Today in
History ~ May 14
Independence Day (in Paraguay)
Events
1264 - Battle at Lewes: Simon of Leicester beats English king Henry III
1264 - Barons War fought in England
1607 - 1st permanent English settlement in New World, Jamestown, was founded
near the James River in Virginia. This hearty group of Virginia Company settlers was chartered by England's King James I, therefore, the name, Jamestown, Virginia. They sailed in three cramped ships "Susan Constant", "Godspeed" and "Discovery" The group was led by Captain John Smith (Pocahontas fame) and Christopher Newport. Jamestown was the first permanent English settlement in what is now the US. Becoming the capital of Virginia and remaining so through 1699.
1643 - King Louis XIV, who would be known as "The Sun King," became
ruler of France at age 4 upon the death of his father, Louis XIII. Crowned King
in 1654
1767 - British government disbands Americans import duty on tea
1787 - Delegates gather in Phila to draw up US constitution
1796 - To treat smallpox, English physician Edward Jenner inoculated eight-year old James Phipps with a small dose of cowpox.
1800 - Friedrich von Schiller's "Macbeth," premieres in Weimar
1804 - Lewis and Clark Expedition Departs St. Louis, Missouri, on a mission to explore the Northwest from the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean
[H]
1811 - Paraguay gains independence from Spain (National Day)
1832 - Felix Mendelssohn's "Hebrides," premieres
1835 - Charles Darwin reaches Coquimbo in Northern Chile
1842 - 1st edition of London Illustrated News
1853 - Gail Borden applies for patent for making condensed milk.
1863 - Battle of Jackson, MS
1863 - Engagement at Jackson, Mississippi
1864 - Battle of Resaca, Georgia begins
1878 - Vaseline first sold (registered trademark for petroleum jelly)
1894 - Fire in Boston bleachers spreads to 170 adjoining buildings
1897 - Stars and Stripes Forever John Philip Sousa's march "The Stars and Stripes Forever" premiered in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The occasion was the unveiling of a statue of George Washington.
1904 - The Third Olympiad of the modern era, and the first Olympic Games to be held in the United States, opened in St. Louis, Missouri.
1908 - 1st passenger flight in an airplane
1913 - Franz Hals museum opens in Harleem Netherlands
1918 - Sunday baseball becomes legal in Wash DC
1921 - Mussolini's fascists win 29 parliament seats
1932 - "We Want Beer!" parade in NY
1940 - German breakthrough at Sedan
1940 - Nazis bomb Rotterdam (600-900 dead), Netherlands surrender to Germany
1941 - 3,600 Parisian Jews arrested
1942 - Congress established the WAACs, the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps, for
World War II duty.
1942 - Aaron Copland's "Lincoln Portrait" was first performed, by the
Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra.
1944 - 91 German bombers harass Bristol
1944 - Gens Rommel, Speidel & von Stulpnagel plot to assassinate Hitler
1945 - Kamikaze Zero strikes US aircraft carrier Enterprise
1945 - US offensive on Okinawa, Sugar Loaf conquered
1948 - Israel declares independence from British administration [H]
1948 - US grants Israel de facto recognition
1949 - Truman signs bill establishing a rocket test range at Cape Canaveral
1951 - Ernie Kovacs Show, TV Variety debut on NBC
1955 - Warsaw Pact is signed by the Soviet Union, Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland & Romania
1960 - "At the Drop of a Hat" closes at John Golden NYC after 216 performances
1960 - Mickey Thompson, a.k.a. "Mr. Speed," broke Bernd Rosemeyer's twenty-two-year-old record for the standing mile and standing kilometer, when he drove his "Assault" car to record speeds of 149.93 and 132.94, respectively.
1961 - Bus with 1st group of Freedom Riders bombed & burned in Alabama
1962 - Princess Sophia of Greece weds Don Juan Carlos of Spain
1968 - Beatles announce formation of Apple Corp
1968 - Czech government announces liberalizing reforms under Alexander Dubcek
1969 - Abortion & contraception legalized in Canada
1970 - Cops kill 2 students in racial disturbance (Jackson State U, Miss)
1970 - Harry A Blackmun appointed to Supreme Court
1973 - Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In last airs on NBC-TV
1973 - The United States launched Skylab 1, its first manned space station.
1973 - US Supreme court approves equal rights to females in military
1974 - Symbionese Liberation Army destroyed in shoot-out, 6 killed
1975 - U.S. forces raided the Cambodian island of Koh Tang and recaptured the
American merchant ship Mayaguez. All 40 crew members were released safely by
Cambodia, but some 40 U.S. servicemen were killed in the military operation.
1980 - Sumpul River Massacre About 350 Salvadoran refugees were killed attempting to cross the Sumpul River from El Salvador to
Honduras.
1980 - President Carter inaugurated the Department of Health and Human Services.
1986 - Institute for War documents publishes Anne Frank's complete diary
1987 - Colt revolver (Peacemaker) of 1873 sells for $242,000
1988 - A church bus hit a pickup truck going the wrong way near Carrollton, Ky.,
killing 27 bus passengers, mostly teenagers.
1989 - Demonstration for democratic reforms in Beijing's Tiananmen square
1989 - Moonlighting, TV Crime Drama last airs on ABC
1990 - Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev ruled illegal Estonia's and Latvia's
declarations of transition toward independence. He made no distinction between
their documents and Lithuania's declaration of immediate independence.
1991 - Winnie Mandela sentenced to 6 years for complicity in kidnapping and beating of four youths, one of whom died. She is freed pending appeal.
1991 - President Bush nominated Robert M. Gates for director of the CIA, a
position he was denied four years earlier due to the Iran-Contra investigation.
1991 - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II arrived
in Washington to begin a two-week visit to the United States.
1991 - Forty-two people were killed in a train collision in western Japan.
1992 - Former Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev addressed members
of the U.S. Congress, appealing to them to pass a bill aiding the people of the
former Soviet Union.
1995 - Dalai Lama proclaims 6-year-old Gedhun Choekyi Nyima 11th reincarnation of Panchen Lama, Tibet's 2nd most
senior spiritual leader
1996 - Dr. Jack Kevorkian, who has assisted more than two dozen suicides, was acquitted of
murder for the fourth time.
1997 - Jurors at the Timothy McVeigh trial in Denver saw chilling
black-and-white surveillance pictures of a Ryder truck moving toward the
Oklahoma City federal building minutes before a bomb blew the place apart.
1997 - Baseball's Exec Council suspends NY Yank owner George Steinbrenner
1997 - Russia and the NATO nations agreed on a treaty that cleared the way for
NATO expansion to the east.
1998 - A federal judge dismissed involuntary manslaughter charges against a
former FBI agent in connection with the 1992 deadly shooting at the cabin of
white separatist Randy Weaver in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
1998 - After nine season, the NBC sitcom "Seinfeld" aired its final
episode. (commercials are $2M for 30 seconds)
2000 - Hundreds of thousands of mothers and other gun control advocates marched
in Washington and several other cities, demanding sensible gun laws and mourning
the loss of children to gun violence. It was known as the Million Mom March.
2001 - The Supreme Court ruled 8-to-0 that there is no exception in federal law
for people to use marijuana to ease their pain from cancer, AIDS or other
illnesses.
2001 - Promising to be a "determined adversary" toward gun violence,
President Bush announced plans to mobilize federal and local prosecutors who
would focus exclusively on gun-related crimes.
Birthdays
Today
1679 - Peder [Nielsen] Horrebow, Danish astronomer
1686 - Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Prussia, (inventor: thermometer) (physicist: developed measure of temperature)
1727 - Thomas Gainsborough, English painter (Blue Boy), baptized
1771 - Robert Owen, England, factory owner/socialist
1805 - Johann Peter Emilius Hartmann, composer
1867 - Kurt Eisner, German premier of revolutionary Bavaria (1918-19)
1885 - Otto Klemperer, Breslau Germany, conductor/composer
1900 - Billie Dove (Lillian Bohny) (actress: All the Brothers were Valiant, The Black Pirate)
1915 - Harry Joseph Chick Daugherty, trombonist (Spike Jones & City Slickers)
1916 - Skip Martin (composer, bandleader)
1917 - Norman Luboff (choral leader: The Norman Luboff Choir)
1922 - Richard Deacon (actor: The Dick Van Dyke Show, B.J. and the Bear, Leave It to Beaver, Carousel, Francis in the Haunted House, The Patsy, Bad Manners, Blackbeard's Ghost)
1923 - Diane Arbus, [Nemerov], NYC, photographer (Vogue/Harper's Bazaar)
1925 - Al Porcino (jazz musician)
1925 - John Lester Moss (baseball)
1925 - Patrice Munsel, Spokane Wash, soprano (Met Opera, Patrice Munsel Show)
1928 - Billy Martin, (baseball)
1929 - Gump (Lorne) Worsley (Hockey Hall of Famer: goaltender: Western Hockey League MVP [1952]; Vezina Trophy winner [1964, 1966]: Montreal
Canadiens)
1936 - Bobby Darin (Cassotto) (Grammy Award-winning singer: Mack the Knife [1959], Splish Splash, Dream Lover, You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby, Things, If I Were a Carpenter; inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame [1990]; actor: Captain Newman, M.D., If a Man Answers, Come September)
1937 - Dick Howser (baseball: New York Yankees manager)
1938 - Don Blackburn (hockey)
1940 - Chay Blyth, English sailor (Alone in Order to the World)
1942 - Tony Perez (baseball: Cincinnati Reds player, manager)
1943 - Derek Leckenby (musician: guitar: group: Herman's Hermits: Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter, I'm Henry VIII I Am)
1943 - Elizabeth Ray, Marshall NC, congressman Wilbur Mills' lover
1943 - Jack Bruce (musician: bass: group: Cream: Sunshine of Your Love, White Room, Crossroads; group: Graham Bond Organization; solo: Themes for an Imaginary Western)
1944 - George Lucas (film producer, director: The Star Wars Trilogy, American
Graffiti, Indiana Jones)
1944 - Troy Shondell (singer: This Time)
1946 - Robert Jarvik, surgeon/inventor (Jarvik 7 artificial heart)
1947 - Dick Tidrow (baseball)
1948 - Dave LaRoche (baseball)
1948 - Tom Gilmore (hockey)
1950 - Willie McGee (football)
1951 - Pierre Plante (hockey)
1952 - David Byrne (singer: group: Talking Heads: Love Goes to Building on Fire; composer for film: True Stories)
1955 - Steve Staniland (baseball)
Famous
deaths
0347 - Pachomius, Egyptian monastery founder/abbot (Coenobieten), dies
0649 - Theodore, Greek Pope (642-49) (excommunicated by Paul II), dies
1610 - Henry IV, 1st Bourbon-king of France (1572, 89-1610), murdered at 56
1726 - Moshe Darshan, Rabbi/author (Torat Ahsam), dies
1847 - Fanny Cacilia Mendelssohn Hensel, pianist/composer (sister of Felix), dies at 41
1912 - August Strindberg, Swedish writer (Deaddans), dies at 63
1925 - Henry Rider Haggard, English writer (Dawn, She), dies
1940 - Emma Goldman, US anarchists/feminist/author (Living My Life), dies
1965 - Frances Perkins, US 1st female minister of Labor (1933-45), dies at 83
1968 - Adm Husband Edward Kimmel, commandant US Ocean fleet WW II (and scapegoat for Pearl Harbor), dies at 86
1980 - Hugh Griffith, actor (Passover Plot, Ben Hur, Tom Jones), dies at 67
1987 - Rita Hayworth, actress (Gilda), dies of Alzheimer's disease at 68
1991 - Jiang Qing, widow of Chinese leader Mao Tse Tung, commits suicide
1992 - Lyle Alzado, NFL defense linesman (Raiders), -turned-actor/businessman,
died of brain cancer, which he had blamed on steroid use. at 43
1993 - William Randolph Hearst, US newspaper magnate (Pulitzer), dies at 85
1997 - Harry Blackstone Jr, magician, dies of cancer at 62
1997 - Princess Caradja-Kretzulesco, descendant of Prince Dracula, dies at 76
1998 - Frank Sinatra died after suffering a heart attack. He was 82.
2000 - Former Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi
died in Tokyo at age 62.
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