May 12
1926 The Italian-built airship
Norge becomes the first vessel to fly over the North Pole.
1932 Ten weeks after
his abduction, the infant son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Jr., is found dead in Hopewell, New Jersey, just a few miles from the Lindberghs' home.
1935
Bill Wilson and
Dr. Bob Smith (founders of
Alcoholics Anonymous) meet for the first time in Akron, Ohio, at the home of Henrietta Siberling.
1937 The Duke and Duchess of York are crowned as
King George VI and
Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Westminster Abbey.
1942 World War II: The
U.S. tanker SS Virginia is torpedoed in the mouth of the Mississippi River by the German submarine
U-507.
1957
Alfonso de Portago crashes during the
Mille Miglia, killing himself, his co-driver, Ed Nelson and ten spectators five of whom were children.
1981
Francis Hughes starves to death in the Maze Prison in a Republican campaign for political prisoner status to be granted to
Provisional IRA prisoners.
1982 During a procession outside the shrine of the Virgin Mary in Fαtima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan Marνa Fernαndez y Krohn before he can attack
Pope John Paul II with a bayonet. Krohn, an ultraconservative Spanish priest opposed to the
Vatican II reforms, believed that the Pope had to be killed for being an "agent of Moscow".
1986 NBC debuts the current well-known peacock as seen in the
NBC 60th Anniversary Celebration.
1989 The
San Bernardino train disaster kills four people. A week later an underground gasoline pipeline, damaged by earth moving equipment during crash clean-up, explodes killing two more people.
2008 An ~8.0
earthquake occurs in Sichuan, China, killing over 69,000 people.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
conducts the largest-ever raid of a workplace in Postville, Iowa, arresting nearly 400 immigrants for identity theft and document fraud.
2015 A
train derailment in Philadelphia kills 8 people and injures over 200.
A
7.3-magnitude earthquake and six major aftershocks hit Nepal, killing over 200 people.
Births
1820 Florence Nightingale; 1850 Henry Cabot Lodge; 1889 Otto Frank (father of Anne Frank); 1907 Katharine Hepburn; 1911 Charles Biro (Daredevil Comics); 1918 Mary Kay Ash,
Julius Rosenberg; 1925 Yogi Berra; 1928 Burt Bacharach; 1935 Felipe Alou; 1936 Tom Snyder; 1937 George Carlin; 1942 Billy Swan; 1945 Ian McLagan; 1948 Steve Winwood; 1950 Bruce Boxleitner, Gabriel Byrne, Billy Squier; 1958 Eric Singer (KISS drummer); 1959 Ray Gillen, Ving Rhames; 1961 Billy Duffy; 1962 Emilio Estevez; 1966 Stephen Baldwin; 1968 Tony Hawk; 1969 Kim Fields ('Tootie' from "Facts of Life"); 1970 Jim Furyk, Samantha Mathis, Mike Weir; 1978 Jason Biggs
Deaths
1864 J. E. B. Stuart; 1925 Amy Lowell; 1944 Max Brand; 1957 Erich von Stroheim; 1992 Robert Reed (father on "The Brady Bunch"); 2000 Adam Petty; 2001 Perry Como, Alexei Tupolev (designed the
Tu-144); 2014 H. R. Giger