May 13
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Today is:
I Just Called to Say I Love You Day - On the birthday of Stevie Wonder, call someone you love and tell them so. Stevie Wonder was born |
1717: Maria Theresa, Empress of Austria and Queen of
Hungary and Bohemia, in Vienna.
1767: John VI of Portugal. He ruled first as prince regent
(1799-1816) and then as king (1816-26), and formally acknowledged Brazil's independence in
1825.
1842: Sir Arthur Sullivan, English composer who together
with librettist W.S. Gilbert wrote such operettas as ``The Mikado,'' ``The Pirates of
Penzance'' and ``The Gondoliers,'' born.
1856: Peter Henry Emerson, first photographer to promote
photography as an independent art.
1882: French painter Georges Braque. He worked closely with
Pablo Picasso, jointly creating the movement known as Cubism.
19??: Al Denson
1907: British novelist Daphne du Maurier (Lady Browning),
granddaughter of novelist George Browning and best known for her novel
"Rebecca."
1913: William R. Tolbert Jr, Liberian president from 1972
until he died in a coup in 1980.
1914: Boxing champion Joe Louis (Joseph Louis Barrow) in
Lafayette, Alabama. World heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 until 1949 when he
retired.
1926: Actress Beatrice Arthur
1927: Director-choreographer Herbert Ross
1950: Singer Stevie Wonder, born Steveland Hardaway
1926: Actress Beatrice Arthur
1927: Critic Clive Barnes
1927: Director-choreographer Herbert Ross
1939: Actor Harvey Keitel
1949: Actor Franklin Ajaye
1950: Singer Stevie Wonder
1961: Baseball player Dennis Rodman
1962: Actress Julianne Phillips
1965: Country singer Lari White
1966: Singer Darius Rucker (Hootie and the Blowfish)
1968: Actress Susan Floyd ("Then Came You")
1977: Actress Samantha Morton ("Sweet and Lowdown")
1028: Death of St. Euthymius the Enlightener
1191: Richard I of England and King Guy of Jerusalem
attack Cyprus
1390: Death of Robert II, King of Scotland
1501: Amerigo Vespucci departs Lisbon on the voyage that
gets the New World named after him
1515: Mary, sister of King Henry VIII of England, widow of
King Louis XII of France, marries Charles, Duke of Suffolk, against her brother's wishes,
in England
1568: Mary, Queen of Scots was defeated by the English at
the battle of Langside in Glasgow.
1572: Election of Pope Gregory XIII
1607: Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in
North America, was founded near the James River in Virginia.
1619: Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, statesman and founding
father of the Netherlands, was executed by Prince Maurice of Nassau on a charge of
subverting religion.
1648: Margaret Jones, of Plymouth, Mass., found guilty of
witchcraft
1787: The first fleet of ships carrying convicts to the
new penal colony of Australia left England. They arrived the following January.
1830: The Republic of Ecuador was founded, with Juan Jose
Flores as president.
1833: Mendelssohn's "Italian" Symphony was
premiered in London.
1835: The first foreign embassy in Hawaii is established.
1835: John Nash, British architect who developed Regent's
Park and Regent Street in London, died.
1846: The U.S. Congress formally declared war on Mexico
over California, although fighting had begun days earlier.
1871: Daniel Auber died in Paris at the age of 89. Auber,
born in Normandy while Beethoven was still a lad, was a master of the French comic opera.
Even Wagner praised his music. But by the time Auber died his music was all but forgotten
outside of France.
1884: Cyrus Hall McCormick, U.S. industrialist and
inventor, died. He is generally credited with the development of the mechanical harvester.
1884: Institute for Electrical & Electronics Engineers
(IEEE) founded
1888: Brazil's parliament agreed to abolish slavery.
1917: Three peasant children near Fatima, Portugal,
reported seeing a vision of the Virgin Mary.
1918: The first US airmail stamps, featuring a picture of
an airplane, were introduced. (On some of the stamps, the airplane was printed
upside-down, making them collector's items.)
1930: Fridtjof Nansen, Norwegian Arctic explorer and
diplomat, died. He headed Norway's team at the League of Nations and won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1922
1940: In his first speech as prime minister of Britain,
Winston Churchill told the House of Commons, "I have nothing to offer but blood,
toil, tears and sweat."
1941: Martin Bormann became deputy leader of German's Nazi
party following Rudolf Hess's mysterious flight to Scotland.
1943: The Italian commander-in-chief in Tunisia
surrendered a day after his German counterpart, with the Allies holding some 250,000
prisoners of war.
1949: The first British-produced jet bomber, the Canberra,
made its maiden test flight.
1950: Blind U.S. Motown legend Stevie Wonder was born as
Steveland Judkins Morris.
1954: President Eisenhower signed into law the St.
Lawrence Seaway Development Act.
1954: The musical play "The Pajama Game" opened
on Broadway.
1958: Vice President Nixon's limousine was battered by
rocks thrown by anti-US demonstrators in Caracas, Venezuela.
1958: French nationalists in Algeria rebelled against
their government's policy of doing a deal with Algerian rebels, seizing government
buildings and taking over several towns.
1961: U.S. film actor Gary Cooper, who won Oscars for his
roles in ``Sergeant York'' and ``High Noon,'' died at 60.
1965: Israel and West Germany agreed to establish
diplomatic relations. Several Arab nations broke ties with Germany.
1968: Talks between North Vietnamese and American
negotiators, aimed at ending the Vietnam War, opened in Paris.
1981: Turkish gunman Mehmet Ali Agca wounded Pope John
Paul in St. Peter's Square.
1985: 11 people died when a Philadelphia police helicopter
bombed the fortified house of a radical organization, MOVE, to end a 24-hour siege. The
ensuing fire destroyed 53 homes.
1986: Austrian author Stefan Zweig's prized possessions
were bequeathed to the British Library. Among them: a Freud article on Mozart, a Bach
cantata, and Haydn's 97th Symphony.
1987: President Reagan said his personal diary confirmed
that he'd talked with Saudi Arabia's King Fahd about Saudi help for the Nicaraguan Contras
at a time when Congress banned military aid -- but Reagan said he did not solicit secret
contributions.
1988: The US Senate voted 83-to-6 to order the US military
to enter the war against illegal drug trafficking, approving a plan to give the Navy the
power to stop drug boats on the high seas and make arrests.
1989: In unusually strong language, President Bush called
on the people of Panama and the country's defense forces to overthrow their military
leader, General Manuel Antonio Noriega.
1990: Rebels seized the state radio station on the Indian
Ocean island republic of Madagascar, but the government quickly regained control after the
coup attempt failed to secure mass support.
1990: Two U.S. airmen were shot to death in the
Philippines on the eve of talks concerning the future of U.S. military bases; the
revolutionary New People's Army claimed responsibility.
1991: South African black activist Winnie Mandela and two co-defendants were convicted of abducting four young black men and keeping them at her Soweto home. (After an appeal, Mrs. Mandela was ordered to pay a fine.)
1992: A trio of astronauts from the space shuttle
"Endeavour" captured a wayward Intelsat-Six communications satellite during the
first-ever three-person spacewalk.
1992: President Bush announced a $600 million loan package
to help rebuild riot-scarred Los Angeles.
1993: The House Ways and Means Committee gave final
approval to President Clinton's deficit-cutting package, containing a tax increase of $246
billion over five years.
1993: In suburban Paris, a masked man armed with dynamite
took a roomful of nursery school children hostage, demanding $18.5 million. (The man was
shot to death by a crack police unit two days later).
1993: The Strategic Defense Initiative (''Star Wars''),
the futuristic defense program initiated by U.S. President Ronald Reagan, was downgraded
by the Pentagon.
1993: Ezer Weizman was sworn in as Israel's seventh
president. His uncle Chaim Weizmann was the first president at Israel's founding in 1948.
1994: Palestinian police took over control of Jericho from
Israeli soldiers.
1994: Foreign ministers from the West and Russia agreed on
a new joint strategy to relaunch Bosnian peace negotiations.
1994: President Clinton nominated federal appeals Judge
Stephen G. Breyer to the US Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Harry A. Blackmun.
1995: Army Captain Lawrence Rockwood was convicted at his
court-martial in Fort Drum, N.Y., of conducting an unauthorized investigation of reported
human rights abuses at a Haitian prison (the next day, Rockwood was dismissed from the
military, but received no prison time).
1996: Thousands of Liberian war refugees, many ill after a
week at sea, were refused admission to the Ghanaian port of Takoradi.
1996: Over 600 people were killed by a tornado in the
northern Bangladesh district of Tangail.
1996: Recovery workers in the Florida Everglades retrieved
the flight data recorder from ValuJet Flight 592.
1996: The Supreme Court unanimously struck down Rhode
Island's ban on ads that list or refer to liquor prices, saying the law violated
free-speech rights.
1997: At the Oklahoma City bombing trial, prosecutors
showed jurors the key to the Ryder truck used to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah federal
building, alleging Timothy McVeigh left it behind in the same alley he picked to stash his
getaway car.
1998: President Clinton ordered harsh sanctions against an
unapologetic India, which had gone ahead with a second round of nuclear tests despite
global criticism.
1999: Russian lawmakers opened hearings on whether
President Boris Yeltsin should be impeached. (The lower chamber of parliament ended up
rejecting all five charges raised against Yeltsin, including one accusing him of starting
the Chechen War.)
1999: Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and columnist Meg
Greenfield died in Washington at age 68.
2000: Explosions at a fireworks warehouse in the Netherlands killed 22 people and injured nearly one-thousand others.
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