On This Date In 1202 The 1202 Syria earthquake struck at about dawn with an epicenter in southwestern Syria. Up to 1,100,000 deaths have been associated with this earthquake, although other estimates are much smaller. It was felt over a very wide area, from Sicily to Iraq and Anatolia to upper Egypt.
On This Date In 1498 Portuguese explorer Vasco de Gama became the first European to reach India via the Atlantic Ocean when he arrived at Calicut on the Malabar Coast.
On This Date In 1506 The great Italian explorer Christopher Columbus died in Valladolid, Spain. Columbus was the first European to explore the Americas since the Vikings set up colonies in Greenland and Newfoundland in the 10th century.
On This Date In 1593 Salomo Glassius (May 20, 1593 - July 27, 1656), a German theologian and biblical critic, was born at Sondershausen, in the principality of Schwarzburg-Sondershausen.
On This Date In 1635 The Battle of Les Avins, or Battle of Avein, was fought during the Thirty Years' War between a French and a Spanish army. The battle was fought in the Belgian village of Les Avins, south of Huy. The Spanish army was inferior in numbers, surrounded and completely defeated in just a few hours.
On This Date In 1743 François-Dominique Toussaint L'ouverture (May 20, 1743 - April 8, 1803) was born in Saint Domingue, Haiti. He was a leader of the Haitian Revolution. In a long struggle for independence, Toussaint led enslaved Africans to victory over Europeans, abolished slavery, and secured native control over the colony in 1797 while nominally governor of the colony.
On This Date In 1774 The Administration of Justice Act, or Act for the Impartial Administration of Justice, also popularly called the Murdering Act or Murder Act, an Act passed by the Parliament of Great Britain and becoming law on May 20, 1774, was one of the measures (variously called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts or the Coercive Acts by those whose political agenda ran contrary to Parliament's) that were designed to secure Britain's jurisdiction over her American dominions. These acts included the Boston Port Bill, the Massachusetts Government Act, and the Quartering Act.
On This Date In 1774 The Massachusetts Government Act was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain and became a law, and was one of the Intolerable Acts that lead to dissent in the American colonies and to the creation of the Declaration of Rights and Grievances in 1774.
On This Date In 1778 British forces from Philadelphia attempted to trap 2,200 Continentals defending Valley Forge led by Marquis de Lafayette. Lafayette, through skillful maneuvering, avoids the entrapment and the destruction of his forces. The encounter takes place at Barren Hill, now known as Lafayette Hill, just northwest of Philadelphia.
On This Date In 1802 Slavery was restored in Guadeloupe. Political conflicts in Guadeloupe and in Saint-Domingue grew from this, along with the defection of leading French officers, like Toussaint L'Ouverture, the black general Jean-Jacques Dessalines and the mulatto officer Alexandre Pétion in October 1802, within the context of an ongoing guerrilla war.
On This Date In 1862 President Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead, providing settlers with 160 acres of surveyed public land after payment of a filing fee and five years of continuous residence. Designed to spur Western migration, the Homestead Act culminated a twenty-year battle to distribute public lands to citizens willing to farm.
On This Date In 1873 San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world's most famous garments: blue jeans.
On This Date In 1902 The United States ended its occupation of Cuba.
On This Date In 1915 British, Canadian and Indian troops launched a new round of attacks against a reinforced German line around the village of Festubert, located in the Ypres Salient on the Western Front. In four days, they would succeed in capturing the village from the Germans.
On This Date In 1927 Charles Linbdbergh took off on his solo flight from New York to Paris in the Sprit of St. Louis, and became the first aviator to cross the Atlantic non-stop.
On This Date In 1932 Amelia Earhart accomplished her goal of flying solo across the Atlantic Ocean. She brought her plane down on the coast of Ireland after a harrowing trip lasting 15 hours and 18 minutes The flight was the second solo flight across the Atlantic and the longest nonstop flight by a woman-2,026 miles (3,261 kilometers)-as well as the first flight across the Atlantic by a woman.
On This Date In 1940 The German army in northern France reached the English Channel at Abbeville, France.
On This Date In 1941 The Germans launched the first airborne invasion in history, choosing the Greek island of Crete in the Eastern Mediterranean. The Battle of Crete was unprecedented in three respects: it was the first mainly airborne invasion; the first time the Allies made significant use of intelligence from the deciphered German Enigma code; and was the first time invading German troops encountered mass resistance from a civilian population.
On This Date In 1946 English poet W.H. Auden became an American citizen. In 1948, Auden won the Pulitzer Prize for his long poem The Age of Anxiety (1947).
On This Date In 1953 Using a phrase that would haunt Americans in later years-“Now we can see [success in Vietnam] clearly, like light at the end of a tunnel”-Gen. Henri Navarre assumed command of French Union Forces in Vietnam. The French had been fighting a bloody war against communist insurgents in Vietnam since 1946. The insurgents, the Viet Minh, were fighting for independence and the French were trying to reassert their colonial rule in Indochina.
On This Date In 1954 Ronald Reagan Played Lieutenant Commander Masterson in “The Ford Television Theatre” - Season 2, Episode 34: Beneath These Waters.
On This Date In 1956 The United States conducted the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.
On This Date In 1964 Rudy Lewis, the ‘odd-man-out’ in the history of the Drifters, died. He occupied the lead singer spot from late 1960 until 1964, when he died in his bed from a drug overdose, OR from binge eating, and choking to death. http://www.answers.com/topic/rudy-lewis
On This Date In 1965 A Pakistan Airways Boeing 707 arriving from Pakistan crashed upon landing at the airport in Cairo, Egypt, killing 124 people. The accident came just as pilots were complaining about poor conditions at the Cairo airport.
On This Date In 1969 After 10 days and 10 bloody assaults, Hill 937 in South Vietnam was finally captured by U.S. and South Vietnamese troops. The Americans who fought there cynically dubbed Hill 937 “Hamburger Hill” because the battle and its high casualty rate reminded them of a meat grinder.
On This Date In 1979 The 1979 NBA World Championship Series at the conclusion of the 1978-79 season were won by the Seattle SuperSonics defeating the Washington Bullets 4 games to 1. Besides the Seattle Metropolitans victory in the Stanley Cup in 1917, this remains Seattle's only men's professional sports championship.
On This Date In 1980 “Unmasked”, an album by the American rock band Kiss, was released. It was the group's 8th studio album.
On This Date In 1983 The cause of AIDS was identified by two French researchers, Luc Montagnier and Francoise Barre-Sinoussi. Their report isolated a virus, later called HIV, that attacked a person's immune system, thus inviting lethal infections.
On This Date In 1987 “Beverly Hills Cop II”, an action-comedy film starring Eddie Murphy and directed by Tony Scott, was released. It was the first sequel in the Beverly Hills Cop series.
On This Date In 1989 Sunday Silence edged by Easy Goer to win the closest race in the 114-year history of the Preakness Stakes by a nose.
On This Date In 1993 The last episode of TV sitcom “Cheers” was aired, and viewed by some 93 million people.
On This Date In 1995 President Bill Clinton permanently closed the two-block stretch of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House to all non-pedestrian traffic as a security measure.
On This Date In 1996 In a victory for the gay and lesbian civil rights movement, the U.S. Supreme Court voted six to three to strike down an amendment to Colorado's state constitution that would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legislative, executive, or judicial action to protect the rights of homosexuals.
On This Date In 1998 At the Roman Catholic Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, Frank Sinatra's funeral was held, with 400 mourners in attendance and hundreds of fans outside. He was laid to rest after his passing on May 14 from a heart attack.
On This Date In 2001 “Bootylicious”, a song by American R&B group Destiny's Child, was released. It was written and produced by Rob Fusari, Faltone Moore, and band member Beyoncé Knowles for the band's third studio album Survivor (2001), and contains a prominent sample from the 1981 recording “Edge of Seventeen,” as written and performed by Stevie Nicks.
On This Date In 2003 “PlanetSide”, a massively-multiplayer online first-person-shooter computer game published by Sony Online Entertainment, was released.
On This Date In 2008 “Age of Conan: Hyborian Adventures”, a fantasy-themed massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Norwegian computer video game developer company Funcom and published by Eidos Interactive for PCs, was released.
On This Date In 2008 Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor after a related seizure sent him to the hospital. He succumbed to this disease, dying on August 25, 2009, in his Hyannis Port, Massachusetts home.
On This Date In 2010 Five paintings by Picasso, Matisse and other great artists, worth up to £430 million, were stolen from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris.
On This Date In 2010 Genome pioneer J. Craig Venter took another step in his quest to create synthetic life, by synthesizing an entire bacterial genome and using it to take over a cell. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/21cell.html?hp
On This Date In 2010 A report by a multi-national team of investigators found a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine was responsible for the sinking of the 1,200-tonne corvette Cheonan in the Yellow Sea two months prior. Forty-six sailors died when the ship was ripped in two.
On This Date In 2010 After approving toxic dispersants, the Environmental Protection Agency ordered oil giant BP to use less toxic ones to apply to the Gulf oil spill. http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/epa-gives-bp-24-hours-to-choose-less-toxic-dispersants
Hat tip to any included contributing sources, along with: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page , http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history , http://timelines.com/
Happy Birthday Constance Towers (1934), Anthony Zerbe (1936), Goh Chok Tong (1941), Joe Cocker (1944), Cher (1946), Ron Reagan (1958), Bronson Pinchot (1959), Eric Norris (1965), Mindy Cohn (1966), Timothy Olyphant (1968), Tony Stewart (1971), Busta Rhymes (1972), and Terrance Metcalf (1980),
RIP Dolley Madison (1768 - 1849), William Fargo (1818 - 1881), Estelle Taylor (1894 - 1958), Jimmy Stewart (1908 - 1997), and George Gobel (1919 - 1991).
Quotes:
To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children...to leave the world a better place...to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. Ralph Waldo Emerson
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. Abraham Lincoln
Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved. Helen Keller
Things to remember:
1) The worth of character;
2) The improvement of talent;
3) The influence of example;
4) The joy of origination;
5) The dignity of simplicity;
6) The success of perseverance. Marshall Field
1) The worth of character;
2) The improvement of talent;
3) The influence of example;
4) The joy of origination;
5) The dignity of simplicity;
6) The success of perseverance. Marshall Field
[Had ta!]
The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating...
...and you finish off as an orgasm. George Carlin
...and you finish off as an orgasm. George Carlin
Courtesy YouTube et al:
Endeavour blasted off on the next-to-last shuttle flight Monday morning under the command of Mark Kelly, the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The wounded congresswoman watched the launch in private from Kennedy Space Center. As many as 45,000 guests jammed NASA's launch site. The crowd outside the gates was estimated to be in the tens of thousands, if not more. …
The Earth's place in space, 2011. From Earth the sun appears to pass through a group of star constellations we call the zodiac. Take a tour of this annual cycle from a space perspective. Travel past these stars to the edge of the observable universe.
With Chernobyl's 25th anniversary reminding the world of the terrifying consequences of nuclear safety negligence, many eyes have turned to the continuing crisis in Japan. RT talks to Arnold Gundersen, Energy Adviser at Fairewinds Associates, from Vermont in the US.
And a time to relax, even celebrate! -
praising the big yellow that warms us and gives us light. Only in HQ!
[And especially featuring John Denver!]
Feel it? Your thoughts screaming, mind humming – feel it? Take the moments to be clear, and celebrate what you have been and where you are. Rock it to the next hurdle, event, undertaking that will tax and enthrall your very being! And touch the next person with your heart and mind in ways that will enable them to do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment