May 21
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May 21 |
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Today is: American Red Cross founded (1881) - Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross. Contact: American Red Cross Headquarters. |
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Born on this Day
0427 BC: Plato
1471: German painter and engraver Albrecht Durer in
Nuremberg, Germany. Considered the greatest of the German Renaissance artists.
1527: King Philip II of Spain, who launched the Spanish
Armada
1688: English poet and satirist Alexander Pope1688: English
poet Alexander Pope was born in London, England to Roman Catholic parents. Although he
suffered an illness at age 12 that left him a hunchback, he was acclaimed the chief poet
of his day, by the age of 30.
1844: 1844: Henri Rousseau, French Post-impressionist
painter known as Le Douanier. His style was "primitive" or naive and included
pictures of exotic foliage, flowers and fruit of the jungle along with stilted human and
animal figures.
1860: Willam Einthoven, he was the Dutch physiologist who
won the Nobel Prize in 1924 for his development of the Electrocardiograph
1878: Glenn Curtis the American pioneering aviator whose
planes were used during World War One
1898: Industrialist Armand Hammer. He was head of the
Occidental Petroleum Corp, was born. He struck up a strong relationship with Soviet
authorities and often acted as an intermediary between them and the U.S.
19??: Rick Brainer (Code of Ethics)
1904: Fats Waller, jazz pianist and composer notably for
"Ain't Misbehavin"
1909: Sister Maria Innocentia Hummel was born in Massing,
Bavaria. Her drawings were translated into three dimensional figurines by Franz Goebel.
1916: Novelist Harold Robbins
1917: Actor Raymond Burr
1917: Actor-singer Dennis Day
1920: Actor Anthony Steel
1921: Andrei Sakharov, Soviet dissident and Nobel Peace
Prize winner, born. In 1980 he was sent into internal exile at Gorky until 1986.
1923: Former Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian
1924: Actress-TV personality Peggy Cass
1926: Actor Rick Jason
1930: Malcolm Fraser, Australian Prime Minister 1975-83. He
came into office after the Labor Party government collapsed following a budgetary crisis
he helped to provoke.
1939: Actor David Groh
1941: Rhythm-and-blues singer Ron Isley (The Isley
Brothers)
1943: Rock musician Hilton Valentine (the Animals)
1944: Novelist Janet Dailey
1944: Singer Marcie Blaine
1947: Musician Bill Champlin (Chicago)
1948: Singer Leo Sayer
1948: Actress Carol Potter ("Beverly Hills
90210")
1952: Actor Mr. T (Lawrence Tero Tureaud)
1955: Music producer Stan Lynch (formerly with Tom Petty
and the Heartbreakers)
1957: Actor Judge Reinhold
1972: Rapper The Notorious B.I.G.
1972: Jazz musician Christian McBride
1974: Actress Fairuza Balk
1974: Rapper Rapper Havoc (Mobb Deep)
0216 BC: Hannibal & allies defeat Romans at Cannė,
kill 40,000
0996: Coronation of Otto III as Holy Roman Emperor. He was
16 years old.
1076: Execution of Earl Waltheof
1170: The composer Saint Godric died in England. He was
said to have been more than a hundred years old. Saint Godric's hymns are some of the
oldest surviving pieces of music.
1254: Death of Conrad IV, King of Germany
1388: University of Cologne, Germany, chartered
1420: Betrothal of Henry VI, King of England, to Catherine
de Valois of France; England and France swear perpetual peace; French King Charles VI
recognizes English King Henry V as Duke of Normandy & heir to the French throne
1424: Coronation of James I, King of Scotland
1471: Edward IV, King of England, enters London and Henry
VI, deposed King of England, murdered in the Tower
1502: Discovery of St. Helena island by the Portuguese
1536: The Reformation is adopted in Geneva, Switzerland
1542: Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto died while
searching for gold along the Mississippi River.
1565: Turkish troops attack Malta
1639: Death of Tommaso Campanella, philosopher
1650: Execution of Montrose
1819: The first bicycles in the United States were called
swift walkers and were seen for the first time on the streets of New York City.
1832: The first Democratic National Convention got
underway in Baltimore. The delegates would nominate President Jackson for a second term.
1840: Captain William Hobson claimed British sovereignty
over the whole of New Zealand, even though negotiations had not been completed and it did
not become a British colony until 1841.1881: Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.
1881: Clara Barton, who had served as a nurse near the
front lines during the Civil War, founded the American branch of the Red Cross.
1881: The United States Lawn Tennis Association was formed
in New York City.
1892: "I Pagliacci," one of the world's most
famous operas, premiered. Leoncavallo's masterpiece was first performed at Milan's La
Scala opera house, and the premiere was conducted by Toscanini.
1895: One of the lighter voices of the late 19th century
was silenced when Franz von Suppe, composer of the popular overtures "Light
Cavalry" and "Poet and Peasant," died in Vienna.
1904: Football's international body FIFA was established
in Paris.
1906: Louis H. Perlman of New York City received a patent
for the demountable tire-carrying rim -- similar to the ones we use on our cars today,
only wider.
1922: Rollin Kirby's cartoon, "On the Road to
Moscow," became the first cartoon to win a Pulitzer Prize.
1924: 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered in a
"thrill killing" committed by Nathan Leopold Junior and Richard Loeb, two
students at the University of Chicago.
1927: Charles Lindbergh landed the "Spirit of St.
Louis" in Paris, completing the first solo flight across the Atlantic.
1929: The first automatic electric stock quotation board
was put into operation by Sutro and Company of New York City.
1929: Lord Rosebery, English Liberal party leader and
prime minister, 1894-95, died.
1932: Amelia Earhart became the first woman to fly the
Atlantic solo, from Newfoundland to Ireland.
1934: Oskaloosa, Iowa, became the first city in the United
States to fingerprint each of its citizens.
1935: Hugo de Vries, Dutch geneticist and botanist who
introduced the study of organic evolution, died.
1941: A German U-boat sank the American freighter
"USS Robin Moore" in the South Atlantic.
1941: President Roosevelt proclaimed "an unlimited
state of national emergency," seven months before the Japanese attack on Pearl
Harbor.
1945: Syria and Lebanon broke off negotiations with France
and demanded full independence.
1945: Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart were married in
Mansfield, Ohio at Malabar Farm. Legend has it that the couple fell in love in 1943 during
the making of the film "To Have and Have Not."
1956: The United States exploded the first airborne
hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.
1959: The musical "Gypsy," inspired by the life
of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, opened on Broadway.
1968: The nuclear-powered US submarine "Scorpion,'
with 99 men aboard, was last heard from. (The remains of the sub were later found on the
ocean floor 400 miles southwest of the Azores.)
1969: Sirhan B. Sirhan was sentenced to death for the
murder of Robert Kennedy in 1968. The sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment.
1972: Lazlo Toth, a Hungarian native, attacked
Michelangelo's centuries-old sculpture "Pieta.""
1979: Former San Francisco City Supervisor Dan White was
convicted of voluntary manslaughter in the deaths of Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor
Harvey Milk.
1980: Ensign Jean Marie Butler became the first woman to
graduate from a U.S. service academy as she accepted her degree and commission from the
Coast Guard Academy in New London, Connecticut.
1981: In France, Francois Mitterrand was installed as
President and set up a caretaker government under prime minister Pierre Mauroy.
1982: In the Falklands War, British troops established a
bridgehead at Port San Carlos and HMS Ardent was sunk with the loss of 22 lives.
1984: In Washington, President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El
Salvador appealed to Congress to approve more aid without attaching what he called
"degrading" conditions.
1985: Marvin Gaye's last album was released. "Dream
of a Lifetime" featured songs that critics considered too offensive such as the
controversial, pop version of "the Lord's Prayer.""
1985: After taking fertility drugs, Patti Frustaci of
Orange, California, gave birth to the first recorded American septuplets. Six of the seven
infants were born alive. Three survived.
1986: President Reagan vetoed a Congressional resolution
blocking a scaled-down sale of advanced U.S. missiles to Saudi Arabia. (The veto was
narrowly upheld the following month.)
1987: In the wake of the Iraqi attack on the US frigate
"Stark" that claimed 37 lives, the Senate approved a proposal requiring
President Reagan to send Congress a report detailing the threat to US ships in the Persian
Gulf.
1988: The Soviet news agency Tass reported that the
Communist Party leaders of Armenia and Azerbaijan had been dismissed after fresh outbreaks
of ethnic tensions in the two southern Soviet republics.
1988: "Risen Star" won the Preakness Stakes.
1989: Thousands of native Chinese marched in Hong Kong,
Paris, Tokyo and scores of other cities in a worldwide show of support for the
pro-democracy demonstrators in Beijing.
1990: Israeli soldiers shot and killed three Palestinians
in violence sparked the slayings of seven Palestinians by an Israeli civilian a day
earlier.
1991: Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was killed
by a bomb hidden in a bouquet of flowers while campaigning for elections in India's
southern state of Tamil Nadu.
1991: Ethiopia's Marxist president, Mengistu Haile Mariam,
resigned and fled into exile as rebels continued to advance.
1992: The U. S. Coast Guard announced that high-seas
interdiction of Haitian refugees was being drastically scaled back because refugee camps
at the US naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba, were filled.
1993: President Clinton met at the White House with
Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev; afterward, Clinton expressed pessimism over
finding a long-term solution to the ethnic conflict in the Balkans, and pledged not to
send American soldiers into a "shooting gallery."
1993: Octavio Lepage was sworn in as the new acting leader
of Venezuela after the suspension of President Carlos Andres Perez on corruption charges.
1994: Bakili Muluzi was sworn in as Malawi's president and
quickly moved to erase the worst excesses of defeated president Kamuzu Banda's 30-year
single-party rule.
1994: Israeli commandos swept into Lebanon's eastern
mountains and abducted Mustafa Dirani, a Shiite Muslin guerrilla leader.
1995: Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin died at a
Washington, D.C., hospital after suffering a massive stroke; he was 56.
1996: In east Africa's worst marine disaster, as many as
886 people, many of them teen-agers, drowned when an overloaded Tanzanian ferry capsized
in Lake Victoria. The ferry capsized near the western town of Mwanza. There was an
estimated 1,000 on board and only 114 survived.
1997: Prosecutors at the Oklahoma City bombing trial of
Timothy McVeigh rested their case.
1997: The space shuttle "Atlantis" undocked from
the Russian "Mir" space station.
1998: A gunman opened fire inside Thurston High School in
Springfield, Oregon, killing two students; the suspect, Kip Kinkel, is also accused of
killing his parents a day earlier.
1998: In the wake of deadly anti-government protests,
Indonesia President Suharto stepped down after 32 years in power and was succeeded by Vice
President B.J. Habibie.
1998: Frank and Shirley Capaci of Streamwood, Illinois,
announced they were the holders of a winning Powerball ticket worth $195 million.
1999: Susan Lucci won a Daytime Emmy Award for best
actress on her 19th try.
1999: Presidential friend and fund-raiser Yah Lin
"Charlie" Trie pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations and agreed to
cooperate in an investigation of illegal Asian donations to the Democrats.
1999: A luxury cruise liner, the Sun Vista, sank off
Malaysia's western coast; nearly 1,100 passengers and crew escaped safely.
2000: Nineteen people were killed when a charter plane crashed in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania.
2000: "Dancer in the Dark" won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival; the Grand Prize went to "Devils on the Doorstep."
2000: Death claimed actor Sir John Gielgud at age 96
2000: Dame Barbara Cartland died at the age of
98.
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