevated, "The El," in New York City. The train traveled from Chinatown to the Bronx.
  

• 1957: A.J. Foyt earned his first auto racing victory in Kansas City, Missouri. He went on to become a four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 -- in 1961, 1964, 1967 and 1977.
  

• 1957: Erich Von Stroheim, film actor and one of the silent screen's greatest directors, died. Films he directed included ``Greed'' and ``The Wedding March.''
  

• 1960: Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley exchanged hits when they appeared on the same TV special. Sinatra sang "Love Me Tender" and Elvis sang "Witchcraft.""
  

• 1962: France and independent French-speaking West African states initialed an agreement setting up a West African Monetary Union.
  

• 1965: West Germany and Israel exchanged letters establishing diplomatic relations.
  

• 1967: John Masefield, English poet and, from 1930, poet laureate, died.
  

• 1970: The Senate voted unanimously to confirm Harry A. Blackmun as a Supreme Court justice.
  

• 1975: The White House announced the new Cambodian government had seized an American merchant ship, the "Mayaguez," in international waters.
  

• 1976: Sixteen-year-old racing-jockey Steve Cauthen rode in his first race. He finished far back in the pack at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky. Cauthen got his first win just five days later.
  

• 1978: The Commerce Department said hurricanes would no longer be named exclusively after women.
  

• 1980: Maxie Anderson and his son, Chris were the first to make a non-stop balloon flight across North America in a 75-foot-high helium balloon - "The Kitty Hawk." They went from San Francisco to Quebec in 4 days, 2,200 miles.
  

• 1981: President Benjamin Sheares of Singapore died in office.
  

• 1982: In Fatima, Portugal, security guards overpowered a Spanish priest armed with a bayonet who was trying to reach Pope John Paul the Second.
  

• 1983: The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 17-11 to approve the release of $625 million for development of the M-X missile that had been blocked by Congress.
  

• 1984: The 1984 Louisiana World Exposition began a six-month run in New Orleans. (The fair proved a financial disaster, with organizers forced to file for bankruptcy protection from its creditors.)
  

• 1985: Amy Eilberg was ordained in New York as the first woman rabbi in the Conservative Jewish movement.
  

• 1986: A Soviet government statement reported six deaths from burns and radiation in the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
  

• 1987: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' proposal for an international Middle East peace conference, calling it "perverse and criminal." Peres angrily accused Shamir of arrogance.
  

• 1988: Secretary of State George P. Shultz and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, meeting in Geneva, resolved nearly all remaining questions on an intermediate-range missile treaty.
  

• 1989: The nation's largest airline computer reservation system, the American Airlines Sabre system, shut down for nearly 12 hours -- disrupting the operations of thousands of travel agencies nationwide.
  

• 1989: Retired British pilot Jack Mann was kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalists in Beirut. He was the oldest of the Westerners held hostage in Beirut during the Lebanese civil war.
  

• 1990: The presidents of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania forged a united front by reviving a 1934 political alliance in hopes of enhancing their drive for independence from the Soviet Union.
  

• 1990: Three car bombs in Colombia killed 27 people as the country's drug barons appeared to switch to indiscriminate attacks in their war against the government.
  

• 1991: Syrian President Hafez Assad, meeting with U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, refused to yield on key demands for joining a Middle East peace conference.
  

• 1991: The moderate Nepali Congress won Nepal's first multi-party elections in 32 years.
  

• 1992: Four suspects were arrested in the beating of trucker Reginald Denny at the start of the Los Angeles riots.
  

• 1992: President Bush announced he would travel to the Earth Summit in Brazil.
  

• 1992: CIA Director Gates said he had begun declassifying all relevant information on the President Kennedy assassination to end the notion that the CIA was involved
  

• 1992: Actor Robert Reed of TV's "The Brady Bunch" died in Pasadena, California, at age 59.
  

• 1993: President Clinton proposed putting all money raised from new taxes and spending cuts into a trust fund dedicated solely to reducing the nation's huge budget deficit.
  

• 1993: Franco Nobili, the head of Italy's biggest state firm IRI, was arrested in Rome after a 15-month corruption probe.
  

• 1994: A token force of Palestinian police crossed the Jordan River in preparation for the end of 27 years of Israeli military rule in a West Bank enclave around Jericho.
  

• 1994: The Senate joined the House inpassing a bill banning blockades, violence and threats against clinics where abortions are performed.
  

• 1994: British Labor Party leader John Smith died unexpectedly at age 55.
  

• 1995: President Clinton, during a stopover in Ukraine, visited Babi Yar, the site where more than 30,000 Kiev Jews were massacred by the Nazis in 1941.
  

• 1996: Authorities in Florida called off the search for possible survivors from the crash of ValuJet Flight 592, a day after the jetliner nose-dived into the Everglades with 110 people on board
  

• 1997: At the Oklahoma City bombing trial of Timothy McVeigh, star prosecution witness Michael Fortier testified that McVeigh had been bent on triggering a "general uprising in America." 1997: Australian Susie Maroney became the first woman to swim all the way from Cuba to Florida, covering the 118-mile distance in 24 and a-half hours.
  

• 1997: India and Pakistan agreed to release each other's imprisoned nationals and to set up a telephone hotline to ease tensions.
  

• 1997: Russian President Boris Yeltsin and Chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov signed a peace accord promising to end 400 years of intermittent conflict.
  

• 1998: A day after India's first atomic test blasts in 24 years, neighboring Pakistan said it was ready to test a nuclear device itself. Indonesian President Suharto's security forces killed at least six student demonstrators. 
  

• 1999: Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced he was quitting in July. (He was succeeded by his deputy, Lawrence Summers.)
  

• 1999: Russian President Boris Yeltsin dismissed Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and the Cabinet.
  

•  2000: Adam Petty, 19, the fourth-generation driver of NASCAR's most famous family, died in a crash during practice for the Busch 200 at New Hampshire International Speedway. 
  

• 2000: During visits to Ohio and Minnesota, President Clinton called for open trade with China, saying it would help the communist nation move closer to democracy. 
  
  
     
  

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