On this day in history.

[PitPat]

• 1905 2" rain falls in 10 mins in Taylor, Texas

As if it's not already enough punishment to live in Texas.

 

[Trebuchet]

1992: my wife had a seizure in the middle of the night and I spent the day watching the LA riots in the hospital.

 

[AmyStrange]

TDIH for April 30th

1789
George Washington gives first presidential inaugural address

1803
United States and France conclude the Louisiana Purchase

1863
Battle of Chancellorsville begins

1897
British physicist J.J. Thomson announces the discovery of electrons

1917
Battle of the Boot takes place between Anglo-Indian and Turkish forces

1939
New York World's Fair opens

1945
Adolf Hitler commits suicide in his underground bunker

1948
Original Land Rover debuts at auto show

1975
Fall of Saigon: South Vietnam surrenders

1977
Over 2,000 protesters occupy the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site in New Hampshire

1993
World Wide Web (WWW) launches in the public domain

1993
Tennis star Monica Seles stabbed

1997
Controversial coming out episode of Ellen airs

1997
Big Ben stops at 12:11 pm for 54 minutes

2019
Japan's Emperor Akihito abdicates

 

[PitPat]

In 1789, George Washington took the oath of office at Federal Hall in New York as the first president of the United States.

"And I want my name on everything! Even more than Martin Luther King, Jr. whoever that is!"

 

[AmyStrange]

TDIH for May 1st

1851
First-ever Great Exhibition opens in London

1852
Adventurer and performer Calamity Jane is born

1897
Louisa, the wife of Adolph Louis Luetgert was last seen alive (Chicago, Illinois USA)

1898
The U.S. destroys Spanish Pacific fleet in Battle of Manila Bay

1915
International Congress of Women adopts resolutions on peace, women's suffrage

1926
Ford factory workers get 40-hour week

1931
Empire State Building dedicated

1941
Citizen Kane released

1955
Babe Didrikson Zaharias wins final LPGA tournament of her career

1958
President Eisenhower proclaims Law Day

1960
American U-2 spy plane shot down over Soviet Union

1963
Gloria Steinem publishes part one of A Bunny's Tale in SHOW magazine

1997
Labour Party returns to power in Britain

2002
Former NBA All-Star Jayson Williams indicted for manslaughter

 

[PitPat]

• 1704 Boston News-Letter publishes first newspaper advertisement

Weirdly enough it was for Apple.

 

[AmyStrange]

TDIH for May 2nd

1670
King Charles II grants charter to Hudson's Bay Company

1918
GM buys Chevrolet

1918
Allies argue over U.S. troops joining battle on Western Front

1924
A grisly murder makes rubber gloves standard equipment at crime scenes

1933
Loch Ness Monster sighted for the first time, igniting the modern legend

1945
German troops surrender to Allies in Italy, while Berlin surrenders to Russia's Zhukov

1957
Senator Joseph McCarthy dies

1960
Dick Clark survives the Payola scandal

1963
More than 1,000 schoolchildren protest segregation in the Children's Crusade

1970
Diane Crump became the first woman jockey to ride in the Kentucky Derby

1972
J. Edgar Hoover dies, ending a five-decade era at the FBI

2011
Osama bin Laden killed by U.S. forces

 

[PitPat]

Oddly nothing of note happened on May 2nd.

You'd think there'd be at least something.

 

[AmyStrange]

TDIH for May 3rd

1469
Italian philosopher and writer Niccolo Machiavelli born

1810
Lord Byron swims across tumultuous Hellespont strait in Turkey

1933
Funk master James Brown is born

1942
The Battle of the Coral Sea begins

1943
Roy Hall witnesses the inside of a tornado (McKinney, Texas USA)

1946
Japanese war crimes trial begins

1947
New Japanese constitution goes into effect

1948
U.S. Supreme Court decides Paramount antitrust case

1951
Congressional hearings on General MacArthur begin

1952
Joseph Fletcher lands first aircraft on the North Pole

1954
Supreme Court rules in Hernandez v. Texas, broadening civil rights laws

1962
Trains collide near Tokyo, killing more than 160 people

1980
MADD founder's daughter killed by drunk driver

1992
Exxon executive is murdered

2007
Three-year-old Madeleine McCann goes missing in Portugal

 

[PitPat]

• 1342 Count Hartmann II becomes the ruler of Vaduz, Liechtenstein

And he was the most adorable ruler of them all!

And Liechtenstein, really? Didn't know it had been around that long.

 

[arthwollipot]

And Liechtenstein, really? Didn't know it had been around that long.

How long did you think it had been around?

 

[PitPat]

How long did you think it had been around?

As a sovereign nation? Probably around the 18th century or thereabouts.

I just know it's really small and pretty much removed from anything important going on in Europe.

 

[jeremyp]

• 1342 Count Hartmann II becomes the ruler of Vaduz, Liechtenstein

And he was the most adorable ruler of them all!

And Liechtenstein, really? Didn't know it had been around that long.

It hasn't. Having a ruler of a city that happens to be in a particular country (now) does not mean that country existed back when the ruler accedes to his position.

 

[arthwollipot]

The political entity known as "Liechtenstein" has been around since the Early Middle Ages. Liechtenstein Castle dates back to the 12th century.

 

[PitPat]

Margaret Thatcher, the leader of the Conservative Party, was elected British prime minister, becoming the first woman in Europe to hold that post. She went on to become the longest continuously serving British premier since 1827.

Don't have much to say about this, but it reminded me of this SNL sketch. As an old punk thought it was pretty funny.

History of Punk

youtube.com/watch?v=EEmIIl96zk0

 

[AmyStrange]

TDIH for May 4th

1626
Peter Minuit lands on what is now Manhattan island in New York City

1776
Rhode Island becomes first colony to declare independence from England

1865
President Lincoln is buried in Springfield, Illinois

1886
The Haymarket Square Riot

1905
The U.S. officially begins construction on the Panama Canal

1916
Germany agrees to limit its submarine warfare

1929
Legendary actress Audrey Hepburn is born

1948
Norman Mailer's first novel, The Naked and the Dead, is published

1956
Gene Vincent records Be-Bop-A-Lula

1959
Ella Fitzgerald becomes first Black woman to win a Grammy Award

1961
The first Freedom Ride departs from Washington, D.C.

1966
Willie Mays breaks National League home run record

1970
National Guard kills four students in Kent State shootings

1979
Margaret Thatcher becomes Britain's first female prime minister

1990
Electric chair malfunctions in Florida, leading states to change execution methods

1994
A lawmaker introduces the pun May the Fourth be with you on the floor of U.K. Parliament

1994
Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat sign accord for Palestinian self-rule

2002
Nigerian aircraft crashes in crowded city

 

[Andy_Ross]

1945. North German Army surrendered to the British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery at Lüneburg Heath, near Hamburg. The surrender also applied to all German force units in the Netherlands, Denmark and northwest Germany.

Monty went down the line of German Generals asking who each of them are, they respond with their rank and name and for each one he said “Never heard of you!”

 

[arthwollipot]

Monty went down the line of German Generals asking who each of them are, they respond with their rank and name and for each one he said “Never heard of you!”

Is that documented? Or is it an urban legend? Sounds like an urban legend to me.

 

[Andy_Ross]

No it's real.
Reich President Dönitz ordered Admiral Hans-Georg Friedrich Ludwig Robert von Friedeburg, Commender-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine to negotiate the surrender of German forces.
Montgomery told him unconditional surrender to all Allied forces was necessary and not negotiable. He even said to Friedburg "Why have you brought a major to my headquarters?"

Monty was wearing his black tank regiment desert beret for the occasion. Carefully selected as a nod to his first victory over the Germans at Alamein

 

[PitPat]

• 1846 US state of Michigan ends the death penalty

becoming the first English-speaking government in the world to do so.

Go Wolverines!