On This Day

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

May 9 1992

Westray Mining Disaster

The Westray Mine is located in Pictou County, Nova Scotia. This mine was a new only opened 9 months earlier in September 1991.

Now this is a true tragedy in the sense at the time of the accident it is said it could have been prevented before hand. There had been constant complaints from workers claiming the workplace was unsafe since the mine opened. Owners and officials of the mine ignored negative feedback of the mine and its safety issues and claimed it was one of the safest mines to work in the country. The mine even received the J.T. Ryan Award for Safety for being one of the safest mines is Canada just days before the accident.

Even with the award received for safety, one of the top officials for the mine wrote a document only 3 months before stating the mine was an accident waiting to happen and if changes were not implemented soon then someone would surely died and guess what people did.

On May 9, 1992 at 5:18 in the morning, residents awoke to a massive blast, glass and debris blowing in their windows. It turns out a miner using a pick axe chipping at coal had hit something causing sparks to fall and ignite pockets of methane gas within the mine. The force of the explosion was so powerful it blew the mines entrance which was made out of steel more then a mile in the air. The force nearly obliterated the entrance leaving it sealed but rescue workers manage to get it.

Sadly enough 26 men died and only 15 bodies could be recovered from the site. After the accident questions started to arise and people wanted answers. Forged safety documents surfaced, reports on high levels of coal dust and improper ventilation surfaced along with reports and high methane levels.

It's sad when people have to die because of others greed. This story is considered to be a scandal or cover up to many.

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May 9, 1671

Captain Blood Attempts to Steal Crown Jewels

In London, Thomas Blood, an Irish adventurer better known as "Captain Blood," is captured attempting to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.

Blood, a Parliamentarian during the English Civil War, was deprived of his estate in Ireland with the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660. In 1663, he put himself at the head of a plot to seize Dublin Castle from supporters of King Charles II, but the plot was discovered and his accomplices executed. He escaped capture. In 1671, he hatched a bizarre plan to steal the new Crown Jewels, which had been refashioned by Charles II because most of the original jewels were melted down after Charles I's execution in 1649.

On May 9, 1671, Blood, disguised as a priest, managed to convince the Jewel House keeper to hand over his pistols. Blood's three accomplices then emerged from the shadows, and together they forced their way into the Jewel House. However, they were caught in the act when the keeper's son showed up unexpectedly, and an alarm went out to the Tower guard. One man shoved the Royal Orb down his breeches while Blood flattened the Crown with a mallet and tried to run off with it. The Tower guards apprehended and arrested all four of the perpetrators, and Blood was brought before the king. Charles was so impressed with Blood's audacity that, far from punishing him, he restored his estates in Ireland and made him a member of his court with an annual pension.

Captain Blood became a colorful celebrity all across the kingdom, and when he died in 1680 his body had to be exhumed in order to persuade the public that he was actually dead.

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May 9, 1978

Aldo Moro Found Dead

On May 9, 1978, the body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro is found, riddled by bullets, in the back of a car in the center of historic Rome. He was kidnapped by Red Brigade terrorists on March 16 after a bloody shoot-out near his suburban home. The Italian government refused to negotiate with the extreme left-wing group, which, after numerous threats, executed Moro on May 9. He was a five-time prime minister of Italy and considered a front-runner for the presidency of Italy in elections due in December.

Aldo Moro was regarded by many as Italy's most capable post-World War II politician. A centrist leader of the Christian Democratic Party, he served five times as prime minister in the 1960s and 1970s and promoted cooperation between Italy's disparate political parties. When he formed his first cabinet in 1963, he included some Socialists, who were thus participating in the Italian government for the first time in 16 years. Moro last served as prime minister in 1976, and in October 1976 became president of the Christian Democrats.

On March 11, 1978, he helped end a government crisis when he worked out a parliamentary coalition between the Communist Party and the dominant Christian Democrats. Just five days later, Mr. Moro's car was attacked by a dozen armed Red Brigade terrorists. His five guards were killed, and Moro was abducted and taken to a secret location. On March 18, the Red Brigade issued a communique claiming responsibility for the kidnapping and stating that Moro would undergo a "people's trial."

The Red Brigade, established in 1970 by Italian Renato Curcio, employed bombings, assassinations, kidnappings, and bank robberies as a means of promoting communist revolution in Italy. The Italian Communist Party, which supported democracy and participated in Parliament, condemned the terrorist Red Brigade, and the Red Brigade accused the Communist Party of being a pawn of the bourgeoisie. Renato Curcio and 12 other Red Brigade members were on trial in Turin when Moro was kidnapped, and legal proceedings were only briefly halted after his abduction.

The Italian government declined to negotiate with the kidnappers, claiming that such an action would undermine the state and throw Italy into chaos. Some critics accused the Christian Democrats of yielding to pressure from the Communist Party, whose leaders were even more strongly opposed to a dialogue with the Red Brigade. Police and the army arrested hundreds of suspected terrorists and scoured the country looking for the "people's prison" where Moro was being held but failed to find any solid clues.

On March 19 and April 4, letters apparently freely written by Moro were delivered pleading with the government to negotiate. The government attempted secret talks, but on April 15 the Red Brigade rejected these negotiations and announced that Moro had been found guilty in the people's trial and sentenced to death. Threats to execute him led nowhere, and on April 24 the terrorists demanded the release of 13 Red Brigade members held in Turin in exchange for Moro's life. On May 7, Moro sent a farewell letter to his wife, saying, "They have told me that they are going to kill me in a little while, I kiss you for the last time." Two days later, his body was found on Via Caetani, within 300 yards of the headquarters of the Christian Democrats and 200 yards from the Communist Party headquarters.

According to a wish expressed by Moro during his abduction, no Italian politicians were invited to his funeral. During the next decade, many Red Brigade leaders and members were arrested, and the organization was greatly weakened.

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May 9, 1997

Cunanan Continues Murder Spree

The body of William Reese, 45, a cemetery caretaker, is found in rural Pennsville, New Jersey, on May 9, 1997. He had been shot in the head with a Golden Saber .38-caliber bullet. Police soon determined that the killer was Andrew Cunanan, a 27-year-old man already wanted for three murders. It appeared that Cunanan had killed Reese in the process of stealing his Chevrolet pick-up.

Cunanan spent most of his adult life as the kept companion of wealthy older men, living a very expensive lifestyle in San Diego, California, that was far beyond his own means. In April 1997, Cunanan told his friends that he was moving to San Francisco. However, he actually bought a one-way ticket to Minnesota after begging his credit card company to extend his credit limit.

In Minnesota, Cunanan met up with David Madson, whom he had briefly dated in the past. Apparently, Cunanan went there in an attempt to continue the relationship. On April 27, Jeffrey Trail, an acquaintance of both Cunanan and Madson, met the two at Madson's apartment, but the details of what happened there are still unknown. Authorities know only that Cunanan killed Trail with a hammer and then went to East Rush Lake, where he killed Madson two days later with one shot to the head.

Cunanan then took Madson's jeep and drove to Chicago where he found his next victim: 72-year-old millionaire Lee Miglin. Miglin was bound by duct tape, stabbed with gardening shears, and then killed when Cunanan cut his throat with a saw. Cunanan then drove east to New Jersey in Miglin's Lexus, where he killed Reese and escaped with his car.

A massive manhunt ensued when the FBI placed Cunanan on its Ten Most Wanted List. The press ran with the story, and Cunanan was featured multiple times on television’s America's Most Wanted. Police believe that Cunanan spent a few days in New York City’s Greenwich Village before driving south to Miami, where on July 15, he killed famous fashion designer Gianni Versace outside his South Beach mansion

On July 23, Fernando Carreira, the caretaker of a houseboat in Miami, found an intruder on the boat and called police. Apparently sensing his capture, Cunanan shot himself in the head, but police, unaware, engaged in a five-hour standoff with the already dead killer.

No solid motive for Cunanan's murders has emerged, although rumors abound that he was HIV positive and sought to take revenge for his condition. In the end, Cunanan lived up to his high school classmate's billing as the student "most likely not to be forgotten."

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May 9, 1914

Woodrow Wilson Proclaims the First Mother’s Day Holiday

On this day in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson issues a presidential proclamation that officially establishes the first national Mother’s Day holiday to celebrate America’s mothers.

The idea for a “Mother’s Day” is credited by some to Julia Ward Howe (1872) and by others to Anna Jarvis (1907), who both suggested a holiday dedicated to a day of peace. Many individual states celebrated Mother’s Day by 1911, but it was not until Wilson lobbied Congress in 1914 that Mother’s Day was officially set on the second Sunday of every May. In his first Mother’s Day proclamation, Wilson stated that the holiday offered a chance to "[publicly express] our love and reverence for the mothers of our country."

In 2002, President George W. Bush echoed Wilson’s sentiments by acknowledging mothers in his official statement on Mother’s Day in 2002. He commended foster mothers as well as his own “fabulous mother” for their “love and sacrifice.” He also mentioned past presidents’ expressions of appreciation for their mothers. He quoted John Quincy Adams as having said "all that I am my mother made me" and Abraham Lincoln’s sentiment that “all that I am or hope to be I owe to my angel mother…[my mother's prayers] have clung to me all my life." Bush’s own mother, Barbara, was a popular first lady when the elder Bush served as president from 1989 to 1992.

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May 9, 1945

Herman Goering is Captured by the U.S. Seventh Army

On this day in 1945, Herman Goering, commander in chief of the Luftwaffe, president of the Reichstag, head of the Gestapo, prime minister of Prussia, and Hitler's designated successor is taken prisoner by the U.S. Seventh Army in Bavaria.

Goering was an early member of the Nazi Party and was wounded in the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. That wound would have long-term effects; Goering became increasingly addicted to painkillers. Not long after Hitler's accession to power, Goering was instrumental in creating concentration camps for political enemies. Ostentatious and self-indulgent, he changed his uniform five times a day and was notorious for flaunting his decorations, jewelry, and stolen artwork. It was Goering who ordered the purging of German Jews from the economy following the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, initiating an "Aryanization" policy that confiscated Jewish property and businesses.

Goering's failure to win the Battle of Britain and prevent the Allied bombing of Germany led to his loss of stature within the Party, aggravated by the low esteem with which he was always held by fellow officers because of his egocentrism and position as Hitler's right-hand man. As the war progressed, he dropped into depressions and battled drug addiction.

When Goering fell into U.S. hands after Germany's surrender, he had in his possession a rich stash of pills. He was tried at Nuremberg and charged with various crimes against humanity. Despite a vigorous attempt at self acquittal, he was found guilty and sentenced to be hanged, but before he could be executed, he committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide tablet he had hidden from his guards.

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Tuesday, May 9, 2006.

After being trapped underground for fourteen nights, Tasmanian miners Todd Russell and Brant Webb finally walk free.

Beaconsfield is a small town in the northeast of Tasmania, Australia, about 39 km north west of Launceston on the West Tamar Highway. The district was first settled in 1805 and became a centre for limestone quarrying. The mining of limestone led to the discovery of gold in 1869 which caused the area to boom immensely, and by 1881 Beaconsfield was known as the richest gold town in Tasmania.

On the evening of Anzac Day, 25 April 2006, a small earthquake caused a rock fall in the mine. Eleven miners came out safely, but three remained trapped in the shaft about 1 kilometre below the ground. On the morning of the 27 April the body of 44-year-old Larry Knight was found in the shaft. On the evening of the 30 April 2006, the other two miners were discovered to be alive, after being trapped in the mine for five days. Their survival was claimed as nothing less than a miracle. They were protected by the 1.2m square cage they were in at the time, and which was where they spent most of their following fourteen days. Brant Webb, 37, and Todd Russell, 35, survived by drinking mineralised water that dripped from the rocks throughout the mine. The family of Larry Knight put aside their grief to share the jubilation of the rest of the town.

The operation to rescue the trapped miners was a long and difficult one, as numerous obstacles were faced. The men were sustained by food, water, medicines and other vital goods sent down to them through piping sent through a smaller tunnel drilled through the rock. Paul Featherstone, instrumental in the rescue of Thredbo survivor Stuart Diver, also played a vital role in this rescue. Webb and Russell were finally freed at 4:47am on Tuesday, 9 May 2006, the same day selected for Larry Knight's funeral. A bell at Beaconsfield's Uniting Church, which had not been rung since the announcement of the end of WWII, pealed in celebration as the news broke, and residents immediately started to converge on the mine site. The men did not surface for another hour, as they were initially taken by 4WD to the mine's "crib room", a room the size of a cafeteria, about 700 metres below the ground, for recovery and health checks. The cage lift brought the men to the surface just before 6:00am.

In another sad twist, long-time Australian television personality, reporter Richard Carlton who was with channel 9's "60 minutes", collapsed and died after a press conference held at the site, just two days before the men were freed. Carlton threw the Beaconsfield mine situation and its apparent dangers into the spotlight during the press conference. His final story for 60 Minutes - an investigation into the Beaconsfield disaster - ran just hours after his death.

(This article was posted on April 30 as they were discovered after 5 days but the rescue effort took an agonising 8 days and 9 nights)

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Thursday, May 9, 1901

The Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, opens the first Commonwealth Parliament in Australia.

Prior to 1901, Australia was made up of six self-governing colonies; New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania. These colonies were ultimately under British rule from the time the First Fleet landed, in 1788, until 1901. Numerous politicians and influential Australians through the years had pushed for federation of the colonies, and self-government. After not being accepted by the states the first time, the amended Commonwealth Constitution was given Royal Assent on 9 July 1900.

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved and the Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed. Australia's first Governor-General, John Hope, made the proclamation at Centennial Park in Sydney. Australia's first Prime Minister was Edmund Barton. The first Australian Federal Parliament, held in the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne which was the only building large enough to house the 14,000 guests, was opened by the Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, on 9 May 1901.

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Enjoy Wink

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

May 10, 1869

Transcontinental Railroad Completed

On this day in 1869, the presidents of the Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads meet in Promontory, Utah, and drive a ceremonial last spike into a rail line that connects their railroads. This made transcontinental railroad travel possible for the first time in U.S. history. No longer would western-bound travelers need to take the long and dangerous journey by wagon train, and the West would surely lose some of its wild charm with the new connection to the civilized East.

Since at least 1832, both Eastern and frontier statesmen realized a need to connect the two coasts. It was not until 1853, though, that Congress appropriated funds to survey several routes for the transcontinental railroad. The actual building of the railroad would have to wait even longer, as North-South tensions prevented Congress from reaching an agreement on where the line would begin.

One year into the Civil War, a Republican-controlled Congress passed the Pacific Railroad Act (1862), guaranteeing public land grants and loans to the two railroads it chose to build the transcontinental line, the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific. With these in hand, the railroads began work in 1866 from Omaha and Sacramento, forging a northern route across the country. In their eagerness for land, the two lines built right past each other, and the final meeting place had to be renegotiated.

Harsh winters, staggering summer heat, Indian raids and the lawless, rough-and-tumble conditions of newly settled western towns made conditions for the Union Pacific laborers--mainly Civil War veterans of Irish descent--miserable. The overwhelmingly immigrant Chinese work force of the Central Pacific also had its fair share of problems, including brutal 12-hour work days laying tracks over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. On more than one occasion, whole crews would be lost to avalanches, or mishaps with explosives would leave several dead.

For all the adversity they suffered, the Union Pacific and Central Pacific workers were able to finish the railroad--laying nearly 2,000 miles of track--by 1869, ahead of schedule and under budget. Journeys that had taken months by wagon train or weeks by boat now took only days. Their work had an immediate impact: The years following the construction of the railway were years of rapid growth and expansion for the United States, due in large part to the speed and ease of travel that the railroad provided.

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May 10, 1940

Churchill Becomes Prime Minister

Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, is called to replace Neville Chamberlain as British prime minister following the latter's resignation after losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons.

In 1938, Prime Minister Chamberlain signed the Munich Pact with Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, giving Czechoslovakia over to German conquest but bringing, as Chamberlain promised, "peace in our time." In September 1939, that peace was shattered by Hitler's invasion of Poland. Chamberlain declared war against Germany but during the next eight months showed himself to be ill-equipped for the daunting task of saving Europe from Nazi conquest. After British forces failed to prevent the German occupation of Norway in April 1940, Chamberlain lost the support of many members of his Conservative Party. On May 10, Hitler invaded Holland, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The same day, Chamberlain formally lost the confidence of the House of Commons.

Churchill, who was known for his military leadership ability, was appointed British prime minister in his place. He formed an all-party coalition and quickly won the popular support of Britons. On May 13, in his first speech before the House of Commons, Prime Minister Churchill declared that "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat" and offered an outline of his bold plans for British resistance. In the first year of his administration, Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany, but Churchill promised his country and the world that the British people would "never surrender." They never did.

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May 10, 1922

1,000th Rickenbacker Produced

The 1,000th Rickenbacker car was produced. Named after the company co-founder, American World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, the Rickenbacker Car Company took off in 1922. Rickenbacker, a national darling for his dogfighting exploits, passed on offers from the aviation industry in Washington and from the movie studios in Hollywood in order to start his own car company. In January of 1922, the Rickenbacker car debuted at the New York Auto Show. Priced at $1,500 and equipped with a powerful V-6 and a flywheel at both ends of the crankshaft to reduce the teeth-chattering vibration to which consumers had become accustomed, the Rickenbacker sold 1,500 units on its first day. In two years the company climbed from 83rd in the industry to 19th. "The Car Worthy of the Name," as it was called, was also the first model to introduce four-wheel braking into the economy car class. The 1925 Rickenbacker came with a V-8 and the snappy "hat in the ring" emblem that Rickenbacker's squadron had painted on their planes. In 1926, Rickenbacker marketed the Super Sport as "America's Fastest and Most Beautiful Stock Car." But Rickenbacker resigned in September of that year, and four months later his company was dead. The rapid demise of Rickenbacker owes partly to the public's mistrust of the company's early introduction of front-wheel breaking, but more to the fragile ego of its war-hero founder. During a period of cutthroat price wars, Rickenbacker came under heavy personal criticism at the hands of automobile dealers, who taunted him, "You're a hero today and a bum tomorrow." Rickenbacker could not separate his company's policies from his person and, injured, he resigned. The company was grounded without its captain's name.

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May 10, 1996

Death on Mount Everest

Eight climbers die on Mount Everest during a storm on this day in 1996. It was the worst loss of life ever on the mountain on a single day. Author Jon Krakauer, who himself attempted to climb the peak that year, wrote a best-selling book about the incident, Into Thin Air, which was published in 1997. A total of 15 people perished during the spring 1996 climbing season at Everest. Between 1980 and 2002, 91 climbers died during the attempt.

Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest mountain, in 1953. Though incredibly difficult and dangerous to climb, by the mid-1990s technology had advanced to the point that even intermediate-level climbers could make the attempt with the assistance of expert guides. In 1996, an unprecedented 17 expeditions--hundreds of climbers--attempted to scale the Himalayan peak. One of these included Sandy Pittman, an only moderately experienced climber.

Pittman, the socialite wife of legendary television businessman Bob Pittman, joined expert guide Scott Fischer's team and was acting as a web correspondent for NBC Interactive Media. In her first report, she wrote: "I have got as much in the way of computers and electronic hardware as I have climbing equipment: two portable microcomputers, a camcorder, three 35 mm cameras, a digital camera, two tape recorders, a CD player, a printer and a sufficient quantity (I hope) of solar panels and batteries to make the whole lot operate. I would not like to leave without taking a blend of coffee from Dean & DeLuca, as well as my espresso machine. And because we will be on Everest for Easter, I have also taken four chocolate eggs. Hunting for Easter eggs at 5,000 meters should be interesting." All of these items were carried up the mountain not by Pittman, but by Lopsang Jangbu Sherpa, an employee of the Fischer team. Furthermore, Pittman planned a meeting with her friends--including Martha Stewart--at the base camp and reportedly had the latest copies of Vogue and Vanity Fair ferried up to her at the camp while the team acclimatized to the high altitude of the Himalayas.

Disaster struck on May 10 as four different expeditions all attempted to reach the summit. Guide Anatoli Boukreev took his team to the top early in the day, with Rob Hall and Scott Fischer's teamclose behind. When a powerful storm came up suddenly, the climbers were trapped in a precarious position. Even strong and experienced climbers such as Hall and Fischer, both Everest veterans, could only struggle short distances down the peak. Boukreev descended to the nearest camp without his clients, ostensibly to be in a better position to rescue them. (In his book, Krakauer was highly critical of this move. Boukreev countered Krakauer's version of the story with his own in The Climb, published in 1997.)

Hall and Fischer stayed with their clients but the continuing storm made everyone vulnerable to death as oxygen supplies ran out. Although technology allowed Rob Hall to talk to his wife in New Zealand by satellite phone, there was nothing that could be done to save eight of the climbers, including both Hall and Fischer, who could not make it back to camp. Pittman survived with only minor frostbite. Krakauer blamed the inexperienced climbers and the guides who agreed to lead them--in return for large sums of money--for the tragedy.

Ninety-eight other climbers made it to the peak of Everest in the spring of 1996.

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May 10, 1954

"Rock Around the Clock" Released

"Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and the Comets is released. A year later, the song became the first rock and roll number to top the charts.

When the song was first released, it barely made the pop charts, spending only one week at No. 23. A year later, though, it became a hit after producer James Myers sent copies of the song to dozens of Hollywood producers and suggested they use it in a movie. The producers of Blackboard Jungle (1955), a controversial film about juvenile delinquency, selected the song as the movie's opening music. After the movie opened, sales of "Rock Around the Clock" skyrocketed, selling six million copies by the end of 1955. The song climbed to the top of the charts in July 1955, becoming the first rock and roll song to reach No. 1.

Although rock and roll had been around since the late 1940s, the sound didn't penetrate into the white American mainstream until Haley drew attention to the style, paving the way for future rock and roll artists of all races. He made his first record, Candy Kisses, when he was 18 and spent four years on the road with a series of country-western bands. He worked as a disc jockey under the name "The Ramblin' Yodeler" and performed regularly on the radio with his band the Four Aces of Western Swing, but the band's songs never hit it big.

In the early 1950s, Haley changed direction and began playing the new, upbeat style that came to be known as rock and roll. The group recorded a cover of Jimmy Preston's "Rock the Joint," which sold 75,000 copies. The following year, Haley's original "Crazy Man, Crazy" became the first rock and roll record to make the Billboard Top 10. In addition to being the theme song for The Blackboard Jungle, his song "Rock Around the Clock" was also featured on the television dance show American Bandstand.

By the mid-1950s, Haley was one of the world's most popular performers, and he racked up 12 Top 40 hits in 1955-56, including "See You Later, Alligator." His last Top 40 hit was "Skinny Minnie," recorded in 1958, but throughout the 1970s Haley and his band traveled with the "Rock 'n' Roll Revival" show, documented in the 1973 film Let the Good Times Roll. He had sold an estimated 60 million records by the time he died of a heart attack in 1981. Five years later, he became one of the first inductees into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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May 10, 1877

Hayes Has First Phone Installed in White House

On this day in 1877, President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House’s first telephone installed in the mansion’s telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received phone calls. In fact, the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. The White House phone number was “1.” Phone service throughout the country was in its infancy in 1877. It was not until a year later that the first telephone exchange was set up in Connecticut and it would be 50 more years until President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone line installed at the president’s desk in the Oval Office.

In more recent years, presidential phone recordings have given the public insight into the personalities and political maneuvers of the nation’s leaders. On such tapes, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Harry Truman were frequently heard using profanity or openly criticizing political opponents without the constraints of being in the public eye or having to maintain a facade of presidential decorum. Most of the time those on the other end of the White House phone line had no knowledge they were being taped.

Since 1990, the National Archives and Records Administration has released to the public presidential phone recordings regarding subjects such as Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis; Johnson's increase in the number of U.S. troops sent to Vietnam; and Nixon's appointment of William Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court. American Radio Works® states Nixon left behind more taped phone recordings than any other president, a fact that led to his political undoing in 1973 when Watergate investigators subpoenaed tapes and transcripts of close to 3,700 hours of Nixon’s phone recordings. Since Nixon’s administration, declassified transcripts or sound recordings have become increasingly available to the public in print and online.

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May 10, 1969

Operation Apache Snow is Launched

The U.S. 9th Marine Regiment and the 3rd Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division, along with South Vietnamese forces, commence Operation Apache Snow in the A Shau Valley in western Thua Thien Province. The purpose of the operation was to cut off the North Vietnamese and prevent them from mounting an attack on the coastal provinces.

The operation began with a heliborne assault along the Laotian border and then a sweep back to the east. First contact with the enemy was made by a rifle company from the 101st Airborne on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. Entrenched in prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault and on May 14 beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry. An intense battle raged for the next 10 days and the mountain came under heavy Allied air strikes, artillery barrages, and 10 infantry assaults. On May 20, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st, sent in two additional U.S. airborne battalions and a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements. The communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack, when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way up to the summit of the mountain. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos.

During the intense fighting, 597 North Vietnamese were reported killed and U.S. casualties were 56 killed and 420 wounded. Due to the bitter fighting and the high loss of life, the battle for Ap Bia Mountain received widespread unfavorable publicity in the United States and American media dubbed it "Hamburger Hill," a name evidently derived from the fact that the battle turned into a "meat grinder." Since the operation was not intended to hold territory but rather to keep the North Vietnamese Army off-balance, the mountain was abandoned soon after the battle and occupied by the North Vietnamese a month later.

American public outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives was exacerbated by publication in Life magazine of the pictures of the 241 U.S. soldiers killed the week of the Hamburger Hill battle. Gen. Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was ordered by the White House to avoid such battles. Because of Hamburger Hill, and other battles like it, the U.S. started to shift its policy towards Vietnamization, wherein primary responsibility for the fighting would be handed over to the South Vietnamese.

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May 10, 1865

Jefferson Davis Captured

Jefferson Davis, president of the fallen Confederate government, is captured with his wife and entourage near Irwinville, Georgia, by a detachment of Union General James H. Wilson's cavalry.

On April 2, 1865, with the Confederate defeat at Petersburg, Virginia imminent, General Robert E. Lee informed President Davis that he could no longer protect Richmond and advised the Confederate government to evacuate its capital. Davis and his cabinet fled to Danville, Virginia, and with Robert E. Lee's surrender on April 9, deep into the South. Lee's surrender of his massive Army of Northern Virginia effectively ended the Civil War, and during the next few weeks the remaining Confederate armies surrendered one by one. Davis was devastated by the fall of the Confederacy. Refusing to admit defeat, he hoped to flee to a sympathetic foreign nation such as Britain or France, and was weighing the merits of forming a government in exile when he was arrested by a detachment of the 4th Michigan Cavalry.

A certain amount of controversy surrounds his capture, as Davis was wearing his wife's black shawl when the Union troops cornered him. The Northern press ridiculed him as a coward, alleging that he had disguised himself as a woman in an ill-fated attempt to escape. However, Davis, and especially his wife, Varina, maintained that he was ill and that Varina had lent him her shawl to keep his health up during their difficult journey.

Imprisoned for two years at Fort Monroe, Virginia, Davis was indicted for treason, but was never tried--the federal government feared that Davis would be able prove to a jury that the Southern secession of 1860 to 1861 was legal. Varina worked determinedly to secure his freedom, and in May 1867 Jefferson Davis was released on bail, with several wealthy Northerners helping him pay for his freedom.

After a number of unsuccessful business ventures, he retired to Beauvoir, his home near Biloxi, Mississippi, and began writing his two-volume memoir The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881). He died in 1889 and was buried at New Orleans; four years later, his body was moved to its permanent resting spot in Richmond, Virginia.

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May 10, 1994

Nelson Mandela Inaugurated

In South Africa, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. In his inaugural address, Mandela, who spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner of the South African government, declared that "the time for the healing of the wounds has come." Two weeks earlier, more than 22 million South Africans had turned out to cast ballots in the country's first-ever multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party to lead the country.

Mandela, born in 1918, was the son of the chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. Instead of succeeding his father as chief, Mandela went to university and became a lawyer. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization dedicated to winning rights for the black majority in white-ruled South Africa. In 1948, the racist National Party came to power, and apartheid--South Africa's institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation--became official government policy. With the loss of black rights under apartheid, black enrollment in the ANC rapidly grew. Mandela became one of the ANC's leaders and in 1952 was made deputy national president of the ANC. He organized nonviolent strikes, boycotts, marches, and other acts of civil disobedience.

After the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Nelson helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in acts of sabotage against the white minority government. He was tried for and acquitted of treason in 1961 but in 1962 was arrested again for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1963 with seven others on charges of sabotage, treason, and conspiracy. In the celebrated Rivonia Trial, named after the suburb of Johannesburg where ANC weapons were found, Mandela eloquently defended his actions. On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison. He was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He could write and receive a letter once every six months, and once a year he was allowed to meet with a visitor for 30 minutes. However, Mandela's resolve remained unbroken, and while remaining the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, he led a movement of civil disobedience at the prison that coerced South African officials into drastically improving conditions on Robben Island. In 1982 he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 to a cottage, where he lived under house arrest.

In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and set about dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and on February 11, 1990, ordered the release of Nelson Mandela. Mandela subsequently led the ANC in its negotiations with the minority government for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 26, 1994, the country's first free elections were won by Mandela and the ANC, and a "national unity" coalition was formed with de Klerk's National Party and the Zulus' Inkatha Freedom Party. On May 10, Mandela was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by numerous international dignitaries.

As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights violations under apartheid and introduced numerous initiatives designed to improve the living standards of South Africa's black population. In 1996, he presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution. Mandela retired from politics in June 1999 at the age of 80. He was succeeded as president by Thabo Mbeki of the ANC.

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May 10, 1863

Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson Dies

The South loses one of its boldest and most colorful generals on this day. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson died of pneumonia a week after losing his arm when his own troops accidentally fired on him during the Battle of Chancellorsville. In the first two years of the war, Jackson terrorized Union commanders and led his army corps on bold and daring marches. He was the perfect complement to Robert E. Lee.

A native Virginian, Jackson grew up in poverty in Clarksburg, in the mountains of what is now West Virginia. Orphaned at an early age, Jackson was raised by relatives and became a shy, lonely young man. He had only a rudimentary education but secured an appointment to West Point after another young man from the same congressional district turned his appointment down. Despite poor preparation, Jackson worked hard and graduated 17th in a class of 59 cadets.

Upon graduating, Jackson served as an artillery officer during the Mexican War, seeing action at Vera Cruz and Chapultepec. He earned three brevets for bravery in just six months and then left the service in 1850 to teach at Virginia Military Institute. He was known as a difficult and eccentric classroom instructor, prone to strange and impromptu gestures in class. He was also a devout Presbyterian who refused to even talk of secular matters on the Sabbath. In 1859, he led a group of VMI cadets to serve as gallows guards for the hanging of John Brown.

When war broke out in 1861, Jackson became a brigadier general in command of five regiments raised in the Shenandoah Valley. At the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, Jackson earned distinction by leading the attack that secured an advantage for the Confederates. Confederate General Bernard Bee, trying to inspire his troops, exclaimed "there stands Jackson like a stone wall," and provided one of the most enduring monikers in history.

By 1862, Jackson was recognized as one of the most effective commanders in the Confederate army. Leading his force on one of the most brilliant campaigns in military history during the summer of 1862, Jackson marched around the Shenandoah Valley and held off three Union armies while providing relief for Confederates pinned down on the James Peninsula by George McClellan's army. He later rejoined the Army of Northern Virginia for the Seven Days battles, and his leadership was brilliant at Second Bull Run in August 1862. He soon became Lee's most trusted corps commander.

The Battle of Chancellorsville was Lee's and Jackson's shining moment. Despite the fact that they faced an army twice the size of theirs, Lee daringly split his force and sent Jackson around the Union flank—a move that resulted in perhaps the Army of the Potomac's most stunning defeat of the war. When nightfall halted the attack, Jackson rode forward to reconnoiter the territory for another assault. But as he and his aides rode back to the lines, a group of Rebels opened fire. Jackson was hit three times, and a Southern bullet shattered his left arm. His arm had to be amputated the next day. Soon, pneumonia set in, and Jackson quickly began to fade. He died, as he had wished, on the Sabbath, May 10, 1863, with these last words: "Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees."

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May 10, 1940

As Germany invades Holland and Belgium, Winston Churchill Becomes Prime Minister of Great Britain

On this day in 1940, Hitler begins his Western offensive with the radio code word "Danzig," sending his forces into Holland and Belgium. On this same day, having lost the support of the Labour Party, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigns; Winston Churchill accedes to the office, becoming defense minister as well.

As British and French Allied forces attempted to meet the 136 German divisions breaking into Holland and Belgium on the ground, 2,500 German aircraft proceeded to bomb airfields in Belgium, Holland, France, and Luxembourg, and 16,000 German airborne troops parachuted into Rotterdam, Leiden, and The Hague. A hundred more German troops, employing air gliders, landed and seized the Belgian bridges across the Albert Canal. The Dutch army was defeated in five days. One day after the invasion of Belgium, the garrison at Fort Eben-Emael surrendered, outmanned and outgunned by the Germans.

The Dutch and Belgian governments immediately appealed to Britain for help. Neville Chamberlain pleaded to Parliament that a coalition government, of Liberals and Labour, would be necessary to generate support for a war effort, especially given the lethargy that infected Britain, still reeling from World War I. Labour demonstrated no support for Chamberlain, preferring Churchill, who they thought better able to prosecute a war. As one member of Parliament put it: "Winston-our hope-he may yet save civilization." Great Britain had finally come to take the Nazi threat seriously.

Also on this day, in 1941, Rudolf Hess parachutes into Scotland in an attempt to negotiate a truce between Britain and Germany

On May 10, the day Hitler planned to invade Russia, and German bombs dropped on London in a spring "blitz," Hess parachuted into Scotland, hoping to negotiate peace with Britain, in the person of the Duke of Hamilton, whom Hess claimed to have met at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Such a peace would have prevented Germany from fighting on two fronts and greatly increased Hess's own prestige within the Nazi regime.

He did, in fact, find peace-in the Tower of London, where the British imprisoned him, the last man ever to be held there under lock and key.

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May 10, 1924

J. Edgar Hoover Begins his Legacy with the FBI

J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on this day in 1924.

By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century.

Hoover first became involved in law enforcement as a special assistant to the attorney general, overseeing the mass roundups and deportations of suspected communists during the Red Scare abuses of the late 1910s. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal.

Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr.

While Hoover's success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn't until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal, that Hoover's corruption became known.

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May 10, 1871

Treaty of Frankfurt am Main ends Franco-Prussian War

The humiliating defeat of Louis Napoleon’s Second Empire of France is made complete on May 10, 1871, when the Treaty of Frankfurt am Main is signed, ending the Franco-Prussian War and marking the decisive entry of a newly unified German state on the stage of European power politics, so long dominated by the great empires of England and France.

At the root of the Franco-Prussian conflict was the desire of the ambitious statesman Prince Otto von Bismarck to unify the collection of German states under the control of the most powerful of them, his own Prussia. The event that immediately precipitated the war was the Bismarck-engineered bid by Prince Leopold, of the Prussian Hohenzollern royal family, for the throne of Spain, left empty after a revolution in 1868. Horrified by the idea of a Prussian-Spanish alliance, the French government of Louis Napoleon (or Napoleon III) blocked this idea and, determined to humiliate Prussia into subordination, insisted that the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, personally apologize to the French sovereign and promise that there be no further such attempts by the Hohenzollerns. Wilhelm refused, and subsequently authorized Bismarck to publish the French demands and his own rejection of them; the prince did so knowing such a move would precipitate a war, which he himself greatly desired in order to free Prussia completely from French influence.

Eager to regain prestige after numerous defeats abroad and reassert its military dominance on the European continent, France declared war on July 19, 1870. Unfortunately for the French, the states of southern Germany honored their treaties with mighty Prussia and immediately backed Wilhelm’s armies. Thus the Germans were able to marshal some 400,000 men, double the number of French troops, at the outset of the war. Under the supreme command of Wilhelm and guided by Count Helmuth von Moltke—known as Moltke “The Elder”, to distinguish him from his nephew, who would command German forces during World War I—three German armies cut a broad swath through France, gaining the upper hand almost from the beginning of the fighting.

The crucial battle of the war, fought around the town of Sedan in northern France, resulted in a crushing German victory, in which Napoleon III himself was captured. Upon learning of the emperor’s capture, Paris exploded into rebellion; the legislative assembly was dissolved, and France was declared a republic. Meanwhile, the Germans were closing in: by the end of September, they had captured Strasbourg and completely surrounded France’s capital city, which they subjected to merciless siege and bombardment for the next several months. On January 19, 1871, the French government was forced to open negotiations for surrender. A day earlier, in an added humiliation for France, the Bismarckian dream of unification was fulfilled, as Wilhelm I of Prussia was crowned emperor, or kaiser, of the new German state, in a ceremony that took place in the sumptuous Hall of Mirrors, at Paris’s Versailles palace.

By the terms of the final treaty, signed on May 10, 1871, at Frankfurt am Main, Germany annexed the French provinces of Alsace (excluding Belfort) and Lorraine; the French were also ordered to pay an indemnity of five billion francs. German troops occupied France until September 1873, when the amount had been paid in full. The Franco-Prussian War and the nearly three years of German occupation that followed marked the beginning of a growing enmity between anxious France, its influence and power in decline, and striving Germany, a technologically and industrially superior nation that by the first decade of the 20th century had built the most powerful land army on the European continent. In the summer of 1914, this rivalry would explode into full-scale global warfare, pitting France and the Allies against Germany and the Central Powers in the most devastating conflict the world had yet seen.

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Whew............May 10th was a pretty big day.

But wait.........................

There's more.......................

On this day a Mother convinced the powers to be at the time that Mother's work should be appreciated. And on this day in most parts of the world, Mother's Day is celebrated.

Here in Australia it is always the 2nd Sunday of May.

(Can someone else fill in the blanks? I've given you most of the hints Wink

)

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And................................. I recall reading on this day in 1980 Chrysler Canada were given a bailout in the form of $200 million in guarenteed loans. Confused

Why does this all sound so familiar?

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As I said earlier, anyone can contribute here. Takes 10-15 minutes, just Google and it is very interesting to look up history. I enjoy it and it both enriches and encourages the brain to work a bit harder.

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Cool

harleyrider · Joined: Aug 27, 2005 Posts: 13353 Location: Big Sky Country

aussiedavid wrote:

May 10, 1869

May 10, 1922

1,000th Rickenbacker Produced

The 1,000th Rickenbacker car was produced. Named after the company co-founder, American World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, the Rickenbacker Car Company took off in 1922. Rickenbacker, a national darling for his dogfighting exploits, passed on offers from the aviation industry in Washington and from the movie studios in Hollywood in order to start his own car company. In January of 1922, the Rickenbacker car debuted at the New York Auto Show. Priced at $1,500 and equipped with a powerful V-6 and a flywheel at both ends of the crankshaft to reduce the teeth-chattering vibration to which consumers had become accustomed, the Rickenbacker sold 1,500 units on its first day. In two years the company climbed from 83rd in the industry to 19th. "The Car Worthy of the Name," as it was called, was also the first model to introduce four-wheel braking into the economy car class. The 1925 Rickenbacker came with a V-8 and the snappy "hat in the ring" emblem that Rickenbacker's squadron had painted on their planes. In 1926, Rickenbacker marketed the Super Sport as "America's Fastest and Most Beautiful Stock Car." But Rickenbacker resigned in September of that year, and four months later his company was dead. The rapid demise of Rickenbacker owes partly to the public's mistrust of the company's early introduction of front-wheel breaking, but more to the fragile ego of its war-hero founder. During a period of cutthroat price wars, Rickenbacker came under heavy personal criticism at the hands of automobile dealers, who taunted him, "You're a hero today and a bum tomorrow." Rickenbacker could not separate his company's policies from his person and, injured, he resigned. The company was grounded without its captain's name.

A couple of photos to go with this article. First one includes Eddie (he's the one with the hat):

And in case you're wondering here is a 1922 ad:

harleyrider · Joined: Aug 27, 2005 Posts: 13353 Location: Big Sky Country

harleyrider · Joined: Aug 27, 2005 Posts: 13353 Location: Big Sky Country

May 11 1910 – An act of the U.S. Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana. I could have posted a full article on this but like most things in Big Sky country it would be both to big information wise and to full of pictures. To this day this is one of my favorite riding areas both in the U.S. & Canada and brings back memories of when I first moved to Big Sky country. A friend from school and I were on our way to visit his parents who were running horses at the Many Glacier Lodge. As we came around one of the numerous switchbacks I met my first Montana bear. Needless to say he had the rightaway over the 49' Chevy we were in. Visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...ark_(U.S.) or just Google Glacier National Park (Also Waterton Lakes National Park & Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park)

ChloeDancer · Joined: Nov 09, 2006 Posts: 1555 Location: San Diego

On This Day in Science - May 11, 1835

May 11th marks the passing of the English astronomer, Sir John Frederick William Herschel. He was one of the better known English scientists of the time and made several contributions to astronomy.

One contribution he was credited for was the discovery of life on the Moon.

Starting on August 25, 1835, six articles were published by the New York Sun newspaper describing Herschel's observation of Moon creatures such as unicorns, bipedal beavers and bat-winged humanoids. The Great Moon Hoax was written by Richard A. Locke to increase circulation for the New York Sun.

It wasn't exposed as a hoax for two weeks and no retraction was ever made. Herschel was initially amused by the stories, but grew tired of trying to explain to people he had nothing to do with it or denying the observations to people who believed the hoax.

www.museumofhoaxes.com...nhoax.html

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

I missed a day but,

Thanks Harley and Chloe, interesting.

May 12, 1975

American Ship Mayaguez Seized

The American freighter Mayaguez is captured by communist government forces in Cambodia, setting off an international incident. The U.S. response to the affair indicated that the wounds of the Vietnam War still ran deep.

On May 12, 1975, the U.S. freighter Mayaguez and its 39-man crew was captured by gunboats of the Cambodian navy. Cambodia had fallen to communist insurgents, the Khmer Rouge, in April 1973. The Cambodian authorities imprisoned the American crew, pending an investigation of the ship and why it had sailed into waters claimed by Cambodia. The response of the United States government was quick. President Gerald Ford called the Cambodian seizure of the Mayaguez an "act of piracy" and promised swift action to rescue the captured Americans.

In part, Ford's aggressive attitude to the incident was a by-product of the American failure in Vietnam. In January 1973, U.S. forces had withdrawn from South Vietnam, ending years of a bloody and inconclusive attempt to forestall communist rule of that nation. In the time since the U.S. withdrawal, a number of conservative politicians and intellectuals in the United States had begun to question America's "credibility" in the international field, suggesting that the country's loss of will in Vietnam now encouraged enemies around the world to challenge America with seeming impunity. The Cambodian seizure of the Mayaguez appeared to be just such a challenge.

On May 14, President Ford ordered the bombing of the Cambodian port where the gunboats had come from and sent Marines to attack the island of Koh Tang, where the prisoners were being held. Unfortunately, the military action was probably unnecessary. The Cambodian government was already in the process of releasing the crew of the Mayaguez and the ship. Forty-one Americans died, most of them in an accidental explosion during the attack. Most Americans, however, cheered the action as evidence that the United States was once again willing to use military might to slap down potential enemies.

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May 12, 1932

Body of Lindbergh Baby Found

The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found on this day in 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.

Lindbergh, who became the first worldwide celebrity five years earlier when he flew The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, and his wife Anne discovered a ransom note in their 20-month-old child's empty room on March 1. The kidnapper had used a ladder to climb up to the open second-floor window and had left muddy footprints in the room. The ransom note demanded $50,000 in barely literate English.

The crime captured the attention of the entire nation. The Lindbergh family was inundated by offers of assistance and false clues. Even Al Capone offered his help from prison, though it of course was conditioned on his release. For three days, investigators had found nothing and there was no further word from the kidnappers. Then, a new letter showed up, this time demanding $70,000.

It wasn't until April 2 that the kidnappers gave instructions for dropping off the money. When the money was finally delivered, the kidnappers indicated that little baby Charles was on a boat called Nelly off the coast of Massachusetts. However, after an exhaustive search of every port, there was no sign of either the boat or the child.

On May 12, a renewed search of the area near the Lindbergh mansion turned up the baby's body. He had been killed the night of the kidnapping and was found less than a mile from the home. The heartbroken Lindberghs ended up donating the home to charity and moved away.

The kidnapping looked like it would go unsolved until September 1934, when a marked bill from the ransom turned up. Suspicious of the driver who had given it to him, the gas station attendant who had accepted the bill wrote down his license plate number. It was tracked back to a German immigrant, Bruno Hauptmann. When his home was searched, detectives found $13,000 of Lindbergh ransom money.

Hauptmann claimed that a friend had given him the money to hold and that he had no connection to the crime. The resulting trial again was a national sensation. Famous writers Damon Runyan and Walter Winchell covered the trial. The prosecution's case was not particularly strong. The main evidence, apart from the money, was testimony from handwriting experts that the ransom note had been written by Hauptmann and his connection with the type of wood that was used to make the ladder.

Still, the evidence and intense public pressure was enough to convict Hauptmann. In April 1935 he was executed in the electric chair.

Kidnapping was made a federal crime in the aftermath of this high-profile crime.

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May 12, 1925

Movie Stars Debut on Radio

On this day in 1925, a Philadelphia radio station broadcasts the first all-star radio program featuring film actors and actresses. Sound films had not yet debuted, and the broadcast marked the first time that most listeners had heard the voices of film stars like Lillian Gish and Marion Davies.

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May 12, 1949

Berlin Blockade Lifted

On May 12, 1949, an early crisis of the Cold War comes to an end when the Soviet Union lifts its 11-month blockade against West Berlin. The blockade had been broken by a massive U.S.-British airlift of vital supplies to West Berlin's two million citizens.

At the end of World War II, Germany was divided into four sectors administered by the four major Allied powers: the USSR, the United States, Britain, and France. Berlin, the German capital, was likewise divided into four sectors, even though it was located deep within the Soviet sector of eastern Germany. The future of Germany and Berlin was a major sticking point in postwar treaty talks, especially after the United States, Britain, and France sought to unite their occupation zones into a single economic zone. In March 1948, the Soviet Union quit the Allied Control Council governing occupied Germany over this issue. In May, the three Western powers agreed to the imminent formation of West Germany, a nation that would exist entirely independent of Soviet-occupied eastern Germany. The three western sectors of Berlin were united as West Berlin, which was to be under the administration of West Germany.

On June 20, as a major step toward the establishment of a West German government, the Western powers introduced a new Deutsche mark currency in West Germany and West Berlin. The Soviets condemned this move as an attack on the East German currency and on June 24 began a blockade of all rail, road, and water communications between Berlin and the West. The four-power administration of Berlin had ceased with the unification of West Berlin, the Soviets said, and the Western powers no longer had a right to be there. With West Berlin's food, fuel, and other necessities cut off, the Soviets reasoned, it would soon have to submit to Communist control.

Britain and the United States responded by initiating the largest airlift in history, flying 278,288 relief missions to the city during the next 14 months, resulting in the delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies. As the Soviets had cut off power to West Berlin, coal accounted for over two-thirds of the material delivered. In the opposite direction, return flights transported West Berlin's industrial exports to the West. Flights were made around the clock, and at the height of the Berlin airlift, in April 1949, planes were landing in the city every minute. Tensions were high during the airlift, and three groups of U.S. strategic bombers were sent as reinforcements to Britain while the Soviet army presence in eastern Germany increased dramatically. The Soviets made no major effort to disrupt the airlift. As a countermeasure against the Soviet blockade, the Western powers also launched a trade embargo against eastern Germany and other Soviet bloc countries.

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May 12, 1937

George VI Crowned at Westminster

At London's Westminster Abbey, George VI and his consort, Lady Elizabeth, are crowned king and queen of the United Kingdom as part of a coronation ceremony that dates back more than a millennium.

George, who studied at Dartmouth Naval College and served in World War I, ascended to the throne after his elder brother, King Edward VIII, abdicated on December 11, 1936. Edward, who was the first English monarch to voluntarily relinquish the English throne, agreed to give up his title in the face of widespread criticism of his desire to marry Wallis Warfield Simpson, an American divorcee.

In 1939, King George became the first British monarch to visit America and Canada. During World War II, he worked to keep up British morale by visiting bombed areas and touring war zones. George and Elizabeth also remained in bomb-damaged Buckingham Palace during the war, shunning the relative safety of the countryside, and George made a series of important morale-boosting radio broadcasts, for which he overcame a speech impediment.

After the war, the royal family visited South Africa, but a planned tour of Australia and New Zealand had to be postponed indefinitely when the king fell ill in 1949. Despite his illness, he continued to perform state duties until his death in 1952. He was succeeded by his first-born daughter, who was crowned Queen Elizabeth II in June 1953.

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May 12, 1780

Americans Suffer Worst Defeat of Revolution at Charleston

After a siege that began on April 2, 1780, Americans suffer their worst defeat of the revolution on this day in 1780, with the unconditional surrender of Major General Benjamin Lincoln to British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton and his army of 10,000 at Charleston, South Carolina.

With the victory, the British captured more than 3,000 Patriots and a great quantity of munitions and equipment, losing only 250 killed and wounded in the process. Confident of British control in the South, Lieutenant General Clinton sailed north to New York after the victory, having learned of an impending French expedition to the British-occupied northern state. He left General Charles Cornwallis in command of 8,300 British forces in the South.

South Carolina was a deeply divided state, and the British presence let loose the full violence of a civil war upon the population. First, the British used Loyalists to “pacify” the Patriot population; the Patriots returned the violence in kind. The guerrilla warfare strategies employed by Patriots Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Nathanael Greene throughout the Carolina campaign of 1780-81 eventually chased the far more numerous British force into Virginia, where they eventually surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

Having suffered the humiliation of surrendering to the British at Charleston, Major General Lincoln was able to turn the tables and accept Cornwallis’ ceremonial surrender to General George Washington at Yorktown on October 20.

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May 12, 1941

Hitler Backs Rashid Ali in His Fight Against Britain

On this day in 1941, Adolf Hitler sends two bombers to Iraq to support Rashid Ali al-Gailani in his revolt against Britain, which is trying to enforce a previously agreed upon Anglo-Iraqi alliance.

At the start of the war, Iraqi Prime Minister General Nuri as-Said severed ties with Germany and signed a cooperation pact with Great Britain. In April 1941, the Said government was overthrown by Ali, an anti-British general, who proceeded to cut off the British oil pipeline to the Mediterranean. Britain fought back by landing a brigade on the Persian Gulf, successfully fending off 9,000 Iraqi troops. Ali retaliated by sealing off the British airbase at Habbaniya. Hitler, elated at the grief the British enemy was enduring in the Middle East, began sending arms, via Syria, as well as military experts to aid Ali in his revolt.

On May 12, Hitler sent Major Axel von Blomberg, an air force officer who was to act as a liaison between Iraq and Germany to Iraq, along with the two bombers. Blomberg arrived in the middle of an air battle between Iraqi and British fighters and was shot dead by a stray British bullet. By the end of the month, Iraq had surrendered, and Britain re-established the terms of the original 1930 cooperation pact. A pro-British government formed, with a cabinet led by former Prime Minister Said. Iraq went on to become a valuable resource for British and American forces in the region and in January 1942 became the first independent Muslim state to declare war on the Axis powers.

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May 12, 1864

Bloody Day at the Bloody Angle

Close-range firing and hand-to-hand combat at Spotsylvania Court House, Virginia, result in one of the most brutal battles of the Civil War. After the Battle of the Wilderness (May 5-6), Generals Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee raced respective Union and Confederate forces southward. Grant aimed his army a dozen miles southeast of the Wilderness, toward the critical crossroads of Spotsylvania Court House. Sensing Grant's plan, Lee sent part of his army on a furious night march to secure the road junction before the Union soldiers got there. The Confederates soon constructed a five-mile long system of entrenchments in the shape of an inverted U.

On May 10, Grant began to attack Lee's position at Spotsylvania. After achieving a temporary breakthrough at the Rebel center, Grant was convinced that a weakness existed there, as the bend of the Confederate line dispersed their fire. At dawn on May 12, Union General Winfield Scott Hancock's troops emerged from the fog and overran the Rebel trenches, taking nearly 3,000 prisoners and more than a dozen cannons. While the Yankees erupted in celebration, the Confederates counterattacked and began to drive the Federals back. The battle raged for over 20 hours along the center of the Confederate line—the top of the inverted U—which became known as the "Bloody Angle." Lee's men eventually constructed a second line of defense behind the original Rebel trenches, and fighting ceased just before dawn on May 13.

Around the Bloody Angle, the dead lay five deep, and bodies had to be moved from the trenches to make room for the living. The action around Spotsylvania shocked even the grizzled veterans of the two great armies. Said one officer, "I never expect to be fully believed when I tell what I saw of the horrors of Spotsylvania."

And yet the battle was not done; the armies slugged it out for another week. In spite of his losses, Grant persisted, writing to General Henry Halleck in Washington, "I will fight it out on this line if it takes all summer."

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May 12, 1918

Germany and Austria-Hungary Sign Pact to Exploit Ukraine

On this day in 1918, the rulers of Germany and Austria-Hungary, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Emperor Karl I, meet to sign an agreement pledging their mutual allegiance and determining to share the economic benefits from their relationship with the newly independent state of Ukraine, one of the most fertile and prosperous regions of the former Russian Empire.

One of pre-war Russia’s most prosperous areas, the vast, flat Ukraine (the name can be translated as “at the border” or “borderland”) was one of the major wheat-producing regions of Europe and was also rich with mineral resources, including vast deposits of iron and coal. The majority of Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian empire after the second partition of Poland in 1793, while the remaining section—the principality of Galicia—remained part of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was a key battleground during World War I. With Bolshevik Russia having sued for peace with the Central Powers by the end of 1917, the Ukraine took the opportunity to declare its independence in January 1918.

On February 9, 1918, the leaders of Ukraine’s newly formed Rada government signed a peace treaty with the Central Powers, in which Germany and Austria-Hungary pledged to recognize the Ukrainian National Republic and to provide protection and military assistance against the Bolshevik forces of Russia that were occupying Ukrainian territory. In exchange, the Ukrainian National Republic would provide 100 million tons of food rations to Germany. In practice, the treaty amounted to a virtual annexation of the region by the Central Powers, who forced the Russian troops occupying the country to leave under the terms of the treaty at Brest-Litovsk, signed in March 1918, bringing in their own troops to preserve order and preside over the export of the promised wheat and other food resources to their home countries.

The meeting of the two emperors, Wilhelm and Karl, on May 12 was intended not only to divide the much-needed spoils of the Ukraine treaty but also to strengthen the steadily unraveling alliance between the Central Powers as World War I stretched into its fourth exhausting year. On the Austro-Hungarian side, complete failure on the battlefield against the Russians in Galicia had only been averted by Germany’s help and Russia’s own revolution; indeed, Germany seemed the only hope to preserve the dying empire. For its part, Germany was in his last desperate gasp on the battlefields of the west, throwing everything it had into a major spring offensive that had met with early success but was now confronting a hardening Allied defense, including an influx of fresh troops from the United States. Less than a month later, the Allies would launch their own offensive on the Western Front.

Time was running out for the Central Powers. On the home front, rampant hunger led to strikes and a general atmosphere of discontent and frustration with the war, both at home and on the battlefield. Barely a week after the May 12 meeting, the first in a series of mutinies occurred in the Austro-Hungarian army, led by a group of Slovenian nationalists. Similar rebellions were subsequently launched by Serbs, Rusyns (Ruthenians) and Czechs within the empire’s troops. By the autumn, Germany was confronting mutinies within its own troops and an Allied breakthrough on the previously invincible Hindenburg Line; on November 11, 1918, the war was over.

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May 12, 1987

Forest Fire Sweeps Across China

Firefighters finally contain a giant fire sweeping eastward across China on this day in 1987, but not before 193 people are killed.

The fateful fire began on May 6 in Mohe County of the Heilongjiang Province. From the outset, authorities mishandled the blaze, failing to contain it while the size was still manageable. It spread quickly and within two days, 2,000 square miles had burned and 100 people were dead. Firefighters also had to contend with a separate large forest fire that had broken out near China’s border with the Soviet Union that threatened to join the initial blaze.

It took several more days for the firefighters to finally stop the spread of the fire as it moved toward Inner Mongolia. Although the city of Manqui was saved by controlled fire breaks set by the firefighters, the toll from this huge fire was already immense. Two and a half million acres of land burned and 50,000 people lost their homes. In addition to the 193 people who were killed, hundreds more were injured.

When the fire finally burned out completely on May 27, Yang Zhong, China’s Forestry Minister, was fired for the initially incompetent firefighting response.

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My prayers are with the people of Santa Barbara and surrounding areas. It was only a short while back that fires ravaged much of Victoria and at one stage quite near to my home.

I hope none of our Members, their family or friends have been affected by this tragedy.

earthobservatory.nasa....46&src=nha

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Cool

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

May 13, 1846

President Polk Declares War on Mexico

On May 13, 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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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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May 13, 1981

Pope John Paul II Shot

Near the start of his weekly general audience in Rome's St. Peter's Square, Pope John Paul II is shot and seriously wounded while passing through the square in an open car. The assailant, 23-year-old escaped Turkish murderer Mehmet Ali Agca, fired four shots, one of which hit the pontiff in the abdomen, narrowly missing vital organs, and another that hit the pope's left hand. A third bullet struck 60-year-old American Ann Odre in the chest, seriously wounding her, and the fourth hit 21-year-old Jamaican Rose Hill in the arm. Agca's weapon was knocked out of his hand by bystanders, and he was detained until his arrest by police. The pope was rushed by ambulance to Rome's Gemelli Hospital, where he underwent more than five hours of surgery and was listed in critical but stable condition.

John Paul II, once the spiritual leader of almost 600 million Roman Catholics around the world, was invested in 1978 as the first Polish pope and the first non-Italian pope in 456 years. Fluent in seven modern languages and Latin, he was known as an avid traveler who had little fear of going out in public. Four days after being shot, he offered forgiveness to his would-be assassin from his hospital bed. The pontiff spent three weeks in the hospital before being released fully recovered from his wounds.

The motives of Mehmet Ali Agca in attempting to kill the head of the Roman Catholic Church were enigmatic, and remain so today. In the 1970s, Agca joined a right-wing Turkish terrorist group known as the Gray Wolves. The group is held responsible for the assassination of hundreds of public officials, labor organizers, journalists, and left-wing activists as part of their mission to cleanse Turkey of leftist influence. In recent years, it has been revealed that the Gray Wolves had close ties with far-right politicians, intelligence officers, and police commanders. In February 1979, Abdi Ipekci, a liberal newspaper editor, was murdered near his home in Istanbul. Mehmet Ali Agca was arrested and charged with the crime. While awaiting his trial, Agca escaped from a military prison in November 1979.

In his cell, he left behind a letter that concerned John Paul II's planned trip to Turkey. The letter read: "Western imperialists who are afraid of Turkey's unity of political, military, and economic power with the brotherly Islamic countries are sending the Crusader Commander John Paul under the mask of a religions leader. If this ill-timed and meaningless visit is not called off, I will definitely shoot the pope. This is the only reason that I escaped from prison." Because of this threat, security was tightened during the pope's Turkish visit, and there was no assassination attempt. A Turkish court convicted Agca of murder in absentia, and he remained at large.

On May 9, 1981, Agca took a plane from Majorca to Milan and entered Italy under an assumed name. He took a room in a hotel near the Vatican and on May 13 walked into St. Peter's Square and shot the pope with a 9mm Browning automatic. A handwritten note was found in his pocket that read: "I am killing the pope as a protest against the imperialism of the Soviet Union and the United States and against the genocide that is being carried out in Salvador and Afghanistan." He pleaded guilty, saying he acted alone, and in July 1981 was sentenced to life in prison.

In 1982, Agca announced that his assassination attempt was actually part of a conspiracy involving the Bulgarian intelligence services, which was known to act on behalf of the KGB. Pope John Paul II was a fervent anti-communist who supported the Solidarity trade union in his native Poland, which seemed to make him an appropriate target for the communists. In 1983, despite these developments, the pope met with Mehmet in prison and offered him forgiveness. Further interrogations of Agca led to the arrest of three Bulgarians and three Turks, who went on trial in 1985.

As the trial opened, the case against the Bulgarian and Turkish defendants collapsed when Agca, the state's key witness, described himself as Jesus Christ and predicted the imminent end of the world. He explained that the Bulgarian scenario was concocted by Western intelligence officials, and that God had in fact led him to shoot John Paul II. The attack, he explained, was "tied to the Third Secret of the Madonna of Fatima." The secrets of Fatima were three messages that Catholic tradition says the Virgin Mary imparted to three Portuguese shepherd children in an apparition in 1917. The first message allegedly predicted World War II, the second the rise (and fall) of the Soviet Union, and the third was still a Vatican secret in 1985. In 1986, the Bulgarian and Turkish defendants were acquitted for lack of evidence.

In the late 1990s, Pope John Paul II expressed his hope that the Italian government would pardon Mehmet in 2000. The pontiff had made 2000 a holy "Jubilee" year, of which forgiveness was to be a cornerstone. On May 13, 2000, the 19th anniversary of the attempt on his life, the pope visited Fatima, Portugal. The same day, the Third Secret of Fatima was announced by Vatican Secretary of State Angelo Sodano. Sodano described the secret as a "prophetic vision" in which "a bishop clothed in white...falls to the ground, apparently dead, under a burst of gunfire." The Vatican interpreted this as a prediction of the attempt on John Paul II's life. Mehmet Ali Agca, who had guessed the alleged Fatima-assassination connection in 1985, was pardoned by Italian President Carolo Ciampi on June 14, 2000. Extradited to Turkey, he began serving the eight years remaining on the sentence for his 1979 murder of the Turkish newspaper editor.

In February 2005, Pope John Paul II was hospitalized with complications from the flu. He died two months later, on April 2, 2005, at his home in the Vatican. Six days later two million people packed Vatican City for his funeral--said to be the biggest funeral in history. Although it was not confirmed by the Vatican until 2003, many believe Pope John Paul II began suffering from Parkinson's disease in the early 1990s. He began to develop slurred speech and had difficulty walking, though he continued to keep up a physically demanding travel schedule. In his final years, he was forced to delegate many of his official duties, but still found the strength to speak to the faithful from a window at the Vatican.

Pope John Paul II is remembered for his successful efforts to end communism, as well as for building bridges with peoples of other faiths, and issuing the Catholic Church's first apology for its actions during World War II. He was succeeded by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict XVI. Benedict XVI began the process to beatify John Paul II in May 2005.

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May 13, 1980

UAW Head Joins Chrysler Board

Douglas A. Fraser, president of the UAW, was named to the Chrysler Corporation Board of Directors, becoming the first union representative ever to sit on the board of a major U.S. corporation. Born in 1916 in Glasgow, Scotland, to a Socialist father, Fraser was brought up to the tune of organized labor. He dropped out of high school and began work at a Dodge plant as a metal polisher. Fraser soon moved to the DeSoto plant in Detroit, where he began his career in labor activism. Rising through the ranks of his local UAW chapter, Fraser eventually caught the eye of powerful UAW figure Walter Reuther. Reuther's similar immigrant and Socialist background meant that the two men shared ideas in common. Fraser worked as Reuther's administrative assistant through the groundbreaking years of the 1950s, during which the UAW solidified policies on retirement pensions and medical care for its members. Like Reuther, Fraser believed that to achieve its goals the UAW needed to be willing to make reasonable compromises. It wasn't until 1977 that Fraser was elected president of the UAW. He inherited the title as the automotive industry suffered its greatest recession since the Depression. Fraser is credited with having led the UAW through the uncertain years of the globalization of the automotive industry. As it became evident that the Big Three could build their cars wherever they wanted, Fraser fought to make sure that the union stayed flexible in its negotiations with industry executives. His detractors sometimes accused Fraser of pandering, but those who knew him described him as a stern proponent of international labor causes. His flexibility owed to his desire to keep the union an open-minded and competitive organization. The New York Times described Fraser as "an extremely tough-minded unionist, like most who rise through the ferocious fighting that can characterize union politics." In 1973, Fraser helped to solidify the industry's "thirty and out" policy. During his presidency, Fraser attempted to address the less tangible hardships facing autoworkers. Gone were the days of unfair hours and dangerous conditions, but the monotony that faced the average autoworker was still a cross to bear. In 1982, Fraser enacted his most daring and visionary maneuver as UAW president. Faced with Chrysler's imminent collapse, Fraser negotiated away millions of dollars already guaranteed to his union in order to help save a company with valuable jobs. In return, Chrysler traded stock options to the union. The resurgence of Chrysler bore out Fraser's unpopular decision. Respected by his adversaries, Fraser received the unprecedented accolade of being named to Chrysler's board. "His word is enough for us," one Chrysler executive explained. "He gets into plant problems like no other union leader I know." Conceding that his position on Chrysler's board was largely symbolic, Fraser nevertheless strove to bring the issues of the laborer into the boardroom. It is one thing to vote to close a plant on paper and quite another to vote after hearing in detail the hardship the decision will cause. Douglas Fraser was a proud and unselfish leader who must be remembered for maintaining his ideals, even after his prosperity made them unnecessary.

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May 13, 1958

Vice President Nixon is Attacked

During a goodwill trip through Latin America, Vice President Richard Nixon's car is attacked by an angry crowd and nearly overturned while traveling through Caracas, Venezuela. The incident was the dramatic highlight of trip characterized by Latin American anger over some of America's Cold War policies.

By 1958, relations between the United States and Latin America had reached their lowest point in years. Latin Americans complained that the U.S. focus on the Cold War and anticommunism failed to address the pressing economic and political needs of many Latin American nations. In particular, they argued that their countries needed more basic economic assistance, not more arms to repel communism. They also questioned the American support of dictatorial regimes in Latin America simply because those regimes claimed to be anticommunist-for example, the U.S. awarded the Legion of Merit medal to Venezuelan dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez in 1954; Jimenez was overthrown by a military coup early in 1958.

This was the atmosphere into which Vice President Richard Nixon arrived during his goodwill trip through Latin America in April and May 1958. The trip began with some controversy, as Nixon engaged in loud and bitter debates with student groups during his travels through Peru and Uruguay. In Caracas, Venezuela, however, things took a dangerous turn. A large crowd of angry Venezuelans who shouted anti-American slogans stopped Nixon's motorcade through the capital city. They attacked the car, damaged its body and smashed the windows. Inside the vehicle, Secret Service agents covered the vice president and at least one reportedly pulled out his weapon. Miraculously, they escaped from the crowd and sped away. In Washington, President Eisenhower dispatched U.S. troops to the Caribbean area to rescue Nixon from further threats if necessary. None occurred, and the vice president left Venezuela ahead of schedule.

The riot in Caracas served as a wake-up call to U.S. officials in Washington, alerting them to America's deteriorating relations with Latin America. In the next few months, the United States increased both its military and economic assistance to the region. However, it was not until communist Fidel Castro's rise to power in Cuba beginning in 1959 that the United States truly realized the extent of discontent and rebelliousness in Latin America.

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May 13, 1915

Edith Wharton Writes of the War’s Effect on France

“Since leaving Paris yesterday we have passed through streets and streets of such murdered houses, through town after town spread out in its last writhings,” the celebrated novelist Edith Wharton writes on May 13, 1915, from the town of Nancy, in the Argonnes region of France. “And before the black holes that were homes, along the edge of the chasms that were streets, everywhere we have seen flowers and vegetables springing up in freshly raked and watered gardens.”

Wharton, born in New York City in 1862, settled permanently in France in 1907. Celebrated for her vivid and acutely observed novels of Victorian life, including The House of Mirth (1905) and her later classic The Age of Innocence (1920), Wharton was living in Paris when World War I broke out in the summer of 1914. From the beginning of the war, Wharton devoted herself to the Allied cause, working with the French Red Cross and leading a committee that founded hostels and schools to serve refugees, including many children, from the German-occupied zones of northeastern France and Belgium. She was eventually awarded the French Legion d’honneur (Legion of Honor) for her work.

In 1916, Wharton edited an illustrated literary anthology featuring works by prominent writers and artists including John Galsworthy, Thomas Hardy, W.B. Yeats and John Singer Sargent. She herself traveled to the front lines of the conflict, writing reports for American newspapers urging the United States to enter the war. Her novella The Marne, published in 1918, criticized America's slowness to help France. That same year, Wharton’s wartime observations were collected and published together in the book Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belport.

Wharton concluded her entry of May 13, 1915, included in Fighting France, with a lyrical description of the town of Nancy at dusk, a peaceful and beautiful scene marred only by the threatening sounds of war in the near distance. “Now, at sunset, all life ceases in Nancy and veil after veil of silence comes down on the deserted Place and its empty perspectives. Last night by nine the few lingering lights in the streets had been put out, every window was blind, and the moonless night lay over the city like a canopy of velvet….The ordered masses of architecture became august, the spaces between them immense, and the black sky faintly strewn with stars seemed to overarch an enchanted city. Not a footstep sounded, not a leaf rustled, not a breath of air drew under the arches. And suddenly, through the dumb night, the sound of the cannon began.”

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May 13, 1956

Gene Autry's Melody Ranch Goes off the Air

Gene Autry's musical variety show, Gene Autry's Melody Ranch, aired its final broadcast on this day in 1956, after 16 years. By the time the show debuted, Autry had appeared in dozens of Saturday matinee movies and had become a popular guest on radio variety shows. The show featured 10- to 15-minute skits about cowboys and rustlers, along with musical numbers by Autry, "America's singing cowboy."

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May 13, 1985

A Raid is Set for MOVE Headquarters

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, police begin evacuating people from their Osage Avenue homes in order to prepare for an operation against MOVE, a radical cult group that had assembled a large arsenal. By the end of the confrontation, 11 people were dead and 61 homes had been burned down.

The roots of the 1985 incident date back to 1978 when a confrontation between MOVE and the police left Officer James Ramp dead. Several innocent MOVE members were convicted of murder, enraging other members. Leader John Africa began a counterattack on Christmas Eve, 1983. At the MOVE headquarters at 6221 Osage Avenue, members set up several loudspeakers and began shouting profanities at their neighbors. Even more ominously, MOVE began assembling a cache of weapons and building bunkers in their row house.

Everything came to a head in May 1985 when Mayor W. Wilson Goode ordered police to raid the MOVE headquarters. Authorities soon realized that there was very little they could do to remove MOVE members from their entrenched position. At about 5:30 p.m. on May 13, a small bomb was dropped on the roof of the building in an attempt to destroy their bunker. This proved disastrous, as the roof was covered with tar and gas, and a blistering fire broke out.

It took the fire department an hour to begin extinguishing the fire. By this time, it was raging out of control. In the ensuing chaos, six adults and five children inside the MOVE home were killed. By the time the fire had been contained, nearly an entire block of homes in Philadelphia had burned down.

Much like the Waco, Texas, raid of the Branch Davidians eight years later, the government came under heavy criticism for their harsh handling of the confrontation.
In 1986, a jury awarded $1.5 million to three survivors of the MOVE raid.

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May 13, 1975

The Inventor of Western Swing Dies

Bob Wills, one of the most influential musicians in the history of country-western music, is born on a small farm near Kosse, Texas.

Born James Robert Wills in 1905, he was trained to be a musician from an early age. His father was a champion fiddle player, and he began giving Wills lessons as soon as the boy could hold the instrument. By the time he was 10, Wills was a skilled fiddler and a competent guitar and mandolin player.

Wills left home at 16 and worked various jobs, like picking cotton and preaching. He eventually joined a traveling medicine show, where he played fiddle and met Herman Arnspiger, a Texas farm boy who had learned to play guitar from a Sears catalog guitar book. The pair began playing at dances and parties around Fort Worth, and after adding a singer, won a regular radio gig performing as the Light Crust Doughboys.

In 1933, the group separated and Wills formed the band that would make him famous: Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. With the Playboys, Wills perfected his hard-driving country-western sound, which drew heavily on the rhythms of the popular jazz-swing bands of the era. Wills' fiddle playing sounded nothing like the traditional folk music he had heard as a child. By using strong beats and syncopation, he produced a sound that seemed to cry out for dancing.

Wills eventually added drums, brass, and woodwinds to the Texas Playboys, making himself into a country-western bandleader in the style of Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. Several of his bands were as large as 22 pieces, and Wills worked with more than 600 musicians in his long career. In 1940, Wills took some of the Playboys to Hollywood, where the band appeared in a number of western movies that won them a nationwide following. Among their many hits were highly danceable tunes like, "Take Me Back to Tulsa," "Bubbles in My Beer," and the ever popular "San Antonio Rose." All told, Wills has sold more than 20 million records to date

Many critics have argued Wills and the Texas Playboys had a greater influence on the sounds of country-western music than any other performer or group. In recognition of his achievements, Wills was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1968. He believed his chances of winning were so slim he was backstage chatting with friends when the award was announced. When he was finally tracked down and brought on stage, he said, "I don't usually take my hat off to nobody. But I sure do to you folks."

Stricken by a series of severe strokes, he died seven years later at the age of 70.

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Sunday, May 13, 1787

The First Fleet of Convicts Departs Portsmouth, England, Bound for Botany Bay, Australia.

Conditions in England in the 18th century were tough: the industrial revolution had removed many people's opportunities to earn an honest wage as simpler tasks were replaced by machine labour. As unemployment rose, so did crime, especially the theft of basic necessities such as food and clothing. The British prison system was soon full to overflowing, and a new place had to be found to ship the prison inmates. The American colonies were no longer viable, following the American war of Independence. Following Captain Cook's voyage to the South Pacific, the previously uncharted continent of New Holland proved to be suitable.

On 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military and civilian personnel to Botany Bay, New South Wales, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, who was appointed Governor-designate. The First Fleet consisted of 775 convicts on board six transport ships, accompanied by officials, crew, marines and their families who together totalled 645. As well as the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three storeships.

The First Fleet assembled in Portsmouth, England, and set sail on 13 May 1787. They arrived in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788. Phillip immediately determined that there was insufficient fresh water, an absence of usable timber, poor quality soil and no safe harbour at Botany Bay. Thus the fleet was moved to Port Jackson, arriving on 26 January 1788. Australia Day, celebrated annually on January 26, commemorates the landing of the First Fleet at Port Jackson, and the raising of the Union Jack to claim the land as belonging to England.

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May 13, 1607

Jamestown Founded

Some 100 English colonists settle along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed, and Discovery.

Upon landing at Jamestown, the first colonial council was held by seven settlers whose names had been chosen and placed in a sealed box by King James I. The council, which included Captain John Smith, an English adventurer, chose Edward Wingfield as its first president. After only two weeks, Jamestown came under attack from warriors from the local Algonquian Native American confederacy, but the Indians were repulsed by the armed settlers. In December of the same year, John Smith and two other colonists were captured by Algonquians while searching for provisions in the Virginia wilderness. His companions were killed, but he was spared, according to a later account by Smith, because of the intercession of Pocahontas, Chief Powhatan's daughter.

During the next two years, disease, starvation, and more Native American attacks wiped out most of the colony, but the London Company continually sent more settlers and supplies. The severe winter of 1609 to 1610, which the colonists referred to as the "starving time," killed most of the Jamestown colonists, leading the survivors to plan a return to England in the spring. However, on June 10, Thomas West De La Warr, the newly appointed governor of Virginia, arrived with supplies and convinced the settlers to remain at Jamestown. In 1612, John Rolfe cultivated the first tobacco at Jamestown, introducing a successful source of livelihood. On April 5, 1614, Rolfe married Pocahontas, thus assuring a temporary peace with Chief Powhatan.

The death of Powhatan in 1618 brought about a resumption of conflict with the Algonquians, including an attack led by Chief Opechancanough in 1622 that nearly wiped out the settlement. The English engaged in violent reprisals against the Algonquians, but there was no further large-scale fighting until 1644, when Opechancanough led his last uprising and was captured and executed at Jamestown. In 1646, the Algonquian Confederacy agreed to give up much of its territory to the rapidly expanding colony, and, beginning in 1665, its chiefs were appointed by the governor of Virginia.

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Cool

(A post tomorrow may be difficult as I'm having a full day Hospital Procedure)

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ChloeDancer · Joined: Nov 09, 2006 Posts: 1555 Location: San Diego

aussiedavid wrote:

(A post tomorrow may be difficult as I'm having a full day Hospital Procedure)

Hope it's something really easy, like you lie in the hospital bed all day and watch TV while they fill you with an IV of orange colored water... Laughing

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

No....................

ChloeDancer · Joined: Nov 09, 2006 Posts: 1555 Location: San Diego

aussiedavid wrote:

No....................

Dang it! Nothing is that easy, huh?

Hope it went well and that you're back home now.

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

Thanks Chloe, I'm fine now.

Every male over 50 should have the procedure (colonostopy) at least every two years. The three day preparation is not nice, the procedure is intrusive Cool

, and is really all over in half to a day. Women should also have it as a precaution. Bowel cancer is the second biggest killer in our country behind smoking related cancers.

Quite a number of years back my half yearly full blood tests showed a real low level of blood count, bordering on anemia..............nothing happened to me to account for this hence my first procedure which required a number of large polyps being removed......all clear but now I have to endure this every 6 - 9 months. Not pleasant but is necessary as a precaution.

David

Cool

aussiedavid · Joined: Oct 27, 2006 Posts: 6758 Location: Australia

I am surprised no one contributed at least one item covering the last three days. Anyway..................

14th May

14th May 1804 Lewis and Clark expedition leaves St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean.

14th May 1904 The first Olympic Games to be held in the United States, opens in St. Louis, Missouri.

14th May 1973 Skylab, America's first space station, is successfully launched into an orbit around the earth.

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15th May

15th May 1972 During an outdoor rally in Laurel, Maryland, George Wallace, the governor of Alabama and a presidential candidate, is shot by 21-year-old Arthur Bremer.

15th May 1896 Tornado decimates Sherman Texas, leaving 73 people dead.

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16th May

16th May 1960 Us - Soviet Summit meeting abrubtly ends.

16th May 1918 On May 16, 1918, the United States Congress passes the Sedition Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect America’s participation in World War I.

If you need further details of the above, including any other events that occured on those days, just Google, it's that simple. Wink

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On with today.

May 17, 1954

Brown v. Board of Ed is Decided

In a major civil rights victory, the U.S. Supreme Court hands down an unanimous decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, ruling that racial segregation in public educational facilities is unconstitutional. The historic decision, which brought an end to federal tolerance of racial segregation, specifically dealt with Linda Brown, a young African American girl who had been denied admission to her local elementary school in Topeka, Kansas, because of the color of her skin.

In 1896, the Supreme Court ruled in Plessy v. Ferguson that "separate but equal" accommodations in railroad cars conformed to the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. That ruling was used to justify segregating all public facilities, including elementary schools. However, in the case of Linda Brown, the white school she attempted to attend was far superior to her black alternative and miles closer to her home. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) took up Linda's cause, and in 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka reached the Supreme Court. African American lawyer (and future Supreme Court justice) Thurgood Marshall led Brown's legal team, and on May 17, 1954, the high court handed down its decision.

In an opinion written by Chief Justice Earl Warren, the nation's highest court ruled that not only was the "separate but equal" doctrine unconstitutional in Linda's case, it was unconstitutional in all cases because educational segregation stamped an inherent badge of inferiority on African American students. A year later, after hearing arguments on the implementation of their ruling, the Supreme Court published guidelines requiring public school systems to integrate "with all deliberate speed."

The Brown v. Board of Education decision served to greatly motivate the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s and ultimately led to the abolishment of racial segregation in all public facilities and accommodations.

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May 17, 1970

Heyerdahl Sails Papyrus Boat

On May 17, 1970, Norwegian ethnologist Thor Heyerdahl and a multinational crew set out from Morocco across the Atlantic Ocean in Ra II, a papyrus sailing craft modeled after ancient Egyptian sailing vessels. Heyerdahl was attempting to prove his theory that Mediterranean civilizations sailed to America in ancient times and exchanged cultures with the people of Central and South America. The Ra II crossed the 4,000 miles of ocean to Barbados in 57 days.

Heyerdahl, born in Larvik, Norway, in 1914, originally studied zoology and geography at the University of Oslo. In 1936, he traveled with his wife to the Marquesas Islands to study the flora and fauna of the remote Pacific archipelago. He became fascinated with the question of how Polynesia was populated. The prevailing opinion then (and today) was that ancient seafaring people of Southeast Asia populated Polynesia. However, because winds and currents in the Pacific generally run from east to west, and because South American plants such as the sweet potato have been found in Polynesia, Heyerdahl conjectured that some Polynesians might have originated in South America.

To explore this theory, he built a copy of a prehistoric South American raft out of balsa logs from Ecuador. Christened Kon-Tiki, after the Inca god, Heyerdahl and a small crew left Callao, Peru, in April 1947, traversed some 5,000 miles of ocean, and arrived in Polynesia after 101 days. Heyerdahl related the story of the epic voyage in the book Kon-Tiki (1950) and in a documentary film of the same name, which won the 1952 Oscar for Best Documentary.

Heyerdahl later became interested in the possibility of cultural contact between early peoples of Africa and Central and South America. Certain cultural similarities, such as the shared importance of pyramid building in ancient Egyptian and Mexican civilizations, perhaps suggested a link. To test the feasibility of ancient transatlantic travel, Heyerdahl built a 45-foot-long copy of an ancient Egyptian papyrus vessel in 1969, with the aid of traditional boatbuilders from Lake Chad in Central Africa. Constructed at the foot of the Pyramids and named after the sun god Ra, it was later transported to Safi in Morocco, from where it set sail for the Caribbean on May 24, 1969. Defects in design and other problems caused it to founder in July, 600 miles short of its goal. It had sailed 3,000 miles.

Undaunted, Heyerdahl constructed a second papyrus craft, the Ra II, with the aid of Aymaro Indian boatbuilders from Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. With a multinational crew of seven, the Ra II set sale from Safi on May 17, 1970. After a voyage of 57 days and 4,000 miles, the ship arrived in Barbados. The story of this voyage is recorded in the book The Ra Expeditions (1971) and in a documentary film.

In 1977, Heyerdahl led the Tigris expedition, in which he navigated a craft made of reeds down the Tigris River in Iraq to the Persian Gulf, across the Arabian Sea to Pakistan, and finally to the Red Sea. The goal of the expedition was to establish the possibility that there was contact between the great cultures of Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and Egypt across the sea. Heyerdahl later led research expeditions to Easter Island and an archeological site of Tucume in northern Peru. For the most part, Heyerdahl's ideas have not been accepted by mainstream anthropologists.

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May 17, 1769

Washington Criticizes “Taxation Without Representation”

On this day in 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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May 17, 1943

The Memphis Belle Flies its 25th Bombing Mission

On this day in 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes the first B-17 crew to complete 25 missions over Europe.

The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle's crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.

The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed "the enemy again and again and again-until he has had enough." The film's producer, Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler, was known for such non-military fare as The Letter, Wuthering Heights, and Jezebel.

A fictional film about the B-17, called Memphis Belle, was released in 1990, starring John Lithgow, Matthew Modine, and Eric Stoltz.

(I quite enjoyed this film by the way).

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May 17, 1990

Gorbachev Meets with Lithuanian Prime Minister

Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev meets with Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene in an effort to settle differences arising from Lithuania's recent proclamation of independence from the Soviet Union. For Gorbachev, the meeting was a test of his skill and ability to maintain the crumbling Soviet empire.

Lithuania became part of the Soviet Union after Soviet forces seized it in 1939, and the country remained a Soviet republic for the next 50 years. In 1989, Gorbachev publicly repudiated the so-called Brezhnev doctrine. This doctrine--established in 1968 to justify the Soviet military intervention to put down anti-government protest in Czechoslovakia--allowed the Soviet Union to use force to preserve already existing communist governments in other states. Gorbachev's repudiation was obviously intended to improve relations with Russia's increasingly restless allies in eastern Europe, where anti-government and anticommunist protests were growing. In Lithuania, however, anti-Soviet nationalists took Gorbachev's statement to mean that Russia would not interfere with an independent movement in one of its own republics. On March 11, 1990, Lithuania declared itself an independent republic.

Gorbachev, however, had no intention of allowing republics to break free from the USSR. On May 17, Gorbachev met with Lithuanian Prime Minister Kazimiera Prunskiene in Moscow to discuss the situation. Despite optimistic press releases concerning their talks, it quickly became apparent that Lithuania would not back down on its claim to independence. After imposing economic sanctions and threatening military action, the Soviet Union launched a full-scale military assault against Lithuania in January 1991. The Soviet effort was in vain, however. In December 1991, 11 of the 12 Soviet Socialist Republics (including Lithuania) proclaimed their independence and established the Commonwealth of Independent States. A few weeks later, Gorbachev resigned as president and the Soviet Union ceased to exist.

The Lithuanian-Soviet conflict had a significant impact on U.S.-Soviet relations. Many in the United States were horrified by the January 1991 military Soviet intervention into Lithuania. The U.S. Congress quickly moved to end economic assistance to the Soviet Union. Some U.S. officials also believed that Russia's actions indicated that Gorbachev, despite his talk of reform, was increasingly under the control of hard-liners in the Soviet government.

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May 17, 1974

LAPD Raid Leaves Six SLA Members Dead

In Los Angeles, California, police surround a home in Compton where the leaders of the terrorist group known as the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) are hiding out. The SLA had kidnapped Patricia Hearst, of the fabulously wealthy Hearst family publishing empire, months earlier, earning headlines across the country. Police found the house in Compton when a local mother reported that her kids had seen a bunch of people playing with an arsenal of automatic weapons in the living room of the home.

The LAPD's 500-man siege on the Compton home was only the latest event in a short, but exceedingly bizarre, episode. The SLA was a small group of violent radicals who quickly made their way to national prominence, far out of proportion to their actual influence. They began by killing Oakland's superintendent of schools in late 1973 but really burst into society's consciousness when they kidnapped Hearst the following February.

Months later, the SLA released a tape on which Hearst said that she was changing her name to Tania and joining the SLA. Shortly thereafter, a surveillance camera in a bank caught Hearst carrying a machine gun during an SLA robbery. In another incident, SLA member General Teko was caught trying to shoplift from a sporting goods store, but escaped when Hearst sprayed the front of the building with machine gun fire.

Although law enforcement officials began talking about the SLA as if they were a well-established paramilitary terrorist organization, the SLA had only a handful of members, most of who were disaffected middle class youths.

On May 17, Los Angeles police shot an estimated 1,200 rounds of ammunition into the tiny Compton home as six SLA members shot back. Teargas containers thrown into the hideout started a fire, but the SLA refused to surrender. Autopsy results showed that they continued to fire back even as smoke and flames were searing their lungs; they clearly chose suicide and martyrdom over jail. Randolph Hearst, Patty's father, remarked that the massive attack had turned "dingbats into martyrs." The raid left six SLA members dead, including leader Donald DeFreeze, also known as Cinque. Patty Hearst was not inside the home at the time. She was not found until September 1975.

Patty Hearst was put on trial for armed robbery and convicted, despite her claim that she had been coerced, through repeated rape, isolation, and brainwashing, into joining the SLA. Prosecutors believed that she actually orchestrated her own kidnapping because of her prior involvement with one of the SLA members. Despite any real proof of this theory, she was convicted and sent to prison. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence after she had served almost two years. Hearst was pardoned by President Clinton in January 2001.

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May 17, 1863

Battle of Big Black River, Mississippi

The Union army defeats the Confederates on the Big Black River and drives them into Vicksburg in part of a brilliant campaign by General Ulysses S. Grant. Grant had swung his army down the Mississippi River past the strong riverfront defenses, and landed in Mississippi south of Vicksburg. He then moved northeast toward Jackson and split his force to defeat Joseph Johnston's troops in Jackson and John C. Pemberton's at Champion's Hill.

During the engagement at Champion's Hill, a Confederate division under William Loring split from Pemberton's main force and drifted south of the battlefield. Pemberton was forced to retreat to the Big Black River where he waited for Loring's troops. Loring, however, was heading east to join Johnston's army because he believed he could not reach Pemberton. While Pemberton waited for Loring on a bridge over the Big Black River, Grant attacked.

Pemberton suffered his second defeat in two days at the Big Black River. The battle began at dawn, and by 10 a.m. the Confederate position appeared hopeless. Confederate casualties numbered 1,752 killed, wounded, and captured, to the Yankees' 279. Pemberton withdrew across the bridge and then burned it down. With the bridge out, Grant could no longer advance. But he now had Pemberton backed up into Vicksburg. He soon closed the ring and laid siege to the town, which surrendered on July 4.

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May 17, 1930

Information Please Debuts

Radio quiz show Information Please is first broadcast. Until Information Please, radio quiz shows generally posed difficult questions to ordinary people. Information Please assembled a panel of experts and intellectuals and asked them tricky questions. The show ran until 1948.

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Wednesday, May 17, 1893.

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination sparked WWI, arrives in Australia for a tour marked by hunting parties and barbeques.

His Imperial and Royal Highness Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Este, was born 18 December 1863. He was an Archduke of Austria and from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. The Archduke was one of the leading advocates of maintaining the peace within the Austro-Hungarian government during both the Bosnian Crisis of 1908-1909 and the Balkan Wars Crises of 1912-1913.

On 17 May 1893, the Archduke arrived in Sydney, Australia. His visit was unique in that he spent much time hunting in the New South Wales outback, near the then-remote towns of Nyngan and Narromine. In his diary, Ferdinand noted a dislike for the barbeques organised for his hunting parties, and he reamrked on the "wasteful" practice of ringbarking trees for clearing. He was also astonished by, and admired, the speed and endurance of Australian horses.

Following the completion of his tour in Australia, the Archduke then went on to the United States, where his most notable observation was disgust at the Americans' attitude to and treatment of the poor.

Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated by "The Black hand", a secret nationalistic Serb society, at approximately 11:00am on 28 June 1914. The assassination led to war between Austria and Serbia, which escalated into World War I as other European countries allied themselves with one side or the other.

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Thursday, May 17, 1770.

Captain James Cook Discovers and Names Queenland's Glass House Mountains.

Captain James Cook was not the first to discover Australia, as he was preceded by numerous Portuguese and Dutch explorers. However, he was the first to sight and map the eastern coastline. Cook's ship, the 'Endeavour', departed Plymouth, England, on 26 August 1768. After completing the objective of his mission, which was to observe the transit of Venus from the vantage point of Tahiti, Cook went on to search for Terra Australis Incognita, the great continent which some believed to extend round the pole. After spending nearly a year charting the coastline of New Zealand, which had been documented by Abel Tasman in 1642, he set sail east.

On 19 April 1770, Cook's crew first sighted land, although it was not known whether the land belonged to an island or a continent. The land was in fact the far southeastern corner of the Australian continent, and Cook went on to chart the eastern coast of what was then known as New Holland, claiming it for Great Britain under the name of New South Wales.

Cook named many points of interest along the way. On 17 May 1770, he sighted and named the Glass House Mountains, which lie in what is now Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland. He named the series of volcanic plugs Glass House because they reminded him of Yorkshire's glass furnace chimneys. On this day, he also documented Noosa Head.

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Monday, May 17, 1909

Professor Julius Sumner Miller is Born.

Julius Sumner Miller, the man who popularised science with children, was born on 17 May 1909. Sumner Miller studied under Albert Einstein, but was best known for his work on children's television programs, being Disney's "Professor Wonderful" on The Mickey Mouse Club and in Canada, the "mad professor" on The Hilarious House of Frightenstein. In Australia, Sumner Miller's catchphrase was "Why is it so?", and this was also the title of his show which was broadcast from 1963 to 1986. In "Why Is It So?", he piqued children's (and adults') curiosity by investigating common questions by using common household equipment to conduct experiments.

One of Sumner Miller's more popular experiments showed how air pressure could exert sufficient force on a boiled egg (with shell removed) to push it into a milk bottle which had an opening of lesser circumference than that of the egg. Unfortunately, Sumner Miller omitted information on how to then remove the egg: subsequently, milk factories all over Australia encountered the problem of having to scrap returned milk bottles with boiled eggs inside.

Sumner Miller died of leukaemia on 14 April 1987. Information on how to remove the boiled egg can be found at:
physics.about.com/cs/a...210603.htm

(My older brother,whilst he was completing his Chemical Engineering studies at Melbourne University, served as a laboratory assistant under the Professor for two years.)

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That's all.................enjoy.

Cool

harleyrider · Joined: Aug 27, 2005 Posts: 13353 Location: Big Sky Country

aussiedavid wrote:

I am surprised no one contributed at least one item covering the last three days. Anyway..................

On with today.

That's all.................enjoy.

Cool

Hey you forgot this one:

May 17, XXXX

Georgia Has New Harleyrider

Cool

harleyrider · Joined: Aug 27, 2005 Posts: 13353 Location: Big Sky Country

Here are some pictures of the Memphis Belle: