crgator
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Florida
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 10:12:06 AM
May 18, 1980:
Mount St. Helens erupts
Mount St. Helens in Washington erupts, causing a massive avalanche and killing 57 people on this day in 1980. Ash from the volcanic eruption fell as far away as Minnesota.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 6:10:41 AM
The Bath School Bombing (1927)
Over the course of several months leading up to May 18, 1927, disgruntled school board member Andrew Kehoe hid hundreds of pounds of explosives inside the Bath Consolidated School in Bath Township, Michigan. That day, after destroying his farm—which was slated for foreclosure—he detonated the explosives inside the school and set off a bomb in his vehicle. The massacre is considered the deadliest act of mass murder in a school in US history.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 5:22:37 AM
1910 – The Earth passes through the tail of Comet Halley.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 3:29:11 AM
In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won the Republican Party presidential nomination over William H. Seward who later became the United Secretary of State.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 18, 2013 12:04:02 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 18 ...
1778 Capt. Allen McLane and his Kent Co. troops set fire to British defenses in Philadelphia and prevented the Marquis de la Fayette from being ambushed at Barren Hill.
1903 Six women dressed in black and known as the Little Sisters of the Poor arrived in Delaware from France and established a settlement in Wilmington. Their Catholic mission was to love the elderly poor and shelter them like family.
1967 Fenwick Island was hit by twisters and high winds resulting in the destruction of seven homes in the Cape Windsor Trailer Park.
2003 Legislation recently passed by the General Assembly allowed liquor stores in the state to open for Sunday sales for the first time.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 11:44:25 PM
1792 - The New York Stock Exchange was founded at 70 Wall Street by 24 brokers.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 5:30:31 PM
* 1769 - George Washington launches a legislative salvo at Great Britain's fiscal and judicial attempts to maintain its control over the American colonies. With his sights set on protesting the British policy of "taxation without representation," Washington brought a package of non-importation resolutions before the Virginia House of Burgesses.
The resolutions, drafted by George Mason largely in response to England's passage of the Townshend Acts of 1767, decried Parliament's plan to send colonial political protestors to England for trial. Though Virginia's royal governor promptly fired back by disbanding the House of Burgesses, the dissenting legislators were undeterred. During a makeshift meeting held at the Raleigh Tavern in Williamsburg, Virginia's delegates gave their support to the non-importation resolutions. Maryland and South Carolina soon followed suit with the passing of their own non-importation measures.
The non-importation resolutions lacked any means of enforcement, and Chesapeake tobacco merchants of Scottish ancestry tended to be loyal to their firms in Glasgow. However, tobacco planters supported the measure, and the mere existence of non-importation agreements proved that the southern colonies were willing to defend Massachusetts, the true target of Britain's crackdown, where violent protests against the Townshend Acts had led to a military occupation of Boston, beginning on October 2, 1768.
When Britain's House of Lords learned that the Sons of Liberty, a revolutionary group in Boston, had assembled an extra-legal Massachusetts convention of towns as the British fleet approached in 1768, they demanded the right to try such men in England. This step failed to frighten New Englanders into silence, but succeeded in rallying Southerners to their cause. By impugning colonial courts and curtailing colonial rights, this British action backfired: it created an American identity where before there had been none.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 1:05:30 PM
May 17, 1973: Televised Watergate hearings begin.
In Washington, D.C., the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, headed by Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, begins televised hearings on the escalating Watergate affair. One week later, Harvard law professor Archibald Cox was sworn in as special Watergate prosecutor.
On June 17, 1972, five men were arrested for breaking into and illegally wiretapping the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. One of the suspects, James W. McCord Jr., was revealed to be the salaried security coordinator for President Richard Nixon's reelection committee. Two other men with White House ties were later implicated in the break-in: E. Howard Hunt, Jr., a former White House aide, and G. Gordon Liddy, finance counsel for the Committee for the Re-election of the President. Journalists and the Select Committee discovered a higher-echelon conspiracy surrounding the incident, and a political scandal of unprecedented magnitude erupted.
In May 1973, the special Senate committee began televised proceedings on the Watergate affair. During the Senate hearings, former White House legal counsel John Dean testified that the Watergate break-in had been approved by former Attorney General John Mitchell with the knowledge of chief White House advisers John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, and that President Nixon had been aware of the cover-up. Meanwhile, Watergate prosecutor Cox and his staff began to uncover widespread evidence of political espionage by the Nixon reelection committee, illegal wiretapping of thousands of citizens by the administration, and contributions to the Republican Party in return for political favors.
In July, the existence of what were to be called the Watergate tapes--official recordings of White House conversations between Nixon and his staff--was revealed during the Senate hearings. Cox subpoenaed these tapes, and after three months of delay President Nixon agreed to send summaries of the recordings. Cox rejected the summaries, and Nixon fired him. His successor as special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, leveled indictments against several high-ranking administration officials, including Mitchell and Dean, who were duly convicted.
Public confidence in the president rapidly waned, and by the end of July 1974 the House Judiciary Committee had adopted three articles of impeachment against President Nixon: obstruction of justice, abuse of presidential powers, and hindrance of the impeachment process. On July 30, under coercion from the Supreme Court, Nixon finally released the Watergate tapes. On August 5, transcripts of the recordings were released, including a segment in which the president was heard instructing Haldeman to order the FBI to halt the Watergate investigation. Four days later, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign. On September 8, his successor, President Gerald Ford, pardoned him from any criminal charges.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 5:02:54 AM
George Boleyn, Brother of Anne, Beheaded (1536)
Henry VIII had two of his six wives beheaded, but the unpleasant consequences of his marriages did not apply only to his spouses. After Henry's first marriage was annulled, he took Anne Boleyn as his queen. Though she bore him the future Queen Elizabeth I, she produced no male heir, and he lost interest in her. In 1536, he had her imprisoned on questionable charges of adultery and incest—allegedly with her brother, George. Both were beheaded.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 4:31:08 AM
1875 – Aristides wins the first Kentucky Derby.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 4:23:33 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 17 ...
1813 Governor Joseph Haslet pardoned Charles Coursey, a 14 year old Dover youth, of murder.
1921 Delamore, the former Wilmington home of US Senator Thomas F. Bayard, Sr. at S. Clayton Street and Maple, burned to the ground.
1954 US Supreme Court ruled in favor of school integration in Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka. Two of the four cases involved dealt with discrimination in Delaware.
2006 For the first time since the Civil War, regular summer services were held at Old Christ Church near Laurel first constructed in 1772.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 3:23:47 AM
In 1865, The International Telegraph Union (later named the International Telecommunication Union) was established in Paris.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 17, 2013 12:46:19 AM
May 16, 1929: First Academy Awards ceremony.
On this day in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California.
The brainchild of Louis B. Mayer, head of the powerful MGM film studio, the Academy was organized in May 1927 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the advancement and improvement of the film industry. Its first president and the host of the May 1929 ceremony was the actor Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. Unlike today, the winners of the first Oscars--as the coveted gold-plated statuettes later became known--were announced before the awards ceremony itself.
At the time of the first Oscar ceremony, sound had just been introduced into film. The Warner Bros. movie The Jazz Singer--one of the first "talkies"--was not allowed to compete for Best Picture because the Academy decided it was unfair to let movies with sound compete with silent films. The first official Best Picture winner (and the only silent film to win Best Picture) was Wings, directed by William Wellman. The most expensive movie of its time, with a budget of $2 million, the movie told the story of two World War I pilots who fall for the same woman. Another film, F.W. Murnau's epic Sunrise, was considered a dual winner for the best film of the year. German actor Emil Jannings won the Best Actor honor for his roles in The Last Command and The Way of All Flesh, while 22-year-old Janet Gaynor was the only female winner. After receiving three out of the five Best Actress nods, she won for all three roles, in Seventh Heaven, Street Angel and Sunrise.
A special honorary award was presented to Charlie Chaplin. Originally a nominee for Best Actor, Best Writer and Best Comedy Director for The Circus, Chaplin was removed from these categories so he could receive the special award, a change that some attributed to his unpopularity in Hollywood. It was the last Oscar the Hollywood maverick would receive until another honorary award in 1971.
The Academy officially began using the nickname Oscar for its awards in 1939; a popular but unconfirmed story about the source of the name holds that Academy executive director Margaret Herrick remarked that the statuette looked like her Uncle Oscar. Since 1942, the results of the secret ballot voting have been announced during the live-broadcast Academy Awards ceremony using the sealed-envelope system. The suspense--not to mention the red-carpet arrival of nominees and other stars wearing their most beautiful or outrageous evening wear--continues to draw international attention to the film industry's biggest night of the year.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 5:18:00 PM
* 1717 - Writer Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille on this day in 1717.
The outspoken writer was born to middle-class parents, attended college in Paris, and began to study law. However, he quit law to become a playwright and made a name for himself with classical tragedies. Critics embraced his epic poem, La Henriade, but its satirical attack on politics and religion infuriated the government, and Voltaire was arrested in 1717. He spent nearly a year in the Bastille.
Voltaire's time in prison failed to dry up his satirical pen. In 1726, he was forced to flee to England. He returned several years later and continued to write plays. In 1734, his Lettres Philosophiques criticized established religions and political institutions, and he was forced to flee again. He retreated to the region of Champagne, where he lived with his mistress and patroness, Madame du Chatelet. In 1750, he moved to Berlin on the invitation of Frederick II of Prussia and later settled in Switzerland, where he wrote his best-known work, Candide. He died in Paris in 1778, having returned to supervise the production of one of his plays.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 3:21:53 PM
1963 - After 22 Earth orbits, Gordon Cooper returned to Earth, ending Project Mercury.
1969 - Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 5:57:25 AM
Coordinated Casablanca Bombings Kill 33 (2003)
In a single night in 2003, 12 suicide bombers detonated explosives over a short span of time at several locations in Casablanca, Morocco, including a Jewish community center, a Spanish restaurant, and the Belgian consulate. The coordinated bombings claimed 33 victims. Two terrorists were caught before they could carry out their missions, and many others were later arrested for their roles in what was the deadliest terrorist attack in Morocco's history.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 5:44:34 AM
1866 – The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 3:54:13 AM
On This Date in Delaware, May 16 ...
1648 With the Swedes still controlling the Delaware River, the eighth expedition from the homeland arrived in Wilmington with more trade goods, but few settlers. The colony now consisted of 79 men of whom only 28 were farmers.
1939 Old state records were transferred from the basement of Old Court House in Dover to the new state Hall of Records near Legislative Hall which had been completed the previous December.
1944 Sgt. Howard E. Massey of Dover was killed in action in Martino, Italy.
2007 A Virginia man charged with running a red light near Lewes causing a three vehicle pileup said he was bitten by a snake while driving. Strangely, when police arrived, the snake was nowhere to be found.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 16, 2013 3:31:20 AM
In 1951, the first regularly scheduled transatlantic flight began between Idlewild Airport (now JFK) and Heathrow Airport London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 5:48:02 PM
* 1756 - The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. However, fighting and skirmishes between England and France had been going on in North America for years.
In the early 1750s, French expansion into the Ohio River valley repeatedly brought France into armed conflict with the British colonies. In 1756--the first official year of fighting in the Seven Years War--the British suffered a series of defeats against the French and their broad network of Native American alliances. However, in 1757, British Prime Minister William Pitt (the older) recognized the potential of imperial expansion that would come out of victory against the French and borrowed heavily to fund an expanded war effort. Pitt financed Prussia's struggle against France and her allies in Europe and reimbursed the colonies for the raising of armies in North America.
By 1760, the French had been expelled from Canada, and by 1763 all of France's allies in Europe had either made a separate peace with Prussia or had been defeated. In addition, Spanish attempts to aid France in the Americas had failed, and France also suffered defeats against British forces in India.
The Seven Years War ended with the signing of the treaties of Hubertusburg and Paris in February 1763. In the Treaty of Paris, France lost all claims to Canada and gave Louisiana to Spain, while Britain received Spanish Florida, Upper Canada, and various French holdings overseas. The treaty ensured the colonial and maritime supremacy of Britain and strengthened the 13 American colonies by removing their European rivals to the north and the south. Fifteen years later, French bitterness over the loss of most of their colonial empire contributed to their intervention in the American Revolution on the side of the Patriots.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 11:24:31 AM
May 15, 1976: A young woman and her married lover kill her family.
Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca are arrested for the brutal slaying of Columbo's parents and brother in Elk Grove, Illinois. Twenty-year-old Columbo had left her family home two years earlier to live with DeLuca, a 36-year-old married man. The pair later killed Frank, Mary, and Michael Columbo in order to receive the family inheritance, unaware that the Columbos had written Patricia out of their wills years earlier.
As a 16-year-old, Columbo worked in a suburban coffee shop where she met pharmacist Frank DeLuca, who managed the pharmacy next door. He soon hired her to work in his store and the two began an unusual sexual relationship; Columbo showed classmates pictures of her having sex with DeLuca's dog.
In April 1974, DeLuca brought Columbo to stay in his own home, despite the fact that he still lived with his wife and five kids. Her parents were relieved when she later told them she was going to move into her own apartment, and even provided her with money. However, they soon learned that DeLuca had left his wife and moved in with their daughter, prompting Columbo's father to beat DeLuca severely.
On May 4, 1976, Patricia Columbo, then 19, and Frank DeLuca, 39, decided to carry out the plan themselves. They crept into the Columbo family home and shot Columbo's parents. They then bludgeoned Mike with a bowling trophy and stabbed him nearly 100 times with scissors. Police questioned Patricia but had no reason to suspect her until the following week.
Inspired by the promise of reward money, a friend led police to the men who had discussed killing the Columbo family with Patricia. After the couple was arrested, DeLuca's employees revealed that they had seen him washing and burning bloodstained clothes on the day after the murders. Apparently, he had kept them silent by threatening their families. While in jail, DeLuca attempted to have these witnesses killed by a cellmate, but another inmate thwarted the plan by telling the police.
The jury convicted Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca, and they were each sentenced to 200 to 300 years in prison. But Columbo managed to keep herself in the spotlight: In 1979, it was reported that she had assisted in organizing sex orgies involving guards and wardens at her prison in Dwight, Illinois. High-ranking officials at the prison, including the warden, were forced to resign in the wake of the scandal.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 5:17:22 AM
The Great Gold Robbery (1855)
On the night of May 15, 1855, a shipment of gold bars and coins was sent from London to Paris, first via the South Eastern Railway and then on a ship across the English Channel. When the shipment arrived in Boulogne, France, the containers—all of which were locked and sealed—were found to be missing a large amount of the gold, worth about 12,000 British pounds at the time. The missing weight had been replaced with lead shot. A group of men was later arrested for the theft.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 5:13:37 AM
1911 – In Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey v. United States, the United States Supreme Court declares Standard Oil to be an "unreasonable" monopoly under the Sherman Antitrust Act and orders the company to be broken up.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 3:19:35 AM
In 1817, the first private mental health hospital opened in the United States, named the Asylum for the relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 15, 2013 2:14:08 AM
This Day in Delaware History: May 15
1773 George Washington "Dined at Newcastle and lodg'd at Wilmington...." on his way to enroll his stepson John Parke Custis in King's College (Columbia University).
1891 The Delaware General Assembly chartered the Delaware State College for Colored Students (Delaware State University). Professor Wesley P. Webb was its first president.
1940 The Du Pont Company chose to launch the sale of nylon stockings to the nation and sold nearly four million pairs in four days.
1945 The next to last German U-boat to surrender in World War II, the U 858, Kapitainlieutenant Thilo Bode commanding, was brought into the Lewes Breakwater.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 7:26:17 PM
May 14, 1948: A brutal murder begins an unusual investigation.
Three-year-old June Devaney, recovering from pneumonia at Queen's Park Hospital in Blackburn, England, is kidnapped from her bed. Nurses discovered her missing at 1:20 a.m. the next day, and police were immediately summoned to investigate. Two hours later, her body was found with multiple skull fractures. The medical examiner determined that Devaney had been raped and then swung headfirst into a wall.
Two significant clues were found in the children's ward that would prove helpful in catching the killer: footprints on the freshly cleaned floor and a water bottle that had been moved. Although there were several fingerprints on the bottle, police were able to account for all but one set. These prints also failed to match any of those in the police's database of known criminals.
Investigators fingerprinted over 2,000 people who had access to the hospital. Still, they couldn't find a match. Detective Inspector John Capstick then went even further: He decided that every man in the town of Blackburn, a city with more than 25,000 homes, would be fingerprinted.
A procedure such as this would be impossible in the United States where Fourth Amendment protections prevent searches without probable cause. But the plan went into effect in Blackburn on May 23, with police assurances that the collected prints would be destroyed afterward. Two months later, the police had collected over 40,000 sets of prints yet still had not turned up a match. Checking against every registry they could find, authorities determined that there were still a few men in town who hadn't provided their prints.
On August 11, police caught up with one of these men, Peter Griffiths. His footprints matched the ones found at the scene. When his fingerprints also came back a match, he confessed to the awful crime, blaming it on alcohol.
Griffiths was found guilty of murder and was executed on November 19, 1948.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 8:48:45 AM
* 1955 - The Soviet Union and seven of its European satellites sign a treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization that put the Soviets in command of the armed forces of the member states.
The Warsaw Pact, so named because the treaty was signed in Warsaw, included the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria as members. The treaty called on the member states to come to the defense of any member attacked by an outside force and it set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union. The introduction to the treaty establishing the Warsaw Pact indicated the reason for its existence. This revolved around "Western Germany, which is being remilitarized, and her inclusion in the North Atlantic bloc, which increases the danger of a new war and creates a threat to the national security of peace-loving states." This passage referred to the decision by the United States and the other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on May 9, 1955 to make West Germany a member of NATO and allow that nation to remilitarize. The Soviets obviously saw this as a direct threat and responded with the Warsaw Pact.
The Warsaw Pact remained intact until 1991. Albania was expelled in 1962 because, believing that Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was deviating too much from strict Marxist orthodoxy, the country turned to communist China for aid and trade. In 1990, East Germany left the Pact and reunited with West Germany; the reunified Germany then became a member of NATO. The rise of non-communist governments in other eastern bloc nations, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, throughout 1990 and 1991 marked an effective end of the power of the Warsaw Pact. In March 1991, the military alliance component of the pact was dissolved and in July 1991, the last meeting of the political consultative body took place.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 5:47:56 AM
Seinfeld Series Finale Airs (1998)
One of the most successful situation comedies in the history of television, Seinfeld is often described as a show about nothing. Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld, the latter of whom starred as a fictionalized version of himself on the show, it featured a collection of selfish and neurotic characters obsessed with the minutiae of everyday life. After nine seasons, the series came to an end.
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Isaihi
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Illinois
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 5:12:15 AM
1804 – The Lewis and Clark Expedition departs from Camp Dubois and begins its historic journey by traveling up the Missouri River.
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frankbank
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Delaware
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 5:08:43 AM
THIS DAY IN DELAWARE HISTORY
On This Date in Delaware, May 14 ...
1945 The 7th War Loan Drive was held in Delaware and one of the honored guests was the Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. James P. Connor of Wilmington.
1985 A 7 by 10 foot, 353 lb. landing gear fell harmlessly from an Air Force C-5A Galaxy airplane from 6,000 feet in a field 1 1/2 miles northwest of Smyrna.
2001 A crowd of over 500 people gathered outside Newark's Deer Park Tavern and committed minor vandalism just before the establishment was to shut down for renovations.
2005 The Kalmar Nyckel, replica of the sailing vessel that brought the first Swedish settlers to Wilmington in 1638, rushed out into the Delaware River to rescue two Philadelphia brothers whose cabin cruiser had gone down near Pea Patch Island.
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lvskyguy
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 14, 2013 3:31:26 AM
In 1973, the United States first space station, Skylab, was launched.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 11:26:32 PM
Joe Louis (1914): Heavyweight boxer who began his amateur career at age 18, and after winning the National Amateur Athletic Union light heavyweight title in 1934, immediately turned professional. In 1937, Louis became the world heavyweight champion by knocking out James J. Braddock in the eighth round of the title bout. Upon announcing his retirement in 1949, the "Brown Bomber," as he was affectionately called by his fans, had defended his title 25 times and had scored 21 knockouts. Louis came out of retirement in 1950, losing a decision to Ezzard Charles. In 1951, Joe was knocked out by Rocky Marciano, after which he retired for good. Out of 71 professional fights, Louis was defeated only three times. He passed away in 1981.
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cgstach
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Chicago
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 10:58:05 AM
* 1846 - The U.S. Congress overwhelmingly votes in favor of President James K. Polk's request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas.
Under the threat of war, the United States had refrained from annexing Texas after the latter won independence from Mexico in 1836. But in 1844, President John Tyler restarted negotiations with the Republic of Texas, culminating with a Treaty of Annexation.
The treaty was defeated by a wide margin in the Senate because it would upset the slave state/free state balance between North and South and risked war with Mexico, which had broken off relations with the United States. But shortly before leaving office and with the support of President-elect Polk, Tyler managed to get the joint resolution passed on March 1, 1845. Texas was admitted to the union on December 29.
While Mexico didn't follow through with its threat to declare war, relations between the two nations remained tense over border disputes, and in July 1845, President Polk ordered troops into disputed lands that lay between the Neuces and Rio Grande rivers. In November, Polk sent the diplomat John Slidell to Mexico to seek boundary adjustments in return for the U.S. government's settlement of the claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico and also to make an offer to purchase California and New Mexico. After the mission failed, the U.S. army under Gen. Zachary Taylor advanced to the mouth of the Rio Grande, the river that the state of Texas claimed as its southern boundary.
Mexico, claiming that the boundary was the Nueces River to the northeast of the Rio Grande, considered the advance of Taylor's army an act of aggression and in April 1846 sent troops across the Rio Grande. Polk, in turn, declared the Mexican advance to be an invasion of U.S. soil, and on May 11, 1846, asked Congress to declare war on Mexico, which it did two days later.
After nearly two years of fighting, peace was established by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed on February 2, 1848. The Rio Grande was made the southern boundary of Texas, and California and New Mexico were ceded to the United States. In return, the United States paid Mexico the sum of $15 million and agreed to settle all claims of U.S. citizens against Mexico.
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rjojo40
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Las Vegas
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 9:08:44 AM
May 13, 1568: Mary Queen of Scots defeated.
At the Battle of Langside, the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, the regent of her son, King James VI of Scotland. During the battle, which was fought out in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, a cavalry charge routed Mary's 6,000 Catholic troops, and they fled the field. Three days later, Mary escaped to Cumberland, England, where she sought protection from Queen Elizabeth I.
In 1542, while just six days old, Mary ascended to the Scottish throne upon the death of her father, King James V. Her great-uncle was Henry VIII, the Tudor king of England. Mary's mother sent her to be raised in the French court, and in 1558 she married the French dauphin, who became King Francis II of France in 1559 and died in 1560. After Francis' death, Mary returned to Scotland to assume her designated role as the country's monarch. In 1565, she married her English cousin Lord Darnley, another Tudor, which reinforced her claim to the English throne and angered Queen Elizabeth.
In 1567, Darnley was mysteriously killed in an explosion at Kirk o' Field, and Mary's lover, James Hepburn, the earl of Bothwell, was the key suspect. Although Bothwell was acquitted of the charge, his marriage to Mary in the same year enraged the nobility, and Mary was forced to abdicate in favor of her son by Darnley, James. In 1568, she escaped from captivity and raised a substantial army but was defeated and fled to England. Queen Elizabeth I initially welcomed Mary but was soon forced to put her cousin under house arrest after Mary became the focus of various English Catholic and Spanish plots to overthrow her.
In 1586, a major Catholic plot to murder Elizabeth was uncovered, and Mary was brought to trial, convicted for complicity, and sentenced to death. On February 8, 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was beheaded for treason at Fotheringhay Castle in England. Her son, King James VI of Scotland, calmly accepted his mother's execution, and upon Queen Elizabeth's death in 1603, he became James I, king of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
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Isaihi
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 6:37:06 AM
1787 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts (the "First Fleet") to establish a penal colony in Australia.
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mister8tch
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 5:10:12 AM
Pope John Paul II Shot in Vatican City (1981)
In 1981, Pope John Paul II was shot in Vatican City's St. Peter's Square by Turkish terrorist Mehmet Ali Agca, who was captured and imprisoned. Although the pontiff was shot in the stomach, he recovered and publicly forgave his would-be assassin. In spite of the physical setback caused by the shooting, he continued to travel widely, eventually visiting 129 nations and increasing the international character of the papacy.
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lvskyguy
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 3:33:51 AM
In 1994, Johnny Carson made his last television appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.
[Edited by: lvskyguy at 5/13/2013 3:34:35 AM EST]
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thrtyrs
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Maine
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Message Posted: May 13, 2013 12:22:52 AM
First apparition of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, 1917.
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Joisygal
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New Jersey
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 11:54:41 PM
1847 - William Clayton invented the odometer.
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cgstach
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 4:41:13 PM
* 1957 - Race car driver A.J. Foyt (1935- ) scores his first professional victory, in a U.S. Automobile Club (USAC) midget car race in Kansas City, Missouri.
A tough-as-nails Texan, Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr. raced midget cars--smaller vehicles designed to be driven in races of shorter distances--and stock cars before moving up to bigger things in 1958, when he entered his first Indianapolis 500 race. Foyt won his first Indy 500 crown in 1961, when rival Eddie Sachs was forced to make a tire change in the final laps, giving Foyt the chance to overtake him and win with a then-record average speed of 139.13 mph.
The 1964 season saw Foyt earn a record-setting winning percentage of .769 with 10 wins in 13 races. His most important win that year came in the Indy 500, which he finished with an average speed of 147.45 mph. After a near-fatal crash in a stock car race in 1965--in which he broke his back, fractured his ankle and suffered severe chest injuries--Foyt came back to continue his string of impressive achievements. In 1967, he won his third Indy 500 in a car he had designed himself, with his father Tony as chief mechanic. Two weeks later, he traveled to France and won the 24 Hours of LeMans international competition with teammate Don Gurney. With a win at the Daytona 500 in 1972, Foyt became the first driver to win all three major races in motor sports: the Indy 500, the Daytona 500 and the 24 Hours of LeMans.
In addition to the records for most total victories (67), most national championships (7) and most victories in one season (10), Foyt also has the most consecutive Indy 500 starts: He competed in the race for 35 straight years. His fourth win came in 1977, when the 42-year-old Foyt screamed around the track at an average speed of 161.331 mph. Only two other men have equaled his record of four Indy 500 wins.
In 1989, Foyt became the first driver inducted into the brand-new Motor Sports Hall of Fame in Novi, Michigan. He practiced at the Indy 500 track in 1993, but retired on the first day of qualifying races. Apart from auto racing teams, Foyt's later business interests have included car dealerships, funeral homes, oil investments and thoroughbred racehorses.
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rjojo40
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 3:09:16 PM
May 12, 1963: Bob Dylan walks out on The Ed Sullivan Show.
By the end of the summer of 1963, Bob Dylan would be known to millions who watched or witnessed his performances at the March on Washington, and millions more who did not know Dylan himself would know and love his music thanks to Peter, Paul and Mary's smash-hit cover version of "Blowin' In The Wind." But back in May, Dylan was still just another aspiring musician with a passionate niche following but no national profile whatsoever. His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, had not yet been released, but he had secured what would surely be his big break with an invitation to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show. That appearance never happened. On May 12, 1963, the young and unknown Bob Dylan walked off the set of the country's highest-rated variety show after network censors rejected the song he planned on performing.
The song that caused the flap was "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," a satirical talking-blues number skewering the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and its tendency to see covert members of an international Communist conspiracy behind every tree. Dylan had auditioned "John Birch" days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show's producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing "John Birch." While many of the song's lyrics about hunting down "reds" were merely humorous—"Looked up my chimney hole/Looked down deep inside my toilet bowl/They got away!"—others that equated the John Birch Society's views with those of Adolf Hitler raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS's lawyers. Rather than choose a new number to perform or change his song's lyrics—as the Rolling Stones and the Doors would famously do in the years to come—Dylan stormed off the set in angry protest.
Or so goes the legend that helped establish Dylan's public reputation as an artist of uncompromising integrity. In reality, Bob Dylan was polite and respectful in declining to accede to the network's wishes. "I explained the situation to Bob and asked him if he wanted to do something else," recalls Ed Sullivan Show producer Bob Precht, "and Bob, quite appropriately, said 'No, this is what I want to do. If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the show.'" It hardly mattered whether Dylan's alleged tantrum was fact or reality. The story got widespread media attention in the days that followed, causing Ed Sullivan himself to denounce the network's decision in published interviews. In the end, however, the free publicity Bob Dylan received may have done more for his career than his abortive national-television appearance scheduled for this day in 1963 ever could have.
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mister8tch
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 5:31:33 AM
To expand upon the previous post...
Lindbergh Kidnapping.
The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was the abduction of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The toddler, 20 months old at the time, was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of March 1, 1932. Over two months later, on May 12, 1932, his body was discovered a short distance from the Lindberghs' home. A medical examination determined that the toddler had a massive skull fracture, which was determined to be the cause of death.
After an investigation that lasted more than two years, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the crime. In a trial that was held from January 2 to February 13, 1935, Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on April 3, 1936, at 8:44 in the evening. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end.
Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial "the biggest story since the Resurrection." The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the "Lindbergh Law", which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.
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lvskyguy
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 3:31:03 AM
In 1932, ten weeks after his abduction, infant Charles Lindbergh Jr. was found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindbergh home.
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frankbank
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 1:12:52 AM
THIS DAY IN DELAWARE HISTORY
On This Date in Delaware, May 12 ...
1945 Commander Louis A. Drexler, Jr. of Camden was killed by a sniper near Okinawa. Two weeks later Japanese kamikazes in the same area sank the destroyer USS Drexler, the ship that was named for his brother Henry who was awarded the Medal of Honor in 1924. Both were graduates of the Naval Academy.
1997 DelDOT archaeologists working on Route One uncovered a farm near Boyd's Corner in lower New Castle County once owned by Samuel and Henrietta Mahoe in 1727. Growing wheat for three decades, records showed Mahoe died hopelessly in debt.
2000 The University of Delaware baseball team lost to Hofstra in a 20 inning, 4 hour and 37 minute game, 3-2.
2003 Charles Murphy of Milford turned down $200,000 that he was offered for Delaware license plate #6.
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Isaihi
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Message Posted: May 12, 2013 1:07:23 AM
1941 – Konrad Zuse presents the Z3, the world's first working programmable, fully automatic computer, in Berlin.
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Joisygal
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Message Posted: May 11, 2013 11:54:42 PM
1927 - The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was founded.
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tckayaker
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Michigan
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Message Posted: May 11, 2013 9:56:13 PM
1924..Mercedes-Benz is formed by Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz merging their two companies..
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cgstach
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Message Posted: May 11, 2013 5:25:17 PM
* 1997 - Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov resigns after 19 moves in a game against Deep Blue, a chess-playing computer developed by scientists at IBM. This was the sixth and final game of their match, which Kasparov lost two games to one, with three draws.Kasparov, a chess prodigy from Azerbaijan, was a skillful chess player from childhood. At 21, Kasparov played Anatoly Karpov for the world title, but the 49-game match ended indecisively. The next year, Kasparov beat Karpov to become the youngest world champion in history. With a FIDE (Federation International des Echecs) score of 2800, and a streak of 12 world chess titles in a row, Kasparov was considered the greatest chess player in history going into his match with Deep Blue.Chess-playing computers had existed since the 1950s, but they initially saw little success against accomplished human players. That changed in 1985, when Carnegie Mellon doctoral student Feng-hsing Hsu developed a chess-playing computer named "Chiptest" that was designed to play chess at a higher level than its predecessors. Hsu and a classmate went to work for IBM, and in 1989 they were part of a team led by developer C.J. Tan that was charged with creating a computer capable of competing against the best chess players in the world. The resulting supercomputer, dubbed Deep Blue, could calculate many as 100 billion to 200 billion moves in the three minutes traditionally allotted to a player per move in standard chess.Kasparov first played Deep Blue in 1996. The grandmaster was known for his unpredictable play, and he was able to defeat the computer by switching strategies mid-game. In 1997, Kasparov abandoned his swashbuckling style, taking more of a wait-and-see approach; this played in the computer’s favor and is commonly pointed to as the reason for his defeat.The last game of the 1997 Kasparov v. Deep Blue match lasted only an hour. Deep Blue traded its bishop and rook for Kasparov’s queen, after sacrificing a knight to gain position on the board. The position left Kasparov defensive, but not helpless, and though he still had a playable position, Kasparov resigned--the first time in his career that he had conceded defeat. Grandmaster John Fedorowicz later gave voice to the chess community’s shock at Kasparov’s loss: "Everybody was surprised that he resigned because it didn't seem lost. We've all played this position before. It's a known position." Kasparov said of his decision, "I lost my fighting spirit."
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rjojo40
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Message Posted: May 11, 2013 3:02:58 PM
May 11, 1934: Dust storm sweeps from Great Plains across Eastern states.
On this day in 1934, a massive storm sends millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States as far east as New York, Boston and Atlanta.
At the time the Great Plains were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass, which held moisture in the earth and kept most of the soil from blowing away even during dry spells. By the early 20th century, however, farmers had plowed under much of the grass to create fields. The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 caused a great need for wheat, and farms began to push their fields to the limit, plowing under more and more grassland with the newly invented tractor. The plowing continued after the war, when the introduction of even more powerful gasoline tractors sped up the process. During the 1920s, wheat production increased by 300 percent, causing a glut in the market by 1931.
That year, a severe drought spread across the region. As crops died, wind began to carry dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed lands. The number of dust storms reported jumped from 14 in 1932 to 28 in 1933. The following year, the storms decreased in frequency but increased in intensity, culminating in the most severe storm yet in May 1934. Over a period of two days, high-level winds caught and carried some 350 million tons of silt all the way from the northern Great Plains to the eastern seaboard. According to The New York Times, dust "lodged itself in the eyes and throats of weeping and coughing New Yorkers," and even ships some 300 miles offshore saw dust collect on their decks.
The dust storms forced thousands of families from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico to uproot and migrate to California, where they were derisively known as "Okies"--no matter which state they were from. These transplants found life out West not much easier than what they had left, as work was scarce and pay meager during the worst years of the Great Depression.
Another massive storm on April 15, 1935--known as "Black Sunday"--brought even more attention to the desperate situation in the Great Plains region, which reporter Robert Geiger called the "Dust Bowl." That year, as part of its New Deal program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration began to enforce federal regulation of farming methods, including crop rotation, grass-seeding and new plowing methods. This worked to a point, reducing dust storms by up to 65 percent, but only the end of the drought in the fall of 1939 would truly bring relief.
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mister8tch
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Richmond
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Message Posted: May 11, 2013 6:17:10 AM
The Mount Everest Disaster (1996)
During the spring climbing season in 1996, 15 people died trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest, making it the deadliest season in the mountain's history. Eight of the deaths occurred on a single day in May, when climbers were caught by a fierce storm. The disaster was chronicled in a number of books, including one by journalist Jon Krakauer, who was on assignment writing about the commercialization and overcrowding of Everest.
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