May 9

It’s National Butterscotch Brownie Day and Lost Sock Memorial Day and Military Spouses Day

ON THIS DAY…
1457BC The Battle of Megiddo between Thutmose III and a large Canaanite coalition under the King of Kadesh; it is the first battle to have been recorded in what is accepted as relatively reliable detail
0328 Athanasius is elected Patriarch bishop of Alexandria
1429 Joan of Arc defeats the English troops besieging Orléans
1502 Christopher Columbus leaves Spain for his fourth and final journey to the “New World”
1662 The first recorded Punch & Judy Show in Britain at Covent Garden in London
1671 Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London but he is immediately caught because he is too drunk to run with the loot; he is later condemned to death and then mysteriously pardoned and exiled by King Charles II
1753 King Louis XV disbanded the French parliament
1754 The first American newspaper cartoon was published in Benjamin Franklin’s Pennsylvania Gazette which showed a snake cut into sections, each part representing an American colony; the caption read, “Join or die”
1785 Joseph Bramah patented a beer-pump handle
1812 Napoleon leaves Paris for Russia
1825 The Chatham Theatre opened in New York City; it was the first gas-lit theater in America
1864 Union General John Sedgwick was shot and killed by a confederate sharpshooter during fighting at Spotsylvania, VA; his last words before getting hit were “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dis…”
1865 A US patent was issued to Richard Jordan Gatling for the Gatling gun which was the first to successfully combine reliability, high firing rate and ease of loading into a single device
1868 The city of Reno, NV is founded
1882 A stethoscope of the now classic design, invented by William F. Ford, was issued a US patent
1887 Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show opens in London
1893 The first motion picture exhibition was given by Thomas Alva Edison in Brooklyn, New York to an audience of 400 people at the Dept. of Physics, Brooklyn Institute
1896 The first Horseless Carriage Show opens at the Imperial Institute in London; 10 engine-powered models go on show to the public
1901 Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne
1914 J.T. Hearne becomes the first bowler to take 3000 first-class wickets
1914 President Woodrow Wilson issued a proclamation asking Americans to give a public expression of reverence to mothers through the celebration of Mother’s Day; carnations have come to represent the day as they were distributed at one of the first commemorations honoring the mother of the founder of Mother’s Day
1927 Felix the Cat debuts in a daily comic strip
1927 The Australian Parliament first convenes in Canberra
1929 William Hartnell wed Heather McIntyre
1933 In Germany, Chancellor Adolf Hitler orders the burning of ‘un-German’ books; a large bonfire of books is set alight in front of Berlin University – authors considered ‘un-German’ include Karl Marx; Sigmund Freud, Bertolt Brecht and Albert Einstein
1941 The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy; on board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages
1942 Belgrade becomes the first Axis-conquered city to murder or eliminate its Jewish population, largely with the help of Serbian collaborators
1944 The first eye bank in the US opened in New York City through the efforts of Dr. Richard T. Paton of Manhattan Eye, Ear and Throat Hospital and Dr. John McLean of New York Hospital
1945 The Channel Islands are formally liberated by the British
1945 Hermann Göring is captured by the US Army
1949 Rainier III of Monaco becomes Prince of Monaco
1949 Britain’s first self-service launderette opens in London
1950 Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations; this proposal, known as the “Schuman declaration”, is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union
1955 West Germany joins NATO
1955 Sam and Friends debuts on a local US television channel, marking the first television appearance of both Jim Henson and what would become Kermit the Frog and the Muppets
1958 Richard Burton made his network television debut in the presentation of Wuthering Heights on CBS-TV
1960 The US FDA announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle’s Enovid, making Enovid the world’s first approved oral contraceptive pill
1961 Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles becomes the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings
1962 The Beatles manager, Brian Epstein, and EMI record producer George Martin meet for the first time at Abbey Road Studios; Brian later sends the Beatles, who are in Hamburg, Germany, a telegram with the news
1962 A laser beam was bounced off the moon from earth by MIT scientists; the area of the light beam on the surface was estimated at a diameter of 4 miles
1968 In London, the Kray twins, Ronald and Reggie, British gangsters wanted for murder and armed robbery, are arrested
1970 In Washington, D.C., 75,000 to 100,000 war protesters peacefully demonstrate behind a barricaded White House
1970 FCC chairman Newton Minow said: “If you were turn in one channel and watch it from sign-on to sign-off, what you would find is a vast electronic wasteland.”
1971 The Friends of Earth returned 1500 non-returnable bottles to Schweppes
1974 The US House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard M. Nixon
1978 The body of former Italian prime Minister Aldo Moro is found in the boot of a car in the center of Rome – a victim of the terrorist group the Red Brigades
1989 Vice President Dan Quayle said in United Negro College Fund speech: “What a waste it is to lose one’s mind” instead of “a mind is terrible thing to waste.”
1990 Sinead O’Connor refused to perform on Saturday Night Live after Andrew Dice Clay was named as host
1992 The final episode of The Golden Girls aired on NBC-TV
1994 Nelson Mandela is inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president

BORN:
1800 John Brown, abolitionist who advocated and practiced armed insurrection as a means to abolish all slavery; he led the Pottawatomie Massacre in 1856 in Bleeding Kansas and the unsuccessful raid at Harpers Ferry in 1859
1850 Edward Weston, electrical engineer and industrialist who founded the Weston Electrical Instrument Company
1860 Sir James Barrie, novelist and dramatist who is best remembered for creating Peter Pan
1874 Howard Carter, archaeologist who made one of the richest and most celebrated contributions to Egyptology: the discovery of the largely intact tomb of King Tutankhamen
1895 Richard Barthelmess, actor (Broken Blossoms, Tol’able David, Way Down East, Camille, The Dawn Patrol)
1918 Mike Wallace, announcer, game show host and mutliple Emmy Award-winning journalist (60 Minutes)
1920 Richard Adams, novelist (Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, Shardik)
1920 Philip Klass (William Tenn is his pseudonym), science fiction author (“Down Among the Dead Men”, Of All Possible Worlds)
1930 Joan Sims, actress (Carry On…, Farrington of the F.O., Doctor Who)
1932 Geraldine McEwan, actress (Agatha Christie’s Marple, Mapp & Lucia, Henry V, Mulberry)
1934 Alan Bennett, actor-writer (Fortunes of War, Little Dorrit, Beyond the Fringe, The Madness of King George, The History Boys)
1936 Glenda Jackson, two-time Academy Award-winning actress (A Touch of Class, Women in Love, Hedda, Sunday Bloody Sunday, Elizabeth R)
1936 Albert Finney, actor (Tom Jones, Murder on the Orient Express, The Dresser, Erin Brockovich, Big Fish, The Bourne Ultimatum)
1940 James L. Brooks, Academy Award-winning director-producer-writer, multiple Emmy Award-winning writer-producer (Terms of Endearment, The Simpsons, The Tracey Ullman Show, Taxi, The Mary Tyler Moore Show)
1946 Candice Bergen, five-time Emmy Award-winning actress (Murphy Brown, Boston Legal, Starting Over, The Sand Pebbles)
1949 Billy Joel, multiple Grammy Award-winning musician-singer-songwriter (“Piano Man,” “Just the Way You Are,” “Only the Good Die Young”)
1961 John Corbett, actor (Tombstone, Northern Exposure, The Visitor, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Sex and the City)
1962 David Gahan, singer (Depeche Mode)
1962 Paul Heaton, singer-songwriter (The Housemartins, The Beautiful South, Biscuit Boy)
1979 Rosario Dawson, actress (Sin City, Alexander, Grindhouse, Men in Black II, Josie and the Pussycats, Rent)

DIED:
1914 C.M. Post, industrialist who founded Post Cereal Company with the Grape-Nuts cereal he created, dies at 59
1931 A.A. Michelson, physicist who accurately measured the speed of light and received the 1907 Nobel Prize for Physics “for his optical precision instruments and the spectroscopic and metrological investigations” he carried out with them, dies at 79
1985 Edmond O’Brien, Academy Award-winning actor (The Barefoot Contessa, Seven Days in May, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Fantastic Voyage), dies at 69
1998 Alice Faye, singer-actress-dancer (State Fair, Stowaway, Hollywood Cavalcade), dies at 83
2004 Alan King, actor-comedian-writer (Bye Bye Braverman, Stephen King’s Cat’s Eye, Casino, Rush Hour 2), dies at 76