This Day in History

[xoxoxoBruce]

The QE II is very impressive, had a chance to take the tour when my mother and brother sailed to England on her. My father flew over and met them, because he had sailed on the QE I, along with a shitload of other GIs, and didn't like it one damn bit.

[glatt]

I've walked alongside the QEII.

It was docked at the time.

[Gravdigr]

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 Fátima, Portugal, security guards overpower Juan María Fernández 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

[Gravdigr]

May 13

1515 – Mary Tudor, Queen of France and Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk are officially married at Greenwich.

1780 – The Cumberland Compact is signed by leaders of the settlers in early Tennessee.

1787 – Captain Arthur Phillip leaves Portsmouth, England, with eleven ships full of convicts (the "First Fleet") to establish a penal colony in Australia.

1861 – American Civil War: Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom issues a "proclamation of neutrality" which recognizes the breakaway states as having belligerent rights.

The Great Comet of 1861 is discovered by John Tebbutt of Windsor, New South Wales, Australia.

1862 – The USS Planter, a steamer and gunship, steals through Confederate lines and is passed to the Union, by a southern slave, Robert Smalls, who later was officially appointed as captain, becoming the first black man to command a United States ship.

1880 – In Menlo Park, New Jersey, Thomas Edison performs the first test of his electric railway.

1912 – The Royal Flying Corps, the forerunner of the Royal Air Force, is established in the United Kingdom.

1939 – The first commercial FM radio station in the United States is launched in Bloomfield, Connecticut. The station later becomes WDRC-FM.

1950 – The first round of the Formula One World Championship is held at Silverstone.

1954 – The original Broadway production of "The Pajama Game" opens and runs for another 1,063 performances.

1958 – The trademark Velcro is registered.

Ben Carlin becomes the first (and only) person to circumnavigate the world by amphibious vehicle, having travelled over 17,000 kilometres (11,000 mi) by sea and 62,000 kilometres (39,000 mi) by land during a ten-year journey.

1963 – The U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland is decided.

1972 – The Troubles: A car bombing outside a crowded pub in Belfast sparks a two-day gun battle involving the Provisional IRA, Ulster Volunteer Force and British Army. Seven people are killed and over 66 injured.

1985 – Police release a bomb on MOVE headquarters in Philadelphia to end a stand-off, killing 11 MOVE members and destroying the homes of 250 city residents.

1989 – Large groups of students occupy Tiananmen Square and begin a hunger strike.

1994 – Johnny Carson makes his last television appearance on Late Show with David Letterman.

1995 – Alison Hargreaves, a 33-year-old British mother, becomes the first woman to conquer Everest without oxygen or the help of sherpas.

2000 – In Enschede, The Netherlands, a fireworks factory explodes, killing 22 people, wounding 950, and resulting in approximately €450 million in damage.

2012 – 49 dismembered bodies are discovered by Mexican authorities on Mexican Federal Highway 40.

2014 – An explosion at an underground coal mine in south-western Turkey kills 301 miners.

Births

1914 – Joe Louis; 1922 – Bea Arthur; 1923 – Red Garland; 1931 – Jim Jones; 1939 – Harvey Keitel; 1941 – Ritchie Valens; 1943 – Mary Wells; 1945 – Magic Dick; 1949 – Franklyn Ajaye; 1950 – Danny Kirwan, Stevie Wonder; 1952 – John Kasich; 1961 – Dennis Rodman; 1964 – Stephen Colbert; 1966 – Lee Altus, Darius Rucker; 1967 – Chuck Schuldiner; 1969 – Buckethead; 1977 – Samantha Morton; 1986 – Lena Dunham

Deaths

1884 – Cyrus McCormick (co-founded International Harvester); 1961 – Gary Cooper; 1972 – Dan Blocker; 1975 – Bob Wills; 1977 – Mickey Spillane (the mobster, not the author); 1988 – Chet Baker; 1999 – Gene Sarazen; 2000 – Paul Bartel; 2001 – Jason Miller (Father Damian in "The Exorcist"); 2005 – Eddie Barclay; 2012 – Donald "Duck" Dunn

[DanaC]

Wow - the Puckle gun is fascinating. I heartily recommend the wiki page yo've linked to. Really interesting. I hadn't heard of it before (probably because it didn't make into regular usage in the British forces).

[Gravdigr]

Based your recommendation, Dana, I've added a link to to the Wiki article about the Puckle gun itself.

[DanaC]

Nice one, Grav.

Weaponry from this period is really interesting. There's a link on that wiki page to an older design for a repeating firearm that was much lesslike a 'machine gun' but actually allowed for faster firing. Trouble was it was way expensive to make, and way to sensitive to adverse conditions. basically, the slightest damp on the powdr woud totally bollox the gun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalthoff_repeater

No good for mainstream army use, because of the way firearms were mass produced and distributed. Basically - for largescale use, the separate coponents were each mass produced and then assembled, but with something like the Kalthoff repeater, the tolerance for any size or shape variation was so tiny, it just woldn't have worked on that scale. For the standard musket there would still have been problems mixing and matching components, but they had greater tolerance for variation, so far fewer rejected components. Also, much more reliable in adverse weather conditions. Even so, there are countless examples of inadequate guns, and rejected components.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Puckle demonstrated two versions of the basic design: one, intended for use against Christian enemies, fired conventional round bullets, while the second variant, designed to be used against the Muslim Turks, fired square bullets which were considered to be more damaging and would, according to its patent, convince the Turks of the "benefits of Christian civilization."

[Gravdigr]

May 16

1843 – The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.

1866 – The U.S. Congress eliminates the half dime coin and replaces it with the five cent piece, or nickel.

1868 – United States President Andrew Johnson is acquitted in his impeachment trial by one vote in the United States Senate.

1888 – Nikola Tesla delivers a lecture describing the equipment which will allow efficient generation and use of alternating currents to transmit electric power over long distances.

1891 – The International Electrotechnical Exhibition opens in Frankfurt, Germany, and will feature the world's first long distance transmission of high-power, three-phase electric current (the most common form today).

1916 – The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the French Third Republic sign the secret wartime Sykes-Picot Agreement partitioning former Ottoman territories such as Iraq and Syria.

1919 – A naval Curtiss NC-4 aircraft commanded by Albert Cushing Read leaves Trepassey, Newfoundland, for Lisbon via the Azores on the first transatlantic flight.

1929 – In Hollywood, the first Academy Awards are awarded.

1951 – The first regularly scheduled transatlantic flights begin between Idlewild Airport (now John F Kennedy International Airport) in New York City and Heathrow Airport in London, operated by El Al Israel Airlines.

1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.

1975 – Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1988 – A report by the Surgeon General of the United States C. Everett Koop states that the addictive properties of nicotine are similar to those of heroin and cocaine.

1991 – Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom addresses a joint session of the United States Congress. She is the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

Births

1801 – William H. Seward (Seward's Folly); 1824 – Levi P. Morton; 1861 – H. H. Holmes (serial killer); 1905 – Henry Fonda; 1912 – Studs Terkel; 1913 – Woody Herman; 1919 – Liberace; 1921 – Harry Carey, Jr.; 1928 – Billy Martin; 1931 – Jack Dodson (Howard Sprague on The Andy Griffith Show); 1944 – Danny Trejo; 1946 – Roger Earl (Foghat); 1947 – Darrell Sweet (Nazareth); 1953 – Pierce Brosnan; 1955 – Olga Korbut; 1959 – Mare Winningham; 1964 – John Salley; 1964 – Boyd Tinsley (violinist for DMB); 1965 – Krist Novoselic; 1966 – Janet Jackson; 1969 – David Boreanaz, Tucker Carlson; 1970 – Gabriela Sabatini; 1986 – Megan Fox

Deaths

1920 – Levi P. Morton; 1953 – Django Reinhardt; 1955 – James Agee; 1956 – H. B. Reese (created Reese's Peanut Butter Cups); 1957 – Eliot Ness; 1984 – Andy Kaufman; 1984 – Irwin Shaw; 1990 – Sammy Davis Jr., Jim Henson; 2000 – Bodacious (American rodeo bull); 2010 – Ronnie James Dio; 2012 - Chuck Brown ("the Godfather of Go-go"); 2013 – Dick Trickle (snicker)

[DanaC]

It explains it here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_T...rnado_outbreak

[Gravdigr]

I didn't include that link, because it contains no explanation of how a tornado can cause a flood, that I could find.

I saw the words 'tornado', and 'flood'.

If the explanation is in there, and I somehow did not see it, please show it to me, because I have now read that page twice, and still have yet to see an explanation of how a tornado can cause a flood.

[DanaC]

I got the impression that it was more a matter of the same storm causing the tornado as caused the flood - also that water from the river got caught up in the tornado and dumped onto a town - but I may have misunderstood.

[Gravdigr]

May 24

1607 – One hundred English settlers disembark in Jamestown, the first English colony in America.

1626 – Peter Minuit buys Manhattan.

1798 – The Irish Rebellion of 1798 led by the United Irishmen against British rule begins.

1830 – "Mary Had a Little Lamb" by Sarah Josepha Hale is published.

1844 – Samuel Morse sends the message "What hath God wrought" (a biblical quotation, Numbers 23:23) from the Old Supreme Court Chamber in the United States Capitol to his assistant, Alfred Vail, in Baltimore, Maryland, to inaugurate the first telegraph line.

1883 – The Brooklyn Bridge in New York City is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.

1921 – The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti opens.

1930 – Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).

1935 – The first night game in Major League Baseball history is played in Cincinnati, Ohio.

1940 – Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

1941 – World War II: In the Battle of the Atlantic, the German Battleship Bismarck sinks then-pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, killing all but three crewmen.

1962 – Project Mercury: American astronaut Scott Carpenter orbits the Earth three times in the Aurora 7 space capsule.

1970 – The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union.

1976 – The London to Washington, D.C., Concorde service begins.

2000 – Israeli troops withdraw from southern Lebanon after 22 years of occupation.

2001 – The Versailles wedding hall disaster in Jerusalem, Israel kills 23 and injures over 200. The disaster was caught on a camcorder.

Births

1686 – Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit; 1819 – Queen Victoria; 1879 – H. B. Reese (created Reese's Peanut Butter Cups); 1938 – Tommy Chong; 1941 – Bob Dylan; 1943 – Gary Burghoff ('Radar' on MASH); 1944 – Patti LaBelle; 1945 – Priscilla Presley; 1947 – Waddy Wachtel; 1952 – Sybil Danning; 1953 – Alfred Molina; 1955 – Rosanne Cash; 1958 – Chip Ganassi; 1962 – Héctor Camacho; 1966 – Ricky Craven; 1967 – Eric Close, Heavy D; 1974 – Will Sasso

Deaths

1543 – Nicolaus Copernicus; 1963 – Elmore James; 1965 – Sonny Boy Williamson II; 1974 – Duke Ellington; 2008 – Dick Martin

[Gravdigr]

Originally Posted by DanaC

...also that water from the river got caught up in the tornado and dumped onto a town...

I'm not going to think about this anymore...

...because I am fucking confused.

[Gravdigr]

May 25

Today is National Missing Children's Day.

Today is also Towel Day.

240 BC – First recorded perihelion passage of Halley's Comet.

1865 – In Mobile, Alabama, 300 are killed when an ordnance depot explodes.

1895 – The playwright, poet, and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

1914 – The House of Commons of the United Kingdom passes the Home Rule Bill for devolution in Ireland.

1925 – Scopes Monkey Trial: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee.

1935 – Jesse Owens of Ohio State University breaks three world records and ties a fourth at the Big Ten Conference Track and Field Championships in Ann Arbor, Michigan

1950 – A Chicago Surface Lines streetcar crashes into a fuel truck, killing 33 people.

1953 – At the Nevada Test Site, the United States conducts its first and only nuclear artillery test.

The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston, in Texas.

1955 – In the United States, a night-time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It is the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S.

1961 - U.S. President John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of the Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the Moon" before the end of the decade.

1962 – The Old Bay Line, the last overnight steamboat service in the United States, goes out of business.

1968 – The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis is dedicated.

1977 – Star Wars is released in theaters.

Chinese government removes a decade old ban on the works of William Shakespeare.

1979 – American Airlines Flight 191, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, crashes during takeoff at O'Hare International Airport killing all 271 on board and two people on the ground.

1979 – Etan Patz, six years old, disappears from the street just two blocks away from his home in New York City, prompting an international search for the child, and causing U.S. President Ronald Reagan to designate May 25 as National Missing Children's Day (in 1983).

1982 – HMS Coventry is sunk during the Falklands War.

1986 – Hands Across America takes place.

2001 – Erik Weihenmayer, 32 years old, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

2002 – China Airlines Flight 611 disintegrates in mid-air and crashes into the Taiwan Strait. All 225 people on board are killed.

2011 – Oprah Winfrey airs her last show, ending her twenty-five-year run of The Oprah Winfrey Show.

2012 – The Space X 'Dragon' becomes the first commercial spacecraft to successfully rendezvous with the International Space Station.

Births

1803 – Ralph Waldo Emerson; 1889 – Igor Sikorsky; 1897 – Gene Tunney; 1903 – Binnie Barnes; 1921 – Hal David; 1925 – Jeanne Crain; 1926 – Claude Akins; 1927 – Robert Ludlum; 1929 – Beverly Sills; 1936 – Tom T. Hall; 1939 – Dixie Carter; 1943 – Jessi Colter; 1943 – Leslie Uggams; 1944 – Frank Oz; 1947 – Karen Valentine; 1955 – Connie Sellecca; 1958 – Paul Weller; 1963 – Mike Myers; 1969 – Anne Heche; 1970 – Octavia Spencer; 1973 – Demetri Martin; 1976 – Cillian Murphy; 1978 – Brian Urlacher; 1994 – Aly Raisman

Deaths

1899 – Rosa Bonheur; 1919 – Madam C. J. Walker; 1990 – Vic Tayback; 2007 – Charles Nelson Reilly