1524 - Pope Clemens VII fires Netherlands inquisitor-general French Van de Holly
1529 - 2nd Parliament of Spiers bans Lutheranism
1587 - Sir Frances Drake sails into Cadiz, Spain then sinks Spanish fleet
1770 - Capt James Cook first sees Australia
1774 - Gluck's opera "Iphigenia in Aulis," premieres in Paris
1775 - American Revolutionary War begins at the Battle of Lexington, Mass. Eight Minutemen are killed and 10 wounded in an exchange of musket fire with British Redcoats.
[H]
1782, the Netherlands recognized American independence.
1861 - Lincoln orders blockade of Confederate ports (Civil War)
1864 - Naval Engagement at Cherbourg, FR: USS Kearsage vs CSS Alabama
1892 - Charles Duryea takes the 1st American-made auto out for a spin.
1894 - Jules Massenet's opera "Werther," premieres in NYC
1897 - 1st performance of Debussy's "Pelleas et Melisande"
1904 - Much of Toronto destroyed by fire
1906 - SF Earthquake ends killing 452
1924 - "National Barn Dance" premieres on WLS Chicago
1927 - Rudolf Friml's "Vagabond King" opens in London
1933 - FDR announces US will leave gold standard
1936 - Anti-Jewish riots break out in Palestine
1939 - Connecticut finally approves Bill of Rights (148 years late)
1941 - B Brecht's "Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and her Children)," premieres in Zurich
1943 - Jewish residents of the Warsaw Ghetto revolted when the Germans tried to resume deportations to the Treblinka concentration camp. When the uprising ended on May 16, 300 Germans and 7,000
Jews had died and the Warsaw Ghetto lay in ruins. SS-Gen Jurgen Stroop led the destruction of
the Warsaw Ghetto
("The Warsaw Ghetto is no more!" he writes proudly to Heinrich Himmler and Adolf Hitler --
Stroop was hanged on the site of the Warsaw ghetto after the war) [H]
1945 - Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "Carousel" opens on Broadway
1945 - US aircraft carrier Franklin heavy damaged in Japanese air raid
1951 - Gen. Douglas MacArthur, relieved of his Far East command by President Truman, bid farewell to Congress, quoting a line from a ballad: "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
1956 - US actress Grace Kelly marries Monaco's Prince Rainier III (in Church)
1964 - Rightist coup in Laos -- Suvanna Phuma remains premier
1965 - At a cost of $20,000, the outer Astrodome ceiling is painted because of sun's glare, this in turn causes the grass to die
1971 - Charles Manson sentenced to life (Sharon Tate murder)
1971 - The Soviet Union launched its first Salyut space station.
1972 - The U.S. Apollo 16 spacecraft began orbiting the moon two days before astronauts landed on its surface.
1982 - Astronauts Sally K. Ride and Guion S. Bluford Jr. became the first woman and first African-American to be tapped for U.S. space missions.
1987 - Last wild condor captured on California wildlife reserve
1989 - 47 sailors were killed when a gun turret exploded aboard the USS Iowa.
1989 - Pro-Democracy demonstrations began in Beijing'sTiananmen Square.
1990 - The U.S.-backed Contra rebels and the outgoing Nicaraguan government agreed to an immediate cease-fire and a formula to disarm and demobilize the Contras by June 10.
1991 - Greyhound Bus posts $195 million loss for 1990
1991 - Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev arrived in South Korea for talks with President Roh Tae-woo.
1991 - Evander Holyfield won a unanimous decision over George Foreman to retain boxing's heavyweight title in Atlantic City, N.J.
1992 - A series of watercolors depicting members of the British royal family nude caused a stir with London's Fleet Street newspapers. The queen was not
amused.
1992 -After six days, engineers plugged the tunnel leak under the Chicago River that caused an underground flood that had virtually shut down business in the heart of the city.
1993 - The 51-day siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended as fire destroyed the structure after federal agents began smashing their way in; dozens of people, including David Koresh, were killed.
1993 - The governor of South Dakota and seven other people were killed in a plane crash in Iowa.
1994 - A federal jury awarded police beating victim Rodney King $3.8 million dollars in compensatory damages from the city of Los Angeles.
1995 - A truck bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds. Timothy McVeigh was later convicted of federal murder charges and executed.
[H]
1995 - Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind, announced his candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination.
1996 - On the first anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, hundreds of mourners paused for 168 seconds of silence at the site where the federal building once stood. President Clinton, visiting Russia, paid tribute to the hundreds of thousands of Russians who died in the Nazi siege of Leningrad _ and to the victims of the Oklahoma bombing as well.
1996 - The leaders of the G-7 nations met in Moscow.
1997 - More than 50,000 residents abandoned Grand Forks, N.D., as the rising Red River overran sandbags.
1998 - China freed Wang Dan, one of the leaders of the 1989 pro-democracy movement that had been brutally suppressed in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.
1999 - The German parliament inaugurated its new home in the restored Reichstag in Berlin, its prewar capital.
2000 - President Clinton knelt among 168 empty chairs memorializing each victim of the Oklahoma City bombing and declared the site "sacred ground" in the soul of America during a fifth-anniversary dedication ceremony.
2000 - The worst air crash in Philippine history killed 131 people aboard an Air Philippines Boeing 737-200.
2000 - A federal appeals court ruled that 6-year-old Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez may stay in the United States until the court heard the full appeal from his relatives, who sought to retain custody of the boy.
2001 - Pharmaceutical giants dropped a lawsuit against a South African law that could provide cheaper, generic AIDS drugs to millions of Africans, ending an international battle over patent rights and profit.
2001 - The musical "The Producers" opened on Broadway.
Birthdays
Today
1721 - Roger Sherman, signer (Declaration
of Independence, Constitution)
1798 - Franz Joseph Glaser, composer
1877 - Ole Evinrude, inventor (outboard marine engine)
1903 - Eliot Ness, untouchable (US Treasury agent-Chicago
1905 - Tommy Benford (drummer: with Jelly Roll Morton's Red Hot Peppers)
1912 - Glen T Seaborg, US chemist (AEC, plutonium, Nobel 1951)
1920 - Frank Fontaine (comedian, actor, singer: The Jackie Gleason Show)
1922 - Erich Hartmann, German WW II pilot (downed 352 Russian aircrafts)
1925 - Hugh O'Brian, [Krampke], Rochester NY, actor (Wyatt Earp)
1927 - Don Adams (Emmy Award-winning actor: Get Smart [1966-67 & 1967- 68]; Back to the Beach, The Nude Bomb)
1927 - Don Barbour (singer: group: The Four Freshmen: Graduation Day, Charmaine, Blue World)
1928 - Alexis Korner (musician: guitar, singer: Whole Lotta Love)
1930 - Hugh O'Brian (Krampke) (actor: In Harm's Way, Little Big Horn, There's No Business like Show Business, Twins)
1931 - Alex Webster (football)
1932 - Jayne Mansfield (Palmer) (actress: Pete Kelly's Blues, It Takes a Thief, The Girl Can't Help It)
1933 - Dick Sargent (Richard Cox) (actor: Bewitched, That Touch of Mink, Body Count, Fantasy Island)
1934 - Dickie Goodman (entertainer: group: Buchanan and Goodman: Flying Saucer [Parts 1 & 2], Mr. Jaws)
1935 - Dudley Moore (actor: Arthur, Arthur 2, 10, Crazy People, Parallel Lives, Bedazzled, The Hound of the Baskervilles)
1935 - Dudley Moore, London England, actor (10, Arthur, Bedazzled, The Wrong Box, 6 Weeks)
1937 - Elinor Donahue (actress: Father Knows Best, The Andy Griffith Show, Get a Life, Pretty Woman)
1941 - Michel Roux, chef de cuisine
1942 - Alan Price (musician: keyboards, singer: groups: Alan Price Combo, The Animals: House of the Rising Sun, We Gotta Get Out of This Place)
1943 - Czeslaw Bartkowski (jazz musician)
1943 - Eve Graham (singer: group: The New Seekers: Look What They've Done to My Song Ma, I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing)
1946 - John Pergine (football)
1946 - Tim Curry, Cheshire England, actor (Rocky Horror Show)
1947 - Murray Perahia, NYC, pianist (Avery Fischer Prize-1975, Grammy 1988)
1948 - George Farmer (football)
1949 - Lynn Powis (hockey)
1949 - Paloma Picasso, [Gilot], Paris France, actress (Immoral Tales)
1951 - Richard Lemieux (hockey)
1956 - Sue Barker (tennis: French Open Champion: Women's Singles [1976])
Famous
deaths
0843 - Judith, French empress/2nd wife of Louis de Vrome, dies
1588 - Paolo Veronese (Cagliari), painter, dies
1689 - Christina, Queen of Sweden (1644-54), dies
1813 - Benjamin Rush, physician/revolutionary (signed Declaration
of Independence), dies at 67
1824 - George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron, poet, dies in Greece at 36
1862 - Simon Fraser, Canadian explorer, dies
1881 - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl (Beaconsfield)/novelist, dies
1882 - Charles Darwin, evolutionist (Origin of Species), dies
1906 - Pierre Curie, French physicist/chemist (Nobel 1903), dies
1943 - Alexander Schmorell, German resistance fighter, beheaded
1943 - Kurt Huber, German resistance fighter, beheaded
1943 - Willy Graf, German resistance fighter, beheaded
1957 - Charles Funk, Encylopediest (Funk & Wagnalls), dies at 76
1967 - Conrad Adenauer, West Germany chancellor (1949-63), dies at 91
1987 - Maxwell D Taylor, US commander 101st airborne (WW II), dies at 85
1989 - Daphne Du Maurier, English writer (Rebecca, Jamaica Inn), dies at 82
1993 - David Koresh, [Vernon Howell], cult leader (Davidians), suicide
1995 - J Peter Grace Jr, CEO (W R Grace), dies at 81
2001 - Former New Hampshire Gov. Meldrim Thomson died at his home in Orford at age 89.
