May 1
It’s May Day and Loyalty Day and Mother Goose Day and Save the Rhino Day and Space Day and National Chocolate Parfait Day
ON THIS DAY…
1328 With the Treaty of Edinburgh-Northampton, England recognises Scotland as an independent nation
1683 A patent was awarded in England on this day for the extraction of salt from sea water
1707 The Act of Union unites England and Scotland as the United Kingdom of Great Britain; both countries adopt a single flag, the Union Jack
1751 Americas first cricket tournament was held in New York City
1753 Carolus Linnaeus published the first edition of his Species Plantarum in which he gave systematic names to plants that are still in use today
1776 Establishment of the Illuminati in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt
1786 The Mozart opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Vienna
1790 The United States completes its first census
1805 The state of Virginia passed a law requiring all freed slaves to leave the state, or risk either imprisonment or deportation
1823 The skeleton of a mammoth was found in England
1834 The British colonies abolish slavery
1840 The Penny Black, the first official adhesive postage stamp, was issued in the United Kingdom
1841 The first wagon train left Independence, Missouri for California
1849 A telegraph register was patented by Samuel F. B.Morse; this patent incorporates the basic features of the 1844 receiver and a method for marking dots and dashes on paper
1851 The first world’s fair, officially known as the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,” opened in London; it was the brainchild of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert, who invited international participation “for the purposes of exhibition, of competition and of encouragement” and in all, 28 countries participated
1860 A patent for the shaving mug was granted to Thomas E. Hughes
1867 Reconstruction in the South began with black voter registration
1869 The Folies Bergère opens in Paris
1883 Buffalo Bill Cody put on his first Wild West Show
1887 President Rutherford B. Hayes withdrew all Federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction
1886 In Chicago, members of the Knights of Labor take to the streets on Saturday to demand universal adoption of the eight-hour day
1886 Robert Louis Stevenson’s story Kidnapped is first published in Young Folks magazine; the full novel will be published in book form the following July
1888 Nikola Tesla was issued several patents relating to the induction magnetic motor, alternating current (AC) synchronous motor, AC transmission and electricity distribution
1889 Bayer introduced aspirin powder form in Germany
1911 The Empire State Building in New York City has its official opening; at the time, the skyscraper is the tallest in the world
1911 Overturning 4000 years of almost continuous dynastic rule, the Chinese Revolution installs Sun Yat-sen as China’s first president
1924 The first iodized table salt in the US went on sale at grocers in Michigan state
1925 The island of Cyprus becomes a British colony
1927 Imperial Airways became the first British airline to serve hot meals
1927 Adolf Hitler held his first Nazi meeting in Berlin
1930 The dwarf planet Pluto is officially named
1935 Boulder Dam was finished after 4 years and 354 days
1937 President Franklin Roosevelt signed an act of neutrality, keeping the United States out of World War II
1940 The 1940 Summer Olympics are cancelled due to war
1940 Walter E. Disney, of Los Angeles, patents the “art of animation” camera; the multiplane camera allows for a more realistic three-dimensional image as well as depth and richness to the animation
1941 Cheerios is introduced as CheeriOats by the General Mills cereal company
1941 Citizen Kane, starring and directed by Orson Welles, premieres in New York
1942 Disney’s Donald Gets Drafted (the first of what will be many Donald Duck World War II shorts) is released
1945 Admiral Karl Doenitz succeeded Hitler as leader of the Third Reich
1946 The first radar on a commercial ship operated by an American company began service with the maiden voyage of the S.S. African Star of the American South African Line
1947 The first US radar for commercial and private planes was first demonstrated at Culver City, California on a TWA airplane; the device was developed at the Hughes Aircraft Corp. by Howard Robard Hughes and a team of electronic engineers
1948 The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) was established with Kim Il Sung as president
1949 Gerard Kuiper discovered Nereid, the second satellite of Neptune, the outermost and the third largest of Neptune’s known satellites
1950 Guam is organized as a United States commonwealth
1954 The Anaheim Bulletin reports that Disney has purchased land in Anaheim, California for an amusement park
1956 The polio vaccine developed by Jonas Salk is made available to the public
1958 The discovery of the powerful Van Allen radiation belts that surround Earth was published in the Washington Evening Star; the article covered the report made by their discoverer James. A. Van Allen to the joint symposium of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society in Washington DC
1960 Francis Gary Powers’ U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union; Powers was taken prisoner
1961 The Prime Minister of Cuba, Fidel Castro, proclaims Cuba a socialist nation and abolishes elections
1963 James W. Whittaker is the first American to reach the top of Mount Everest
1964 The first BASIC (Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) program was run on a computer at about 4:00AM; invented at Dartmouth University by professors John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz, the first implementation was a BASIC compiler
1966 The Society for Creative Anachronism is begun in Berkeley, CA
1967 Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu in Las Vegas
1971 The National Railroad Passenger Corp. (Amtrak) went into service; it was established by the US Congress to run the nation’s intercity railroads
1972 The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson moved to sunny Burbank, CA after nearly 10 years of broadcasts from New York City
1978 The first unsolicited bulk commercial e-mail (which would later become known as “spam”) is sent by a DEC marketing representative to every ARPANET address on the west coast of the US
1992 On the third day of the Los Angeles riots, Rodney King appeared in public before television news cameras to appeal for calm and plead for peace, asking, “People, I just want to say, you know, can we all get along?”
1997 Tasmania becomes the last state in Australia to decriminalize homosexuality
1999 On Mount Everest, a group of US mountain climbers discovered the body of George Mallory; Mallory had died in June of 1924 while trying to become the first person to reach the summit of Everest
2003 President Bush made a speech aboard an aircraft carrier proclaiming major combat operations in Iraq have ended”
2004 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union
BORN:
1726 Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, KP, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS, soldier and statesman, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1828-1830, 1834) and one of the leading military and political figures of the nineteenth century who rose to prominence in the Napoleonic Wars; his military career culminated at Waterloo, where he, along with von Blücher, defeated the French Emperor, Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo
1839 Hilaire Chardonnet, chemist and industrialist who first developed rayon, the first commonly used artificial fiber
1845 Lawson Tait, surgeon who was the first to both diagnose and remove a diseased appendix
1852 Calamity Jane (Martha Jane Cannary-Burke), a fighter, a scout with George Armstrong Custer, and a frontierswoman who is probably best remembered for her association with Wild Bill Hickok
1875 Harriet Quimby was the first American woman to become a licensed pilot and the first female pilot to fly across the English Channel
1913 Louis Nye, character actor (The Steve Allen Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm)
1916 Glenn Ford, actor (Gilda, Blackboard Jungle, Ransom!, 3:10 to Yuma, Pocketful of Miracles, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Midway, Superman)
1918 Jack Paar, iconic television personality (The Tonight Show)
1919 Dan O’Herlihy, actor (Twin Peaks, The Black Shield of Falworth, Imitation of Life, Fail-Safe, 100 Rifles, The Last Starfighter)
1924 Terry Southern, scriptwriter and author (Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, The Cincinnati Kid, Barbarella, Easy Rider, The Magic Christian)
1925 Scott Carpenter, one of the original seven Mercury astronauts; he was one of the first humans in space, and he was also one of the first humans to live under the ocean surface for an extended period of time as one of the aquanauts in Sealab II off the California coast
1941 Eric Burdon, singer-songwriter (The Animals, War)
1946 Joanna Lumley, OBE, actress (Sapphire & Steel, The New Avengers, Absolutely Fabulous, The Cats Meow, The Satanic Rites of Dracula)
1950 Dann Florek, actor (Law & Order, Law & Order SVU, Sweet Liberty, Flight of the Intruder, Hard Rain)
1954 Ray Parker Jr., guitarist, songwriter, producer and recording artist who is known primarily for writing the theme song to the motion picture Ghostbusters
1969 Wes Anderson, director-writer-producer (Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, The Fantastic Mr. Fox)
DIED:
1731 Johann Ludwig Bach, composer and violinist and second cousin of Johann Sebastian Bach, dies at 54
1973 David Livingstone, medical missionary and explorer in central Africa; he was the first European to see Mosi-oa-Tunya (Victoria Falls), to which he gave the English name in honor of his monarch, Queen Victoria, dies at 60
1904 Antonín Dvorák, composer of romantic music, who employed the idioms and melodies of the folk music of his native Bohemia and Moravia in symphonic, oratorial, chamber and operatic works, dies at 62
1937 Snitz Edwards, silent film character actor (The Mark of Zorro, The Thief of Bagdad, Seven Chances, The Phantom of the Opera, Battling Butler), dies at 75
1945 Joseph Goebbels, Nazi Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda who allowed his wife, Magda, to kill their six young children and shortly after, he and his wife both committed suicide; the Nazi shithead was 47
1965 Spike Jones, popular musician and bandleader specializing in performing satirical arrangements of popular songs (“Der Fuehrer’s Face”, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”), dies at 53
2000 Steve Reeves, bodybuilder (Mr. America 1947, Mr. World 1948, Mr. Universe 1950) and actor (Labors of Hercules, Hercules Unchained, The Last Days of Pompeii, Morgan, the Pirate, The Son of Spartacus), dies at 74
2002 John Nathan-Turner, producer, production manager, writer (All Creatures Great and Small, Doctor Who), dies at 54