Today in history

[Suzuki Johnny]

April 26
757 Stephen II ends his reign as Catholic Pope.
1478 Pazzi conspirators attack Lorenzo and kill Giuliano de' Medici.
1514 Copernicus makes his first observations of Saturn.
1564 William Shakespeare is baptized.
1607 The British establish a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia.
1865 Joseph E. Johnston surrenders the Army of Tennessee to General William T. Sherman.
1915 Second Lieutenant William Rhodes-Moorhouse becomes the first airman to win the Victoria Cross after conducting a successful bombing raid.
1929 The first non-stop flight from England to India is completed.
1931 New York Yankee Lou Gehrig hits a home run but is called out for passing a runner, the mistake ultimately costs him the home run record.
1937 The ancient Basque town of Guernica in northern Spain is bombed by German planes.
1941 The first organ is played at a baseball stadium in Chicago.
1968 Students seize the administration building at Ohio State University.
1983 The Dow Jones Industrial Average breaks 1,200 for first time.
1986 The world's worst nuclear disaster occurs at the Chernobyl power plant in the Soviet Union.



Born on April 26
1718 Esek Hopkins, first commodore of the United States Navy.
1785 John James Audubon, artist and naturalist.
1812 Alfred Krupp, German arms merchant.
1822 Frederick Law Olmsted, landscape architect, designed New York's central park.
1875 Syngman Rhee, South Korean statesman.
1893 Anita Loos, novelist and screenwriter (Gentleman Prefer Blondes).
1894 Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader.
1900 Charles Richter, physicist and seismologist.
1914 Bernard Malamud, novelist and short story writer (The Natural).

On This Day in Sport April 26

1905 Cubs Jack McCarthy becomes only major league player to throw out 3 runners at plate in 1 game, all were ends of a double play
1912 1st homerun hit at Fenway Park (Hugh Bradley, Red Sox)
1931 Lou Gehrig hits a HR but is called out for passing a runner, mistake costs him AL home run crown; he & Babe Ruth tie for season
1935 Frank Boucher is given NHL's Lady Byng Trophy for sportsmanship permanently for winning it 7 of 11 years
1941 A tradition begins, 1st organ at a baseball stadium (Chicago Cubs)
1950 Last horse race at Havre de Grace Track in Md, is run
1950 U of Miami ends William & Mary straight tennis match victories at 82
1952 Patty Berg scores 64, best competitive round of golf by a woman

1986
April 26, Chernobyl, nr. Kiev, Ukraine: explosion and fire in the graphite core of one of four reactors released radioactive material that spread over part of the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, Scandinavia, and later western Europe. 31 claimed dead. Total casualties are unknown. Worst such accident to date.


Lead Story
1954
Polio vaccine trials begin

On this day in 1954, the Salk polio vaccine field trials, involving 1.8 million children, begin at the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia. Children in the United States, Canada and Finland participated in the trials, which used for the first time the now-standard double-blind method, whereby neither the patient nor attending doctor knew if the inoculation was the vaccine or a placebo. On April 12, 1955, researchers announced the vaccine was safe and effective and it quickly became a standard part of childhood immunizations in America. In the ensuing decades, polio vaccines would all but wipe out the highly contagious disease in the Western Hemisphere.

Polio, known officially as poliomyelitis, is an infectious disease that has existed since ancient times and is caused by a virus. It occurs most commonly in children and can result in paralysis. The disease reached epidemic proportions throughout the first half of the 20th century. During the 1940s and 1950s, polio was associated with the iron lung, a large metal tank designed to help polio victims suffering from respiratory paralysis breathe.

President Franklin Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 at the age of 39 and was left paralyzed from the waist down and forced to use leg braces and a wheelchair for the rest of his life. In 1938, Roosevelt helped found the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, later renamed the March of Dimes. The organization was responsible for funding much of the research concerning the disease, including the Salk vaccine trials.

The man behind the original vaccine was New York-born physician and epidemiologist Jonas Salk (1914-95). Salk’s work on an anti-influenza vaccine in the 1940s, while at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, led him, in 1952 at the University of Pittsburgh, to develop the inactivated polio vaccine (IPV), based on a killed-virus strain of the disease. The 1954 field trials that followed, the largest in U.S. history at the time, were led by Salk’s former University of Michigan colleague, Dr. Thomas Francis, Jr.

In the late 1950s, Polish-born physician and virologist Albert Sabin (1906-1993) tested an oral polio vaccine (OPV) he had created from a weakened live virus. The vaccine, easier to administer and cheaper to produce than Salk’s, became available for use in America in the early 1960s and eventually replaced Salk’s as the vaccine of choice in most countries.

Today, polio has been eliminated throughout much of the world due to the vaccine; however, there is still no cure for the disease and it persists in a small number of countries in Africa and Asia.

[KAJUN]

April 27
1296 Edward I defeats the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar.
1509 Pope Julius II excommunicates the Italian state of Venice.
1565 The first Spanish settlement in Philippines is established in Cebu City.
1773 British Parliament passes the Tea Act.
1746 King George II wins the Battle of Culloden.
1813 American forces capture York (present-day Toronto), the seat of government in Ontario.
1861 President Abraham Lincoln suspends the writ of habeas corpus.
1861 West Virginia secedes from Virginia after Virginia secedes from the Union.
1863 The Army of the Potomac begins marching on Chancellorsville.
1865 The Sultana, a steam-powered riverboat, catches fire and burns after one of its boilers explodes. At least 1,238 of the 2,031 passengers--mostly former Union POWs--are killed.
1909 The Sultan of Turkey, Abdul Hamid II, is overthrown.
1937 German bombers of the Condor Legion devastate Guernica, Spain.
1941 The Greek army capitulates to the invading Germans.
1950 South Africa passes the Group Areas Act, formally segregating races.
1961 The United Kingdom grants Sierra Leone independence.
1975 Saigon is encircled by North Vietnamese troops.
1978 The Afghanistan revolution begins.
1989 Protesting students take over Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.


Born on April 27
1737 Edward Gibbon, historian (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire).
1791 Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and the code.
1822 Ulysses S. Grant, Union general during the American Civil War, 18th President of the United States (1869-1877).
1840 Edward Whymper, the first man to climb the Matterhorn.
1900 Walter Lantz, cartoonist, creator of Woody Woodpecker.
1904 Cecil Day-Lewis, Irish poet, father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis.



HAS ANYONE EVER OWNED ONE?? I have ..a 1964 Pontiac Tempest 326 ci....250 hp...three on the tree...bought it new for $ 2100.00

Automotive
2009
GM announces plans to phase out Pontiac

On this day in 2009, the struggling American auto giant General Motors (GM) says it plans to discontinue production of its more than 80-year-old Pontiac brand.
Pontiac’s origins date back to the Oakland Motor Car, which was founded in 1907 in Pontiac, Michigan, by Edward Murphy, a horse-drawn carriage manufacturer. In 1909, Oakland became part of General Motors, a conglomerate formed the previous year by another former buggy company executive, William Durant. The first Pontiac model made its debut as part of the Oakland line in the 1920s. The car, which featured a six-cylinder engine, proved so popular that the Oakland name was eventually dropped and Pontiac became its own GM division by the early 1930s.
Pontiac was initially known for making sedans; however, by the 1960s it had gained acclaim for its fast, sporty “muscle cars,” including the GTO, the Firebird and the Trans Am. The GTO, which was developed by auto industry maverick John DeLorean, was named after a Ferarri coupe, the Gran Turismo Omologato. According to The New York Times: “More than any other G.M. brand, Pontiac stood for performance, speed and sex appeal.” Pontiacs were featured in such movies as 1977’s “Smokey and the Bandit,” in which actor Burt Reynolds drove a black Pontiac Trans Am, and the 1980s hit TV show “Knight Rider,” which starred a Pontiac Trans Am as KITT, a talking car with artificial intelligence, alongside David Hasselhoff as crime fighter Michael Knight.
By the mid-1980s, Pontiac’s sales reached their peak. Experts believe GM hurt the Pontiac brand in the 1970s and 1980s by opting for a money-saving strategy requiring Pontiacs to share platforms with cars from other divisions. In 2008, General Motors, which had been the world’s top-selling automaker since the early 1930s, lost the No. 1 position to Japan-based Toyota. That same year, GM, with sales slumping in the midst of a global recession, was forced to ask the federal government for a multi-billion-dollar loan to remain afloat. On April 27, 2009, as part of its reorganization plan, GM announced it would phase out the Pontiac brand by 2010. A little over a month later, on June 1, GM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, becoming the fourth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.

[KAJUN]

April 28
357 Constantius II visits Rome for the first time.
1282 Villagers in Palermo lead a revolt against French rule in Sicily.
1635 Virginia Governor John Harvey is accused of treason and removed from office.
1760 French forces besieging Quebec defeat the British in the second Battle on the Plains of Abraham.
1788 Maryland becomes the seventh state to ratify the constitution.
1789 The crew of the HMS Bounty mutinies against Captain William Bligh.
1818 President James Monroe proclaims naval disarmament on the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain.
1856 Yokut Indians repel an attack on their land by 100 would-be Indian fighters in California.
1902 Revolution breaks out in the Dominican Republic.
1910 The first night air flight is performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.
1916 British declare martial law throughout Ireland.
1919 Les Irvin makes the first jump with an Army Air Corps parachute.
1920 Azerbaijan joins the Soviet Union.
1930 The first organized night baseball game is played in Independence, Kansas.
1932 A yellow fever vaccine for humans is announced.
1945 Benito Mussolini is killed by Italian partisans.
1946 The Allies indict Tojo on 55 counts of war crimes
1947 Norwegian anthropologist Thor Heyerdahl and five others set out in a balsa wood craft known as Kon Tiki to prove that Peruvian Indians could have settled in Polynesia.
1953 French troops evacuate northern Laos.
1965 The U.S. Army and Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
1967 Muhammad Ali refuses induction into the U.S. Army and is stripped of his boxing title.
1969 Charles de Gaulle resigns as president of France.


Born on April 28
1442 Edward IV, king of England (1461-1470, 1471-1483), first king of the House of York.
1758 James Monroe, fifth President of the United States (1817-1825).
1878 Lionel Barrymore, American stage, screen and radio actor.
1892 John Jacob Niles, American folk singer and folklorist.
1898 William Soutar, Scottish poet.
1902 Johan Borgen, Norwegian novelist.
1912 Odette Hallowes, British secret agent.
1926 Harper Lee, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist (To Kill a Mockingbird).
1930 James Baker III, Cabinet secretary for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
1936 Kenneth White, poet and essayist.
1937 Saddam Hussein, President of Iraq.
1937 Jean Redpath, Scottish folk singer.










Lead Story
1945
Benito Mussolini executed

On this day in 1945, “Il Duce,” Benito Mussolini, and his mistress, Clara Petacci, are shot by Italian partisans who had captured the couple as they attempted to flee to Switzerland.

The 61-year-old deposed former dictator of Italy was established by his German allies as the figurehead of a puppet government in northern Italy during the German occupation toward the close of the war. As the Allies fought their way up the Italian peninsula, defeat of the Axis powers all but certain, Mussolini considered his options. Not wanting to fall into the hands of either the British or the Americans, and knowing that the communist partisans, who had been fighting the remnants of roving Italian fascist soldiers and thugs in the north, would try him as a war criminal, he settled on escape to a neutral country.

He and his mistress made it to the Swiss border, only to discover that the guards had crossed over to the partisan side. Knowing they would not let him pass, he disguised himself in a Luftwaffe coat and helmet, hoping to slip into Austria with some German soldiers. His subterfuge proved incompetent, and he and Petacci were discovered by partisans and shot, their bodies then transported by truck to Milan, where they were hung upside down and displayed publicly for revilement by the masses.

[KAJUN]

April 29
1289 Qalawun, the Sultan of Egypt, captures Tripoli.
1429 Joan of Arc leads French forces to victory over English at Orleans.
1624 Louis XIII appoints Cardinal Richelieu chief minister of the Royal Council of France.
1661 The Chinese Ming dynasty occupies Taiwan.
1672 King Louis XIV of France invades the Netherlands.
1813 Rubber is patented.
1852 The first edition of Peter Roget's Thesaurus is published.
1856 Yokut Indians repel a second attack by the 'Petticoat Rangers,' a band of civilian Indian fighters at Four Creeks, California.
1858 Austrian troops invade Piedmont.
1859 As the French army races to support them and the Austrian army mobilizes to oppose them, 150,000 Piedmontese troops invade Piedmontese territory.
1861 The Maryland House of Delegates votes against seceding from Union.
1862 Forts Philip and Jackson surrender to Admiral David Farragut outside New Orleans.
1913 Gideon Sundback of Hoboken patents the all-purpose zipper.
1916 Irish nationalists surrender to the British in Dublin.
1918 America's WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scores his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall.
1924 Open revolt breaks out in Santa Clara, Cuba.
1927 Construction of the Spirit of St. Louis is completed.
1930 The film All Quiet on the Western Front, based on Erich Maria Remarque's novel Im Western Nichts Neues, premiers.
1945 The German Army in Italy surrenders unconditionally to the Allies.
1945 The Nazi concentration camp of Dachau is liberated by Allied troops.
1946 Former Japanese leaders are indicted in Tokyo as war criminals.
1975 The U.S. embassy in Vietnam is evacuated as North Vietnamese forces fight their way into Saigon.
1983 Harold Washington is sworn in as Chicago's first black mayor.
1992 Four Los Angeles police offices are acquitted of charges stemming from the beating of Rodney King. Rioting ensues.


Born on April 29
1745 Oliver Ellsworth, third Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
1818 Alexander II, Czar of Russia.
1863 William Randolph Hearst, American newspaper publisher.
1877 Tad Dorgan, cartoonist and columnist.
1879 Sir Thomas Beecham, founder of the London Philharmonic.
1899 Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington, renowned jazz composer and musician.
1901 Hirohito, emperor of Japan during and after World War II.



BY DAVID T. ZABECKI
JULY 2018 • MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE

Megiddo, in Israel’s Jezreel Valley, is among the most fought-over pieces of ground in history. The world’s great armies have waged 34 known battles across the terrain surrounding the base of Tel Megiddo, the hilltop settlement dating from 7000 bc. It is the site of history’s first reliably recorded battle, when in 1457 bc Egyptians under Pharaoh Thutmose III defeated a coalition of Canaanite tribes. Many people also believe Megiddo will host history’s last great battle, a climactic clash between the forces of good and evil at the place the New Testament Book of Revelation calls by its Greek name—Armageddon.
Present-day Tel Megiddo (Armageddon) National Park is one of the most significant archaeological sites in Israel. (Itamar Grinberg/Flckr)
In an age when merchants transported almost all trade goods on the backs of camels and horses, Megiddo was strategic terrain in every sense of the term. From its position on the western edge of the Jezreel Valley this high ground dominated the narrow Musmus Pass on the Via Maris, a primary overland trade route in ancient and early medieval times. It linked Egypt with Asia Minor (present-day Turkey) and Mesopotamia’s Fertile Crescent (present-day Iraq). Branches of the fabled Silk and Spice roads ran through the Jezreel along the Via Maris.
Battles since lost to the mists of time were undoubtedly fought there before 1457 bc. Fragmentary inscriptions on ancient Egyptian tombs strongly suggest that in 2350 bc forces under Pharaoh Pepi I defeated Canaanite rebels at the Nose of the Gazelle’s Head, a landmark historians have placed somewhere in the Mount Carmel coastal range, just a few miles northwest of Megiddo.
The Old Testament records five key clashes around Megiddo. In 1285 bc the Israelite prophet Deborah and her military counterpart, Barak, sent Canaanite General Sisera packing in battle near Mount Tabor, 21 miles northeast of Megiddo. Sisera kept running until a turncoat drove a tent peg through his skull. Forty years later a band of 300 Israelites under the prophet and commander Gideon routed a greatly superior Midianite army at the Hill of Moreh, just east of Megiddo. In 1055 bc Saul, first king of a united Israel, lost the battle, his life, his head and three sons to the Philistines at Mount Gilboa, 20 miles southeast of Megiddo, leaving son-in-law David as king. In 841 bc the Israelite captain Jehu staged a coup against King Joram, piercing his heart with an arrow in a chariot duel just east of Megiddo before having his mother, the infamous Queen Jezebel, thrown from a window to her death in Jezreel. Finally, in 609 bc Egyptian Pharaoh Necho II defeated and killed King Josiah of Judah (opposite, in lead chariot) in battle at Megiddo and turned the southern kingdom into a vassal state.
Tel Megiddo was abandoned in 586 bc, about the time Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, overran Judah and sent many survivors into the infamous “Babylonian captivity.” But over the subsequent two and a half millennia the fighting has continued on the plain surrounding Megiddo. In ad 67, during the Jewish Revolt against Rome, future emperor Vespasian routed a rebel force at Mount Tabor. In 1182 and again in 1187 Sultan Saladin of Egypt and Syria defeated the Crusaders at Mount Tabor, though in 1183 he cut and ran at Ain Jalut (present-day Ein Harod, Israel), between Megiddo and Mount Gilboa. The Egyptian Mamluks defeated a force of invading Mongols at Ain Jalut in 1260, only to be thrashed themselves four years later by a combined Crusader force of Templers and Hospitallers at Lejjun, a mile east of the Tel Megiddo ruins.
In the modern era Napoléon Bonaparte turned around a French battle against Ottoman Turks at Mount Tabor in 1799, while in 1918 British General Edmund Allenby defeated a mixed force of Ottomans and Germans at Megiddo. Israel fought four distinct battles—two in 1948, one in 1967 and another in 1973—against Arab forces around Megiddo. Present-day Tel Megiddo (Armageddon) National Park [en.parks.org.il/ParksAndReserves/TelMegiddo] encompasses perhaps the most significant archeological site in Israel, where excavations have unearthed more than two-dozen layers of habitation stretching back to the early Bronze Age.

Peace may reign for the time being in Megiddo, but if the final battle between good and evil foretold in the New Testament comes to pass, it may not be confined to the surrounding plain. Since the end of World War II the name Armageddon has become synonymous with a potential global nuclear cataclysm. MH

[Suzuki Johnny]

April 30
313 Licinius unifies the whole of the eastern Roman Empire under his own rule.
1250 King Louis IX of France is ransomed.
1527 Henry VIII of England and King Francis of France sign the Treaty of Westminster.
1563 All Jews are expelled from France by order of Charles VI.
1725 Spain withdraws from the Quadruple Alliance.
1789 George Washington is inaugurated as the first U.S. president.
1803 The United States doubles in size through the Louisiana Purchase, which was sold by France for $15 million.
1812 Louisiana is admitted into the Union as a state.
1849 Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian patriot and guerrilla leader, repulses a French attack on Rome.
1864 Work begins on the Dams along the Red River, which will allow Union General Nathaniel Banks' troops to sail over the rapids above Alexandria, Louisiana.
1930 The Soviet Union proposes a military alliance with France and Great Britain.
1931 The George Washington Bridge, linking New York City and New Jersey, opens.
1943 The British submarine HMS Seraph drops 'the man who never was,' a dead man the British planted with false invasion plans, into the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.
1945 Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his bunker. Karl Donitz becomes his successor.
1968 U.S. Marines attack a division of North Vietnamese troops in the village of Dai Do.
1970 U.S. troops invade Cambodia to disrupt North Vietnamese Army base areas.
1972 The North Vietnamese launch an invasion of the South.
1973 President Richard Nixon announces the resignation of Harry Robbins Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and other top aides.
1975 North Vietnamese troops enter the Independence Palace of South Vietnam in Saigon ending the Vietnam War.
1980 Terrorists seize the Iranian Embassy in London.


Born on April 30
1777 Carl Friedrich Gauss, German mathematician.
1858 Mary Scott Lord Dimmick, First Lady to President Benjamin Harrison .
1870 Franz Lehár, Hungarian composer (The Merry Widow, The Land of Smiles).
1909 Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands.
1912 Eve Arden (Eunice Quedens), actress.
1933 Willie Nelson, country singer.
1945 Annie Dillard, writer (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek).
1954 Jane Campion, New Zealand film director (The Piano, A Portrait of a Lady).





1945
Adolf Hitler commits suicide

On this day in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler’s dreams of a “1,000-year” Reich.
Since at least 1943, it was becoming increasingly clear that Germany would fold under the pressure of the Allied forces. In February of that year, the German 6th Army, lured deep into the Soviet Union, was annihilated at the Battle of Stalingrad, and German hopes for a sustained offensive on both fronts evaporated. Then, in June 1944, the Western Allied armies landed at Normandy, France, and began systematically to push the Germans back toward Berlin. By July 1944, several German military commanders acknowledged their imminent defeat and plotted to remove Hitler from power so as to negotiate a more favorable peace. Their attempts to assassinate Hitler failed, however, and in his reprisals, Hitler executed over 4,000 fellow countrymen.
In January 1945, facing a siege of Berlin by the Soviets, Hitler withdrew to his bunker to live out his final days. Located 55 feet under the chancellery, the shelter contained 18 rooms and was fully self-sufficient, with its own water and electrical supply. Though he was growing increasingly mad, Hitler continued to give orders and meet with such close subordinates as Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler and Josef Goebbels. He also married his long-time mistress Eva Braun just two days before his suicide.

In his last will and testament, Hitler appointed Admiral Karl Donitz as head of state and Goebbels as chancellor. He then retired to his private quarters with Braun, where he and Braun poisoned themselves and their dogs, before Hitler then also shot himself with his service pistol.

Hitler and Braun’s bodies were hastily cremated in the chancellery garden, as Soviet forces closed in on the building. When the Soviets reached the chancellery, they removed Hitler’s ashes, continually changing their location so as to prevent Hitler devotees from creating a memorial at his final resting place. Only eight days later, on May 8, 1945, the German forces issued an unconditional surrender, leaving Germany to be carved up by the four Allied powers.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in HistoryMay 1
408 Theodosius II succeeds to the throne of Constantinople.
1308 King Albert is murdered by his nephew John, because he refused his share of the Habsburg lands.
1486 Christopher Columbus convinces Queen Isabella to fund expedition to the West Indies.
1805 The state of Virginia passes a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation.
1863 The Battle of Chancellorsville begins as Union Gen. Joe Hooker starts his three-pronged attack against Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.
1867 Reconstruction in the South begins with black voter registration.
1877 President Rutherford B. Hayes withdraws all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
1898 The U.S. Navy under Commodore George Dewey defeats the Spanish fleet at the Battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines.
1915 The luxury liner Lusitania leaves New York Harbor for a voyage to Europe.
1927 Adolf Hitler holds his first Nazi meeting in Berlin.
1931 The Empire State Building opens in New York.
1934 The Philippine legislature accepts a U.S. proposal for independence.
1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signs an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II.
1941 The film Citizen Kane--directed and starring Orson Welles--opens in New York.
1944 The Messerschmitt Me 262, the first combat jet, makes its first flight.
1945 Martin Bormann, private secretary to Adolf Hitler, escapes the Fuehrerbunker as the Red Army advances on Berlin.
1948 North Korea is established.
1950 Gwendolyn Brooks becomes the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize for her book of poetry called Annie Allen.
1960 Francis Gary Powers' U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.
1961 Fidel Castro announces there will be no more elections in Cuba.
1968 In the second day of battle, U.S. Marines, with the support of naval fire, continue their attack on a North Vietnamese Division at Dai Do.
1970 Students from Kent State University riot in downtown Kent, Ohio, in protest of the American invasion of Cambodia.
1986 The Tass News Agency reports the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident.



Born on May 1
1493 Philippus Paracelsus, physician and alchemist.
1764 Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol.
1769 Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington.
1830 Mother (Mary Harris) Jones, reformer and labor organizer.
1839 Louis-Marie-Hilaire Bernigaud, French chemist, inventor of rayon.
1878 James Graham, inventor of the first naval aircraft-carrying ship and first man to film a total eclipse of the Sun.
1896 Mark Clark, American general during World War II.
1909 Kate Smith, singer.
1916 Glenn Ford, actor (The Blackboard Jungle).
1923 Joseph Heller, American author (Catch 22).
1924 Terry Southern, novelist and screenwriter (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider).
1940 Bobbie Ann Mason, American writer (Shiloh and Other Stories, In Country).






Lead Story
1931
Empire State Building dedicated

On this day in 1931, President Herbert Hoover officially dedicates New York City’s Empire State Building, pressing a button from the White House that turns on the building’s lights. Hoover’s gesture, of course, was symbolic; while the president remained in Washington, D.C., someone else flicked the switches in New York.

The idea for the Empire State Building is said to have been born of a competition between Walter Chrysler of the Chrysler Corporation and John Jakob Raskob of General Motors, to see who could erect the taller building. Chrysler had already begun work on the famous Chrysler Building, the gleaming 1,046-foot skyscraper in midtown Manhattan. Not to be bested, Raskob assembled a group of well-known investors, including former New York Governor Alfred E. Smith. The group chose the architecture firm Shreve, Lamb and Harmon Associates to design the building. The Art-Deco plans, said to have been based in large part on the look of a pencil, were also builder-friendly: The entire building went up in just over a year, under budget (at $40 million) and well ahead of schedule. During certain periods of building, the frame grew an astonishing four-and-a-half stories a week.

At the time of its completion, the Empire State Building, at 102 stories and 1,250 feet high (1,454 feet to the top of the lightning rod), was the world’s tallest skyscraper. The Depression-era construction employed as many as 3,400 workers on any single day, most of whom received an excellent pay rate, especially given the economic conditions of the time. The new building imbued New York City with a deep sense of pride, desperately needed in the depths of the Great Depression, when many city residents were unemployed and prospects looked bleak. The grip of the Depression on New York’s economy was still evident a year later, however, when only 25 percent of the Empire State’s offices had been rented.

In 1972, the Empire State Building lost its title as world’s tallest building to New York’s World Trade Center, which itself was the tallest skyscraper for but a year. Today the honor belongs to Dubai’s Burj Khalifa tower, which soars 2,717 feet into the sky.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 2
1670 The Hudson Bay Company is founded.
1598 Henry IV signs Treaty of Vervins, ending Spain's interference in France.
1748 Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ends the War of Devolution in France.
1776 France and Spain agree to donate arms to American rebels fighting the British.
1797 A mutiny in the British navy spreads from Spithead to the rest of the fleet.
1798 The black General Toussaint Louverture forces British troops to agree to evacuate the port of Santo Domingo.
1808 The citizens of Madrid rise up against Napoleon.
1813 Napoleon defeats a Russian and Prussian army at Grossgorschen.
1863 Stonewall Jackson smashes Joseph Hooker's flank at Chancellorsville, Virginia.
1865 President Andrew Johnson offers a $100,000 reward for the capture of the Confederate President
1885 King Leopold II of Belgium establishes the Congo Free State.
1890 The Territory of Oklahoma is created.
1919 The first U.S. air passenger service starts.
1923 Lieutenants Oakley Kelly and John Macready take off from New York for the West Coast on what will become the first successful nonstop transcontinental flight.
1941 Hostilities break out between British forces in Iraq and that country's pro-German faction.
1942 Admiral Chester J. Nimitz, convinced that the Japanese will attack Midway Island, visits the island to review its readiness.
1945 Russian forces take Berlin after 12 days of fierce house-to-house fighting.
1946 Prisoners revolt at California's Alcatraz prison.
1968 The U.S. Army attacks Nhi Ha in South Vietnam and begins a fourteen-day battle to wrestle it away from Vietnamese Communists.
1970 Student anti-war protesters at Ohio's Kent State University burn down the campus ROTC building. The National Guard takes control of campus.


Born on May 2
1729 Catherine II, Czarina of Russia.
1837 Henry Martyn Robert, parliamentarian (Robert's Rules of Order).
1860 William Maddock Bayliss, British physiologist, co-discoverer of hormones.
1866 Jesse Lazear, American physician and researcher of yellow fever.
1877 Vernon Castle, ballroom dancer.
1892 Manfred von Richthofen (the Red Baron), German fighter ace of World War I.
1895 Lorenz Milton Hart, lyricist, collaborator with Richard Rodgers.
1903 Benjamin Spock, pediatrician, author and activist.
1921 Satyajit Ray, Indian film director (Aparajito, The World of Apu).



Automotive
1918
GM buys Chevrolet

On this day in 1918, General Motors Corporation (GM), which will become the world’s largest automotive firm, acquires Chevrolet Motor Company.

GM had been founded a decade earlier by William C. “Billy” Durant, a former carriage maker from Flint, Michigan, whose Durant-Dort Carriage Company had taken control of the ailing Buick Motor Company. On September 16, 1908, Durant incorporated Buick into a new entity, General Motors, which by the end of that decade had welcomed other leading auto manufacturers–including Oldsmobile, Cadillac and Oakland–into its fold. In 1910, with GM struggling financially, stockholders blamed Durant’s aggressive expansionism and forced him out of the company he founded. In November 1911, he launched Chevrolet Motor Company, named for his partner, the Swiss race car driver Louis Chevrolet.

Still the owner of a considerable portion of GM stock, Durant began to purchase more shares in the company as his profits from Chevrolet allowed. In a final move to regain control, Durant offered GM stockholders five shares of Chevrolet stock for every one share of GM stock. Though GM stock prices were exorbitantly high, the market interest in Chevrolet made the five-for-one trade irresistible to GM shareholders. With the sale, concluded on May 2, 1918, Durant regained control of GM. Just two years later, however, he was pushed out for good by Pierre S. DuPont, whose family’s powerful chemical company had begun investing in the fledgling auto industry by buying GM stock in 1914. Pierre DuPont subsequently rose to the chairmanship of GM’s board and became president in 1920. In an agreement made that same year, DuPont paid off all of Durant’s debt; in exchange, the controversial founder left the company.

Durant refused to bow out of the automotive industry, however, founding Durant Motors in 1921 and producing a line of cars for the next decade. The onset of the Great Depression in the early 1930s put an end to Durant’s career in cars, and he threw his entrepreneurial energy behind a string of bowling alleys located near the Buick complex in Flint, Michigan. When this venture failed as well, Durant faded from the public eye. He died on March 18, 1947, at the age of 85, just weeks before the passing of another automotive pioneer: Henry Ford.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 3
495 Pope Gelasius asserts that his authority is superior to Emperor Anastasius.
1568 French forces in Florida slaughter hundreds of Spanish.
1855 Macon B. Allen becomes the first African American to be admitted to the Bar in Massachusetts.
1859 France declares war on Austria.
1863 The Battle of Chancellorsville rages for a second day.
1865 President Abraham Lincoln's funeral train arrives in Springfield, Illinois.
1926 U.S. Marines land in Nicaragua.
1952 The first airplane lands at the geographic North Pole.
1968 After three days of battle, the U.S. Marines retake Dai Do complex in Vietnam, only to find the North Vietnamese have evacuated the area.
1971 James Earl Ray, Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassin, is caught in a jail break attempt.
1979 Margaret Thatcher becomes the first woman prime minister of Great Britain.
1982 A British submarine sinks Argentina's only cruiser during the Falkland Islands War.


Born on May 3
1469 Niccolo Machiavelli, political advisor and writer (The Prince).
1849 Jacob Riis, American reformer (How the Other Half Lives).
1898 Golda Meir, Fourth Prime Minister of Israel (1969-1974).
1903 Bing [Harry Lillis] Crosby, singer and actor. Various dates given for his birth date.
1912 May Sarton, poet and writer.
1913 William Inge, American playwright (Picnic, Bus Stop).
1919 Betty Comden, lyricist.
1919 Pete Seeger, folksinger and songwriter.
1920 John Lewis, jazz pianist.
1920 Walker Smith, Jr. (Sugar Ray Robinson), champion middleweight boxer.
1933 James Brown, American singer and songwriter.



Vietnam War
1965
173rd Airborne Brigade deploys to South Vietnam

The lead element of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (“Sky Soldiers”), stationed in Okinawa, departs for South Vietnam. It was the first U.S. Army ground combat unit committed to the war. Combat elements of the 173rd Airborne Brigade included the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Battalions, 503rd Infantry; the 3rd Battalion, 319th Airborne Artillery; Company D, 16th Armor; Troop E, 17th Cavalry; and the 335th Aviation company.

Headquartered at Bien Hoa Air Base near Saigon, the Brigade conducted operations to keep communist forces away from the Saigon-Bien Hoa complex. In February 1967, the Brigade conducted a combat parachute jump into a major communist base area to the north of Saigon near the Cambodian border. In November 1967, the Brigade was ordered to the Central Highlands, where they fought a major battle at Dak To against an entrenched North Vietnamese Army regiment on Hill 875. In some of the most brutal fighting of the war, the paratroopers captured the hill on Thanksgiving Day, winning the Presidential Unit Citation for bravery in action.

After more than six years on the battlefield, the Brigade was withdrawn from Vietnam in August 1971. During combat service, they suffered 1,606 killed in action and 8,435 wounded in action. Twelve paratroopers of the 173rd won the Medal of Honor for conspicuous bravery in battle.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 4
1471 In England, the Yorkists defeat the Lancastrians at the Battle of Tewkesbury.
1626 American Indians sell Manhattan Island for $24 in cloth and buttons.
1715 A French manufacturer debuts the first folding umbrella.
1776 Rhode Island declares independence from England.
1795 Thousands of rioters enter jails in Lyons, France, and massacre 99 Jacobin prisoners.
1814 Napoleon Bonaparte disembarks at Portoferraio on the island of Elba in the Mediterranean.
1863 The Battle of Chancellorsville ends when Union Army retreats.
1864 Union General Ulysses S. Grant's forces cross the Rapidan River and meet Robert E. Lee's Confederate army.
1927 A balloon soars over 40,000 feet for the first time.
1930 Mahatma Gandhi is arrested by the British.
1942 The Battle of the Coral Sea commences.
1942 The United States begins food rationing.
1961 13 civil rights activists, dubbed Freedom Riders, begin a bus trip through the South.
1970 Ohio National Guardsmen open fire on student protesters at Kent State University, killing four and wounding nine others.


Born on May 4
1796 Horace Mann, educator and author.
1820 Joseph Whitaker, bookseller and publisher (Whitaker's Almanac)
1825 Thomas Henry Huxley, British biologist.
1827 John Hanning Speke, English explorer.
1874 Frank Conrad, electrical engineer and broadcasting pioneer.
1884 Agnes Fay Morgan, American nutritionist and biochemist.
1928 Thomas Kinsella, Irish poet.
1929 Audrey Hepburn (Edda van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston), actress, later U.N. special ambassador.
1939 Amos Oz, Israeli novelist (The Black Box, TheThird State).
1949 Graham Swift, British novelist (The Sweet Shop Owner, Out of this World).

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 5
1494 Christopher Columbus lands on the island of Jamaica, which he names Santa Gloria.
1814 British attack the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, New York.
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte dies in exile on the island of St. Helena.
1834 The first mainland railway line opens in Belgium.
1862 Union and Confederate forces clash at the Battle of Williamsburg, part of the Peninsular Campaign.
1862 Mexican forces loyal to Benito Juarez defeat troops sent by Napoleon III in the Battle of Puebla.
1886 A bomb explodes on the fourth day of a workers' strike in Chicago.
1912 Soviet Communist Party newspaper Pravda begins publishing.
1916 U.S. Marines invade the Dominican Republic.
1917 Eugene Jacques Bullard becomes the first African-American aviator when he earns a flying certificate with the French Air Service.
1920 Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti are arrested for murder.
1935 American Jesse Owens sets the long jump record.
1942 General Joseph Stilwell learns that the Japanese have cut his railway out of China and is forced to lead his troops into India.
1945 Holland and Denmark are liberated from Nazi control.
1961 Alan Shepard becomes the first American in space.
1965 173rd Airborne Brigade arrives in Bien Hoa-Vung, Vietnam, the first regular U.S. Army unit deployed to that country.
1968 U.S. Air Force planes hit Nhi Ha, South Vietnam in support of attacking infantrymen.
1969 Pulitzer Prize awarded to Norman Mailer for his 'nonfiction novel' Armies of the Night, an account of the 1967 anti-Vietnam War march on the Pentagon.
1987 Congress opens Iran-Contra hearings.
2000 The Sun, Earth, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn align - Earth's moon is also almost in this alignment - leading to Doomsday predictions of massive natural disasters, although such a 'grand confluence' occurs about once in every century.


Born on May 5
1813 Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher.
1818 Karl Marx, German philosopher (The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital).
1830 John B. Stetson, American hat maker.
1861 Peter Cooper Hewitt, electrical engineer, inventor of the mercury-vapor lamp.
1883 Charles Albert "Chief" Bender, baseball player.
1890 Christopher Morley, writer (Kitty Foyle).
1899 Freeman F. Gosden, radio comedy writer and performer (Amos 'n' Andy).
1909 Carlos Baker, biographer.
1943 Michael Palin, actor and screenwriter (Monty Python's Flying Circus).







Lead Story
1961
The first American in space

From Cape Canaveral, Florida, Navy Commander Alan Bartlett Shepard Jr. is launched into space aboard the Freedom 7 space capsule, becoming the first American astronaut to travel into space. The suborbital flight, which lasted 15 minutes and reached a height of 116 miles into the atmosphere, was a major triumph for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

NASA was established in 1958 to keep U.S. space efforts abreast of recent Soviet achievements, such as the launching of the world’s first artificial satellite–Sputnik 1–in 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the two superpowers raced to become the first country to put a man in space and return him to Earth. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet space program won the race when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was launched into space, put in orbit around the planet, and safely returned to Earth. One month later, Shepard’s suborbital flight restored faith in the U.S. space program.

NASA continued to trail the Soviets closely until the late 1960s and the successes of the Apollo lunar program. In July 1969, the Americans took a giant leap forward with Apollo 11, a three-stage spacecraft that took U.S. astronauts to the surface of the moon and returned them to Earth. On February 5, 1971, Alan Shepard, the first American in space, became the fifth astronaut to walk on the moon as part of the Apollo 14 lunar landing mission.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 6
1527 German troops begin sacking Rome. Libraries are destroyed, the Pope is captured and thousands are killed.
1529 Babur defeats the Afghan Chiefs in the Battle of Ghaghra, India.
1682 King Louis XIV moves his court to Versailles, France.
1856 U.S. Army troops from Fort Tejon and Fort Miller prepare to ride out to protect Keyesville, California, from Yokut Indian attack.
1861 Arkansas becomes the ninth state to secede from the Union.
1862 Henry David Thoreau dies of tuberculosis at age 44.
1864 In the second day of the Battle of the Wilderness between Union General Ulysses S. Grant and Confederate General Robert E. Lee, Confederate Gen. James Longstreet is wounded by his own men.
1877 Chief Crazy Horse surrenders to U.S. troops in Nebraska. Crazy Horse brought General George Custer to his end.
1937 The dirigible Hindenburg explodes in flames at Lakehurst, New Jersey.
1941 Bob Hope gives his first USO show at California's March Field.
1942 General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders Corregidor to the Japanese.
1944 The Red Army besieges and captures Sevastopol in the Crimea.
1945 Axis Sally makes her final propaganda broadcast to Allied troops.
1954 British runner Roger Bannister breaks the four minute mile.
1960 President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Civil Rights Act of 1960.
1962 The first nuclear warhead is fired from a Polaris submarine.
1994 The Channel Tunnel linking England to France is officially opened.


Born on May 6
973 Henry II, Holy Roman emperor.
1740 John Penn, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
1758 Maximilien Robespierre, French revolutionary.
1840 Frederick William Stowe, son of Harriet Beecher Stowe.
1856 Robert Edward Peary, arctic explorer and the first man to reach the North Pole.
1856 Sigmund Freud, Austrian neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis.
1868 Gaston Leroux, French novelist (The Phantom of the Opera).
1888 Russell Stover, candy manufacturer.
1895 Rudolph Valentino, actor, film icon.
1902 Max Ophuls, film director (La Ronde, Lola Montes).
1915 Orson Welles, actor, director, and writer (Citizen Kane).
1931 Willie Mays, baseball player.
1942 Ariel Dorfman, Chilean writer (Death and the Maiden).



1994
English Channel tunnel opens

In a ceremony presided over by England’s Queen Elizabeth II and French President Francois Mitterand, a rail tunnel under the English Channel was officially opened, connecting Britain and the European mainland for the first time since the Ice Age.

The channel tunnel, or “Chunnel,” connects Folkstone, England, with Sangatte, France, 31 miles away. The Chunnel cut travel time between England and France to a swift 35 minutes and eventually between London and Paristo two-and-a-half hours.
As the world’s longest undersea tunnel, the Chunnel runs under water for 23 miles, with an average depth of 150 feet below the seabed. Each day, about 30,000 people, 6,000 cars and 3,500 trucks journey through the Chunnel on passenger, shuttle and freight trains.
Millions of tons of earth were moved to build the two rail tunnels–one for northbound and one for southbound traffic–and one service tunnel. Fifteen thousand people were employed at the peak of construction. Ten people were killed during construction.
Napoleon’s engineer, Albert Mathieu, planned the first tunnel under the English Channel in 1802, envisioning an underground passage with ventilation chimneys that would stretch above the waves. In 1880, the first real attempt was made by Colonel Beaumont, who bore a tunnel more than a mile long before abandoning the project. Other efforts followed in the 20th century, but none on the scale of the tunnels begun in June 1988.
The Chunnel’s $16 billion cost was roughly twice the original estimate, and completion was a year behind schedule. One year into service, Eurotunnel announced a huge loss, one of the biggest in United Kingdom corporate history at the time. A scheme in which banks agreed to swap billions of pounds worth of loans for shares saved the tunnel from going under and it showed its first net profit in 1999.

Freight traffic was suspended for six months after a fire broke out on a lorry in the tunnel in November 1996. Nobody was seriously hurt in the incident.

In 1996, the American Society of Civil Engineers identified the tunnel as one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in HistoryMay 7
558 The dome of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople collapses. Its immediate rebuilding is ordered by Justinian.
1274 The Second Council of Lyons opens in France to regulate the election of the pope.
1429 Joan of Arc breaks the English siege of Orleans.
1525 The German peasants' revolt is crushed by the ruling class and church.
1763 Indian chief Pontiac begins his attack on a British fort in present-day Detroit, Michigan.
1800 Congress divides the Northwest Territory into two parts. The western part will becomes the Indiana Territory and the eastern section remains the Northwest Territory.
1824 Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony" premieres in Vienna.
1847 The American Medical Association is formed in Philadelphia.
1862 Confederate troops strike Union troops at the Battle of Eltham's Landing in Virginia.
1864 The Battle of the Wilderness ends with heavy losses to both sides.
1877 Indian chief Sitting Bull enters Canada with a trail of Indians after the Battle of Little Bighorn.
1915 The German submarine U-20 torpedoes the passenger ship Lusitiania, sinking her in 21 minutes with 1,978 people on board.
1937 The German Condor Legion arrives in Spain to assist Fransico Franco's forces.
1942 In the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese and American navies attack each other with carrier-launched warplanes. It is the first time in the history of naval warfare where two fleets fought without seeing each other.Two crucial battles in 1942 marked the turning point of the war in the Pacific.
1943 The last major German strongholds in North Africa--Tunis and Bizerte--fall to Allied forces.
1945 Germany signs an unconditional surrender, effectively ending World War II in Europe.
1952 In Korea, Communist POWs at Koje-do riot against their American captors.
1954 French troops surrender to the Vietminh at Dien Bien Phu.
1958 Howard Johnson sets an aircraft altitude record in F-104.
1960 Leonid Brezhnev becomes president of the Soviet Union.


Born on May 7
1812 Robert Browning, English poet.
1833 Johannes Brahms, German composer.
1840 Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer.
1870 Marcus Loew, film executive, consolidated studios to create MGM.
1892 Josip Broz [Tito], leader of Yugoslavia during after World War II.
1892 Archibald MacLeish, American poet and statesman.
1901 Gary Cooper, film actor (High Noon, Friendly Persuasion).
1909 Edwin Herbert Land, inventor of the Polaroid Land Camera.
1919 Eva (Evita) Perón, first lady of Argentina.
1932 Jenny Joseph, English poet and novelist (The Thinking Heart, The Inland Sea).
1943 Peter Carey, Australian writer (Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda).





General Interest
1915
Lusitania sinks

On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland. Within 20 minutes, the vessel sank into the Celtic Sea. Of 1,959 passengers and crew, 1,198 people were drowned, including 128 Americans. The attack aroused considerable indignation in the United States, but Germany defended the action, noting that it had issued warnings of its intent to attack all ships, neutral or otherwise, that entered the war zone around Britain.
When World War I erupted in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson pledged neutrality for the United States, a position that the vast majority of Americans favored. Britain, however, was one of America’s closest trading partners, and tension soon arose between the United States and Germany over the latter’s attempted quarantine of the British isles. Several U.S. ships traveling to Britain were damaged or sunk by German mines, and in February 1915 Germany announced unrestricted submarine warfare in the waters around Britain.
In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. The announcement was placed on the same page as an advertisement of the imminent sailing of the Lusitania liner from New York back to Liverpool. The sinkings of merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel’s course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7 the 32,000-ton ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship’s boilers, and the ship sunk in 20 minutes.
It was revealed that the Lusitania was carrying about 173 tons of war munitions for Britain, which the Germans cited as further justification for the attack. The United States eventually sent three notes to Berlin protesting the action, and Germany apologized and pledged to end unrestricted submarine warfare. In November, however, a U-boat sunk an Italian liner without warning, killing 272 people, including 27 Americans. Public opinion in the United States began to turn irrevocably against Germany.

On January 31, 1917, Germany, determined to win its war of attrition against the Allies, announced that it would resume unrestricted warfare in war-zone waters. Three days later, the United States broke diplomatic relations with Germany, and just hours after that the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. On February 22, Congress passed a $250 million arms appropriations bill intended to make the United States ready for war. In late March, Germany sunk four more U.S. merchant ships, and on April 2 President Wilson appeared before Congress and called for a declaration of war against Germany. On April 4, the Senate voted to declare war against Germany, and two days later the House of Representatives endorsed the declaration. With that, America entered World War I.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 8
1450 Jack Cade's Rebellion--Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI.
1541 Hernando de Soto discovers the Mississippi River which he calls Rio de Espiritu Santo.
1559 An act of supremacy defines Queen Elizabeth I as the supreme governor of the church of England.
1794 The United States Post Office is established.
1846 The first major battle of the Mexican War is fought at Palo Alto, Texas.
1862 General 'Stonewall' Jackson repulses the Federals at the Battle of McDowell, in the Shenendoah Valley.
1864 Union troops arrive at Spotsylvania Court House to find the Confederates waiting for them.
1886 Atlanta pharmacist John Pemberton invents Coca Cola.
1895 China cedes Taiwan to Japan under Treaty of Shimonoseki.
1904 U.S. Marines land in Tangier, North Africa, to protect the Belgian legation.
1919 The first transatlantic flight by a navy seaplane takes-off.
1933 Mahatma Gandhi—actual name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi—begins a hunger strike to protest British oppression in India.
1940 German commandos in Dutch uniforms cross the Dutch border to hold bridges for the advancing German army.
1942 The Battle of the Coral Sea between the Japanese Navy and the U.S. Navy ends.
1945 The final surrender of German forces is celebrated as VE (Victory Europe) day.
1952 Allied fighter-bombers stage the largest raid of the war on North Korea.
1958 President Dwight Eisenhower orders the National Guard out of Little Rock as Ernest Green becomes the first black to graduate from an Arkansas public school.
1967 Boxer Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in U.S. Army.
1984 The Soviet Union announces it will not participate in Summer Olympics planned for Los Angeles.
1995 Jacques Chirac is elected president of France.


Born on May 8
1668 Alain Rene Lesage, French writer (The Adventures of Gil Blas, Turcaret).
1753 Miguel Hidalgo, Mexican nationalist.
1828 Jean Henri Dunant, Swiss philanthropist, founder of the Red Cross and YMCA, first recipient (jointly) of the Nobel Peace Prize.
1829 Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American pianist.
1884 Harry S. Truman, 33rd President of the United States (1945-1953).
1895 Edmund Wilson, American critic and essayist.
1906 Roberto Rossellini, Italian film director.
1910 Mary Lou Williams, jazz pianist and composer.
1920 Sloan Wilson, American author (The man in the Gray Flannel Suit, A Summer Place).
1928 Theodore Sorensen, advisor to John F. Kennedy.
1930 Gary Snyder, beat poet.
1937 Thomas Pynchon, novelist (Gravity's Rainbow).
1940 Peter Benchley, novelist (Jaws, The Deep).
1952 Beth Henley, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Crimes of the Heart).



Lead Story
1945
V-E Day is celebrated in America and Britain

On this day in 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark–the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

The main concern of many German soldiers was to elude the grasp of Soviet forces, to keep from being taken prisoner. About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender.

Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.

Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations…has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.”

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 9
1502 Christopher Columbus leaves Spain on his final trip to the New World.
1754 The first newspaper cartoon in America appears.
1813 U.S. troops under William Henry Harrison take Fort Meigs from British and Canadian troops.
1864 Union General John Sedgwick is shot and killed by a Confederate sharpshooter during fighting at Spotsylvania. His last words are: "They couldn't hit an elephant at this dist--"
1859 Threatened by the advancing French army, the Austrian army retreats across the River Sesia in Italy.
1915 German and French forces fight the Battle of Artois.
1926 Explorers Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett make the first flight over the North Pole.
1936 Fascist Italy captures the city of Addis Abba, Ethiopia and annexes the country.
1941 The German submarine U-110 is captured at sea along with its Enigma machine by the Royal Navy.
1946 King Victor Emmanuel II of Italy abdicates his throne and is replaced by Umberto I.
1962 A laser beam is successfully bounced off the moon for the first time.
1974 The House Judiciary Committee begins formal hearings on Nixon impeachment.


Born on May 9
1800 John Brown, abolitionist.
1844 Belle Boyd, Confederate spy.
1860 James Mathew Barrie, writer (Peter Pan, The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up).
1873 Howard Carter, British archaeologist.
1882 Henry J. Kaiser, shipbuilder.
1906 Eleanor Estes, children's author.
1921 Mona van Duyn, American poet laureate.
1934 Alan Bennett, British playwright and screenwriter (The Madness of King George III).
1936 Albert Finney, British actor (Murder on the Orient Express, Tom Jones).


Cold War
1955
West Germany joins NATO

Ten years after the Nazis were defeated in World War II, West Germany formally joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense group aimed at containing Soviet expansion in Europe. This action marked the final step of West Germany’s integration into the Western European defense system.
Germany had been a divided nation since 1945. The Americans, British, and French held zones of occupation in Western Germany and West Berlin; the Soviets controlled Eastern Germany and East Berlin. Although publicly both the Americans and the Soviets proclaimed their desire for a reunited and independent Germany, it quickly became apparent that each of these Cold War opponents would only accept a reunified Germany that served their own nation’s specific interests. In 1949, the Americans, British, and French combined their zones of occupation in West Germany to establish a new nation, the Federal Republic of Germany. The Soviets responded by setting up the German Democratic Republic in East Germany. On May 5, 1955, the American, French, and British forces formally ended their military occupation of West Germany, which became an independent country. Four days later, West Germany was made a member of NATO. For U.S. policymakers, this was an essential step in the defense of Western Europe. Despite the reluctance of some European nations, such as France, to see a rearmed Germany—even as an ally—the United States believed that remilitarizing West Germany was absolutely vital in terms of setting up a defensive perimeter to contain any possible Soviet attempts at expansion. The Soviet response was immediate. On May 14, 1955, the Soviet Union established the Warsaw Pact, a military alliance between Russia and its Eastern European satellites—including East Germany.

The entrance of West Germany into NATO was the final step in integrating that nation into the defense system of Western Europe. It was also the final nail in the coffin as far as any possibility of a reunited Germany in the near future. For the next 35 years, East and West Germany came to symbolize the animosities of the Cold War. In 1990, Germany was finally reunified; the new German state remained a member of NATO.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Lead Story
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.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 11
1573 Henry of Anjou becomes the first elected king of Poland.
1689 French and English navies battle at Bantry Bay.
1690 In the first major engagement of King William's War, British troops from Massachusetts seize Port Royal in Acadia (Nova Scotia and New Brunswick) from the French.
1745 French forces defeat an Anglo-Dutch-Hanoverian army at Fontenoy.
1792 The Columbia River is discovered by Captain Robert Gray.
1812 British Prime Minster Spencer Perceval is shot by a bankrupt banker in the lobby of the House of Commons.
1857 Indian mutineers seize Delhi.
1858 Minnesota is admitted as the 32nd U.S. state.
1860 Giuseppe Garibaldi lands at Marsala, Sicily.
1862 Confederates scuttle the CSS Virginia off Norfolk, Virginia.
1864 Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart is mortally wounded at Yellow Tavern.
1960 Israeli soldiers capture Adolf Eichmann in Buenos Aires.
1967 The Siege of Khe Sanh ends with the base is still in American hands.


Born on May 11
1885 "King" Joseph Oliver, jazz cornetist and bandleader.
1888 Irving Berlin, composer, writer of over 1,500 songs.
1894 Mari Sandoz, writer and biographer (Crazy Horse).
1895 William Grant Still, American composer and conductor.
1904 Salvador Dali, surrealist painter.
1912 Phil Silvers, comedian and actor.
1918 Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist.
1930 Stanley Elkin, author (George Mills).



Lead Story
1934
Dust storm sweeps from Great Plains across Eastern states

On this day in 1934, a massive storm sends millions of tons of topsoil flying from across the parched Great Plains region of the United States as far east as New York, Boston and Atlanta.

At the time the Great Plains were settled in the mid-1800s, the land was covered by prairie grass, which held moisture in the earth and kept most of the soil from blowing away even during dry spells. By the early 20th century, however, farmers had plowed under much of the grass to create fields. The U.S. entry into World War I in 1917 caused a great need for wheat, and farms began to push their fields to the limit, plowing under more and more grassland with the newly invented tractor. The plowing continued after the war, when the introduction of even more powerful gasoline tractors sped up the process. During the 1920s, wheat production increased by 300 percent, causing a glut in the market by 1931.

That year, a severe drought spread across the region. As crops died, wind began to carry dust from the over-plowed and over-grazed lands. The number of dust storms reported jumped from 14 in 1932 to 28 in 1933. The following year, the storms decreased in frequency but increased in intensity, culminating in the most severe storm yet in May 1934. Over a period of two days, high-level winds caught and carried some 350 million tons of silt all the way from the northern Great Plains to the eastern seaboard. According to The New York Times, dust “lodged itself in the eyes and throats of weeping and coughing New Yorkers,” and even ships some 300 miles offshore saw dust collect on their decks.

The dust storms forced thousands of families from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Kansas and New Mexico to uproot and migrate to California, where they were derisively known as “Okies”–no matter which state they were from. These transplants found life out West not much easier than what they had left, as work was scarce and pay meager during the worst years of the Great Depression.

Another massive storm on April 15, 1935–known as “Black Sunday”–brought even more attention to the desperate situation in the Great Plains region, which reporter Robert Geiger called the “Dust Bowl.” That year, as part of its New Deal program, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration began to enforce federal regulation of farming methods, including crop rotation, grass-seeding and new plowing methods. This worked to a point, reducing dust storms by up to 65 percent, but only the end of the drought in the fall of 1939 would truly bring relief.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 12
254 St. Stephen I begins his reign as Catholic Pope.
1588 King Henry III flees Paris after Henry of Guise triumphantly enters the city.
1641 The chief advisor to Charles I, Thomas Wentworth, is beheaded in the Tower of London
1780 Charleston, South Carolina falls to British forces.
1851 The Tule River War ends.
1863 With a victory at the Battle of Raymond, Mississippi, Union General Ulysses S. Grant closes in on Vicksburg.
1864 Union General Benjamin Butler attacks Drewry's Bluff on the James River.
1865 The last land battle of the Civil war occurs at Palmito Ranch, Texas. It is a Confederate victory.
1881 Tunisia, in North Africa becomes a French protectorate.
1885 In the Battle of Batoche, French Canadians rebel against the Canadian government.
1926 The Airship Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.
1932 The body of Charles Lindbergh's baby is found.
1935 Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio by "Bill W.," a stockbroker, and "Dr. Bob S.," a heart surgeon.
1940 The Nazi conquest of France begins with the crossing Musee River.
1942 The Soviet Army launches its first major offensive of the war, taking Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine.
1943 Axis forces in North Africa surrender.
1949 The Berlin Blockade ends.
1969 Viet Cong sappers try unsuccessfully to overrun Landing Zone Snoopy in Vietnam.
1975 The U.S. merchant ship Mayaguez is seized by Cambodian forces.


Born on May 12
1812 Edward Lear, poet, painter and the youngest of 21 children.
1816 Edmund Beckett Grimthorpe, lawyer and architect.
1820 Florence Nightingale, English nurse and hospital reformer.
1828 Dante Gabriel Rossetti, English poet and painter.
1907 Katherine Hepburn, actress (The Philadelphia Story, The African Queen).
1915 Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics.
1921 Farley Mowat, Canadian nature writer (Never Cry Wolf).
1925 Yogi Berra (Lawrence Peter Berra), baseball player and coach.
1933 Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky, Russian poet.
1936 Tom Snyder, newscaster and television host.
1936 Frank Stella, painter.



Lead Story
1957
Race car driver A.J. Foyt gets first pro victory

On this day in 1957, race car driver A.J. Foyt (1935- ) scores his first professional victory, in a U.S. Automobile Club (USAC) midget car race in Kansas City, Missouri.

A tough-as-nails Texan, Anthony Joseph Foyt, Jr. raced midget cars–smaller vehicles designed to be driven in races of shorter distances–and stock cars before moving up to bigger things in 1958, when he entered his first Indianapolis 500 race. Foyt won his first Indy 500 crown in 1961, when rival Eddie Sachs was forced to make a tire change in the final laps, giving Foyt the chance to overtake him and win with a then-record average speed of 139.13 mph.

The 1964 season saw Foyt earn a record-setting winning percentage of .769 with 10 wins in 13 races. His most important win that year came in the Indy 500, which he finished with an average speed of 147.45 mph. After a near-fatal crash in a stock car race in 1965–in which he broke his back, fractured his ankle and suffered severe chest injuries–Foyt came back to continue his string of impressive achievements. In 1967, he won his third Indy 500 in a car he had designed himself, with his father Tony as chief mechanic. Two weeks later, he traveled to France and won the 24 Hours of LeMans international competition with teammate Don Gurney. With a win at the Daytona 500 in 1972, Foyt became the first driver to win all three major races in motor sports: the Indy 500, the Daytona 500 and the 24 Hours of LeMans.

In addition to the records for most total victories (67), most national championships (7) and most victories in one season (10), Foyt also has the most consecutive Indy 500 starts: He competed in the race for 35 straight years. His fourth win came in 1977, when the 42-year-old Foyt screamed around the track at an average speed of 161.331 mph. Only two other men have equaled his record of four Indy 500 wins.

In 1989, Foyt became the first driver inducted into the brand-new Motor Sports Hall of Fame in Novi, Michigan. He practiced at the Indy 500 track in 1993, but retired on the first day of qualifying races. Apart from auto racing teams, Foyt’s later business interests have included car dealerships, funeral homes, oil investments and thoroughbred racehorses.



Vietnam War
1971
Heavy fighting erupts in A Shau Valley

The first major battle of Operation Lam Son 720 takes place as North Vietnamese forces hit the same South Vietnamese 500-man marine battalion twice in one day. Each time, the communists were pushed back after heavy fighting. Earlier, the South Vietnamese reportedly destroyed a North Vietnamese base camp and arms production facility in the A Shau Valley. On May 19, in a six-hour battle, South Vietnamese troops engaged the communists. Three Allied helicopters and a reconnaissance plane were downed by enemy ground fire. The fighting, air strikes, and artillery fire continued in the A Shau Valley through May 23; the South Vietnamese claimed the capture of more communist bunker networks and the destruction of large amounts of supplies and ammunition.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 13
1607 English colonists land near the James River in Virginia.
1648 Margaret Jones of Plymouth is found guilty of witchcraft and is sentenced to be hanged.
1779 The War of Bavarian Succession ends.
1846 The United States declares war on Mexico after fighting has already begun.
1861 Britain declares its neutrality in the American Civil War.
1864 The Battle of Resaca commences as Union General William T. Sherman fights towards Atlanta.
1888 Slavery is abolished in Brazil.
1912 The Royal Flying Corps is established in England.
1913 Igor Sikorsky flies the first four-engine aircraft.
1944 Allied forces in Italy break through the German Gustav Line into the Liri Valley.
1958 French troops take control of Algiers.
1968 Peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam begin in Paris.
1981 Pope John Paul II survives an assassination attempt.


Born on May 13
1729 Henry William Stiegel, early American glassmaker.
1842 Sir Arthur Sullivan, composer, collaborator with W.S. Gilbert.
1857 Ronald Ross, bacteriologist.
1907 Daphne du Maurier, author (Rebecca).
1912 Gil Evans, jazz pianist and composer.
1914 Joe Louis, world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949.
1940 Bruce Chatwin, travel writer (Patagonia).





Lead Story
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 ina dispute over Texas.

Under the threat of war, the United Stateshad 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.

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 14
1264 King Henry III is captured by his brother-in-law, Simon de Montfort, at the Battle of Lewes.
1509 At the Battle of Agnadello, the French defeat the Venitians in Northern Italy.
1610 French King Henri IV (Henri de Navarre) is assassinated by François Ravaillac, a fanatical monk.
1796 English physician Edward Jenner gives the first successful smallpox vaccination.
1804 Explorer William Clark sets off from St. Louis, Missouri.
1853 Gail Borden applies for a patent for condensed milk.
1863 Union General Nathanial Banks heads towards Port Hudson along the Mississippi River.
1897 Guglielmo Marconi sends the first communication by wireless telegraph.
1897 "Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Phillip Sousa is performed for the first time in Philadelphia.
1935 A plebiscite in the Philippines ratifies an independence agreement.
1940 Holland surrenders to Germany.
1942 The British Army, in retreat from Burma, reaches India.
1948 Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion establishes the State of Israel.
1961 A bus carrying black and white civil rights activists is bombed and burned in Alabama.
1969 Three companies of the 101st Airborne Division fail to push North Vietnamese forces off Hill 937 in South Vietnam.
1973 The U.S. space station Skylab is launched.
1991 In South Africa, Winnie Mandela is sentenced to six years in prison for her part in the kidnapping and beating of three black youths and the death of a fourth.


Born on May 14
1533 Margaret of Valois, queen consort of Navarre.
1686 Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, German physicist, instrument maker, inventor of the thermometer.
1727 Thomas Gainsborough, painter ("Blue Boy").
1771 Thomas Wedgwood, English physicist, photography pioneer.
1897 Sidney Bechet, jazz clarinetist and soprano saxaphone player.
1933 Richard P. Brickner, novelist (The Broken Year).
1944 George Lucas, film director and producer (Star Wars).
1946 Robert Jarvik, American physician.



On this day in the year of our Lord.... 1977...my oldest son was born

[Suzuki Johnny]

Today in History May 15
756 Abd-al-Rahman is proclaimed emir of Cordoba, Spain.
1213 King John submits to the Pope, offering to make England and Ireland papal fiefs. Pope Innocent III lifts the interdict of 1208.
1602 English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold discovers Cape Cod.
1614 An aristocratic uprising in France ends with the Treaty of St. Menehould.
1618 Johannes Kepler discovers his harmonics law.
1702 The War of Spanish Succession begins.
1730 Following the resignation of Lord Townshend, Robert Walpole becomes the sole minister in the English cabinet.
1768 By the Treaty of Versailles, France purchases Corsica from Genoa.
1795 Napoleon enters the Lombardian capital of Milan in triumph.
1820 The U.S. Congress designates the slave trade a form of piracy.
1849 Neapolitan troops enter Palermo, Sicily.
1862 The Union ironclad Monitor and the gunboat Galena fire on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, Virginia.
1864 At the Battle of New Market, Virginia Military Institute cadets repel a Union attack.
1886 Emily Dickinson dies in Amherst, Mass., where she had lived in seclusion for the previous 24 years.
1916 U.S. Marines land in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1918 Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts receive the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They are the first Americans to win France's highest military medal.
1930 Ellen Church becomes the first airline stewardess.
1942 The United States begins rationing gasoline.
1958 Sputnik III is launched by the Soviet Union.
1963 The last Project Mercury space flight, carrying Gordon Cooper, is launched.
1968 U.S. Marines relieve army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.
1972 Gov. George Wallace is shot by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Maryland.
1975 The merchant ship Mayaguez is recaptured from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
1988 Soviets forces begin their withdrawal from Afghanistan.


Born on May 15
1773 Prince Klemens Von Metternich, Chancellor of Austria.
1856 Lyman Frank Baum, author (The Wonderful Wizard of Oz).
1858 Emily Folger, Shakespeare scholar.
1859 Pierre Curie, physicist.
1860 Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, first wife of President Woodrow Wilson.
1890 Katherine Anne Porter, novelist (Ship of Fools).
1891 Mikhail Bulgakov, Russian novelist (Notes of a Dead Man, Heart of a Dog).
1902 Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago through the 1960s and early 1970's.
1923 Richard Avedon, photographer.
1926 Anthony Shaffer, English playwright (Sleuth), twin brother of Peter Shaffer.
1926 Peter Shaffer, English playwright (Equus, Amadeus), twin brother of Anthony Shaffer.
1930 Jasper Johns, Jr., painter, leader of the Pop Art movement.


Cold War
1988
Soviets begin withdrawal from Afghanistan

More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation’s communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory.

For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point. President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow.

By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.