Today in History
~ May 9
Events
1092 - Lincoln Cathedral consecrated
1336 - Italian poet Francesco Petrarca climbs Mont Ventoux
1460 - Courtyard episcopal palace Atrecht has witch burnings
1502 - Christopher Columbus left Cadiz, Spain, on his fourth and final trip to
the Western Hemisphere.
1588 - Duke Henri de Guise's troops occupy Paris
1671 - Thomas"Captain" Blood Steals Crown Jewels from the Tower of London
[H]
1689 - English King William III declares war on France
1753 - King Louis XV disbands French parliament
1754 - 1st newspaper cartoon in America -- segmented snake "Join or Die"
1785 - British inventor Joseph Bramah patents beer-pump handle
1788 - English parliament abolishes slave trade
1836 - HMS Beagle with Charles Darwin departs Port Louis, Mauritius
1837 - "Sherrod" burns in Mississippi River below Natchez Miss; 175 die
1846 - Battle of Resaca de la Palma -- US forces Mexico back to Rio Grande
1862 - Battle of Farmington, MS
1862 - Battle of Ft Pickens, FL (Pensacola), evacuated by CSA
1862 - Confederates evacuate Norfolk, Virginia
1862 - US Naval Academy relocated from Annapolis MD to Newport, RI
1864 - Battle of Cloyd's Mt, & Swift Creek, VA (Drewery's Bluff, Ft Darling)
1864 - Battle of Dalton, GA
1864 - Ship battle at Helgoland, Austria-Denmark
1868 - Anton Bruckner's 1st Symphony in C, premieres
1887 - Buffalo Bill's Wild West show opens in
London [H]
1896 - 1st horseless carriage show in London (featured 10 models)
1899 - Lawn mower patented
1908 - Dirk Fock becomes governor of Suriname
1913 - 17th amendment to the Constitution was ratified, providing
for the election of U.S. senators by popular vote rather than selection by state
legislatures.
1914 - Pres Wilson proclaims Mother's Day
1925 - Cornerstone for Hebrew University, Jerusalem laid
1926 - Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett became the first men to fly over
the North Pole.
1932 - Piccadilly Circus lit by electricity
1933 - Spanish anarchists call for general strike
1936 - Italy takes Addis Abba, annexing Absynnia (Ethiopia)
1941 - English Army breaks German spy codes
1943 - 5th German Panzer army surrenders in Tunisia
1944 - Russians recapture Crimea by taking Sevastopol
1945 - Czechoslovakia liberated from Nazi occupation (Natl Day)
1945 - U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being
lifted immediately.
1945 - Herman Goering is captured by the U.S. Seventh Army
1945 - Jersey liberated from Nazis
1945 - Norwegian Nazi collaborators Vidkun Quisling arrested
1945 - Victory celebration at Red Square
1946 - King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates, replaced by Umberto
1949 - Prince Rainier III becomes leader of Monaco
1951 - Air raid on Chinese positions at Yalu River
1960 - The Food and Drug Administration approved a pill as safe for birth
control use. (The pill, Enovid, was made by G.D. Searle and Co. of Chicago.)
1960 - US sends U-2 over USSR
1961 - In a speech to TV bigwigs at the National Association of Broadcasters
convention, new FCC Chairman Newton N Minow criticizes television as a vast
wasteland.
1962 - Laser beam successfully bounced off Moon for 1st time
1964 - Khrushchev visits Egypt
1970 - 100,000s demonstrate against Vietnam War
1971 - 23rd Emmy Awards: All in the Family, Jack Klugman & Jean Stapleton
1971 - Friends of Earth return 1500 non-returnable bottles to Schweppes
1974 - House Judiciary Committee begin formal hearings on Nixon impeachment
1977 - Patty Hearst let out of jail
1978 - "Ain't Misbehavin'" opens at Longacre Theater NYC for 1604 performances
1978 - The bullet-riddled body of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro, who'd
been abducted by the Red Brigades, was found in an automobile in the center of
Rome.
1979 - The United States and Soviet Union reached a basic accord on the SALT 2
nuclear arms treaty
1980 - A Liberian freighter rammed a bridge in Florida's Tampa Bay, collapsing
part of the span and dropping 35 people to their deaths
1987 - 183 people died when a Polish airliner bound for New York crashed near
Warsaw. The dead included 38 Americans.
1989 - VP Quayle says in United Negro College Fund speech: "What a waste it is to lose one's mind" instead of "a mind is terrible thing to waste"
1990 - NY Newsday reporter Jimmy Breslin suspended for a racial slur
1991 - Michael Landon appears on Tonight Show to talk about his cancer
1991 - William Kennedy Smith, nephew of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was
charged with the March 30 rape and assault of a woman at the Kennedy estate in
West Palm Beach, Fla. He was later acquitted.
1992 - Final episode of "Golden Girls" airs on NBC-TV
1992 - Miss Namibia, a six-foot-tall model and masseuse, was crowned Miss
Universe
1992 - President George H.W. Bush, back in Washington after a visit to riot-torn
Los Angeles, promised in a radio speech that he would work with the
Democrat-controlled Congress on proposals to help American cities.
1993 -Thousands of war veterans, politicians and antigovernment demonstrators
gathered across Moscow and the former Soviet Union to celebrate the World War II
victory over Germany at Stanlingrad.
1993 - Paraguay holds its 1st presidential & parliamentary elections in 50 years
1994 - South Africa's newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the
country's first black president.
1994 - "Passion" opens at Plymouth Theater NYC for 280 performances
1994 - James Clark introduces Mosaic ( later changed to Netscape Communications.)
1994 - Mass murderer Joel Rifkind found guilty in NY
1996 - U.S. scientists announced they had found a protein, without which the
AIDS virus cannot fuse to human cells.
1996 - In dramatic video testimony to a hushed
courtroom in Little Rock, Ark., President Clinton insisted he had nothing to do
with a $300,000 loan at the heart of the criminal case against his former
Whitewater partners.
1997 - Former P.O.W. Douglas "Pete" Peterson became the first ambassador to Vietnam since Graham Martin was airlifted out of the country by helicopter in late April
1975.
1997 - During a visit to a rain forest in Costa Rica, President Clinton urged
nations not to sacrifice their environment in pursuit of economic gain.
2000 - Former four-term Louisiana Gov. Edwin
Edwards was convicted of extortion schemes to manipulate the licensing of
riverboat casinos. (Edwards was sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined
$250,000.)
2001 - China sought U.S. understanding for its refusal to allow a damaged U.S.
Navy spy plane to fly home, saying public sentiment would be outraged if the
aircraft flew again over Chinese territory.
2001 - A stampede at a soccer match in
Ghana killed 126 people.
Birthdays
Today
1265 - Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (Divina Commedia)
1738 - John Pindar, [Peter], physician/poet
1740 - Giovanni Paisiello, Italian composer (Barber of Seville)
1783 - Alexander Ross, Canada, pioneer/fur trader
1785 - James Pollard Espy, Penns, meteorologist (Philosphy of Storms)
1800 - John Brown (abolitionist: led attack on Harper's Ferry in 1859)
1810 - Louis Gallait, historical painter
1843 - Belle Boyd, spy (Confederate)/actress/lecturer
1860 - Sir James Matthew Barrie, Scotland (author, dramatist: Peter Pan, The Little Minister, The Admirable Crichton, What Every Woman Knows, Dear Brutus)
1865 - August de Boeck, composer
1873 - Howard Carter, British archaeologist (found King Tutankhamen's tomb)
1882 - Henry J Kaiser, builder (Liberty Ships, Jeeps, Boulder Dam) (industrialist: ship builder; auto manufacturer; Jeep; aviation, aluminum, steel, magnesium; founder of Hawaii Kai residential neighborhood in Honolulu)
1907 - Baldur von Schirach, German writer/Nazi Youth leader, convicted war criminal
1914 - Carlo Maria Giulini, conductor
1914 - Hank Snow (Clarence) (Country Music Hall of Famer: singer, songwriter, I'm Moving On, Golden Rocket, I Don't Hurt Anymore, Rhumba Boogie, Hello Love, I've been Everywhere)
1918 - Mike Wallace (reporter, interviewer: 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace at Large)
1918 - Orville Freeman, Minneapolis, (Gov-D-Mn)/Sec of Agriculture (1961-69)
1919 - Arthur English, comedian/actor (Malachi's Cove)
1928 - Pancho (Richard) Gonzales (tennis: U.S. Open Champion [1948, 1949)
1934 - Alan Bennett, Engld, playwright/actor (Secret Policeman's Other Ball, Beyond the Fringe)
1936 - Albert Finney (actor: Tom Jones, Shoot the Moon, Annie, The Dresser, Murder on the Orient Express, Scrooge)
1936 - Floyd Robinson (baseball)
1936 - Glenda Jackson (Academy Award-winning actress: Women in Love [1970], A Touch of Class [1973])
1939 - Ralph Boston (National Track & Field Hall of Famer, Olympic Hall of Famer: gold medalist: long jump [1960], silver [1964], bronze [1968]; broke world long jump record 5 times, the last at 27 feet, 5 inches [1965])
1940 - James L Brooks, producer/director (Broadcast News, Taxi, Critic)
1944 - Richie Furay (musician: group: Poco, Buffalo Springfield: I Still Have Dreams, Call It Love)
1946 - Candice Bergen (Emmy Award-winning actress: Murphy Brown [1989, 1990, 1992, 1993]; Starting Over, The Group, SPRINT TV spots; daughter of Edgar Bergen, ventriloquist)
1948 - Calvin Murphy (Basketball Hall of Famer: Houston Rockets)
1948 - John Mahaffey (golfer: PGA Champion [1978])
1949 - Billy Joel (Grammy Award-winning singer: Just the Way You Are [1979]; My Life, You May be Right, It's Still Rock 'n' Roll to Me, Allentown, Goodnight Saigon, Tell Her about It, Uptown Girl, Piano Man)
Famous
deaths
1079 - Stanislaus, Polish bishop of Cracow, murdered
1443 - Niccolo d'Albergati, Italian cardinal, dies
1474 - Peter van Hagenbach, Elzasser knight/land guardian, beheaded
1657 - William Bradford, Governor (Plymouth Colony, Mass), dies
1667 - Marie Louise de Gonzague-Nevers, French Queen of Poland (1645-48)
1707 - Dietrich Buxtehude, German organist/composer, dies at about 69
1745 - Tomaso Antonio Vitali, composer, dies at 82
1791 - Francis Hopkinson, US writer/music/lawyer, dies at 53
1805 - Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, poet/playwright, dies at 45
1880 - Johann Hermann Berens, composer, dies at 54
1957 - Ezio F Pinza, Italian bass (La Scala of Milan, NY Met Opera, Broadway musicals), dies
1970 - Walter Reuther, president of the UAW since 1946, died in an airplane crash at age sixty-two
1977 - James Jones, US writer (From Here to Eternity), dies at 55
1981 - Nelson Algren, US writer (Man with the Golden Arm), dies at 72
1986 - Tenzing Norgay, Tibetan climber (Mount Everest 1953), dies at 71
1991 - Rudolf Serkin, Bohemian/US pianist, dies
1993 - Penelope Gilliatt [Conner], British author
1995 - Abha Gandhi, servant to Gandhi, dies at 68
If
you have other Birthdays or events to add for this day please
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