May 11
It’s Mother’s Day and Eat What You Want Day and Twilight Zone Day
ON THIS DAY…
0330 Constantinople becomes the new capital of the Roman Empire
0868 The first known dated printed book was the Diamond Sutra, a Buddhist scripture; it was made as a 16-ft scroll with six sheets of text printed from wood blocks and one sheet with a woodcut showing the Buddha with disciples and a pair of cats
1310 54 members of the Knights Templar are burned at the stake in France for being heretics
1752 The first US fire insurance policy issued in Philadelphia
1812 Prime Minister Spencer Perceval is assassinated by John Bellingham in the lobby of the House of Commons, London
1812 The Waltz was introduced into English ballrooms; most observers considered it disgusting and immoral
1858 Minnesota becomes the 32nd state in the Union
1910 An act of the US Congress establishes Glacier National Park in Montana
1911 The United States becomes a signatory to the Buenos Aires copyright treaty
1927 The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is founded
1928 Radio station WGY, in Schenectady, NY began Americas first regularly scheduled TV broadcasts
1937 Spam, a canned ham by Hormel, was registered as a trademark
1947 The B.F. Goodrich Company of Akron, OH announced the development of a tubeless tire
1949 Israel joins the United Nations
1949 The first Polaroid camera was sold for $89.95 in New York City
1949 Siam, in southeast Asia, changes its name to Thailand
1951 Jay Forrester patented computer core memory
1957 The Everly Brothers made their Grand Ole Opry debut
1960 In Buenos Aires, Argentina, four Israeli Mossad agents capture fugitive Nazi Adolf Eichmann, living under the assumed name Ricardo Klement
1976 The last episode of the TV medical drama Marcus Welby, M.D. is aired
1985 56 spectators die when a flash fire strikes a football ground during a match in Bradford, England
1987 The first heart-lung transplant takes place
1995 Scientists confirmed that Ebola, one of the world’s deadliest viruses, had broken out in Zaire; the outbreak, in the city of Kikwit, killed about 50, including three Italian nuns who had cared for victims
1997 IBM computer Deep Blue beats chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game series; it is the first time a computer beats an international grand master in a multigame match
2006 Robert Boyd, professor of optics at the University of Rochester, reports that he has created impulses in the laboratory that exceed the speed of light
BORN:
1720 Baron Munchhausen, story-teller whose whimsical tales became The Adventures of Baron Munchausen
1752 Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, physiologist and comparative anatomist, frequently called the father of physical anthropology, who proposed one of the earliest classifications of the races of mankind
1854 Ottmar Mergenthaler, inventor of the Linotype typesetting machine, regarded as the greatest advance in printing since the development of movable type 400 years earlier
1871 Frank Schlesinger, astronomer who pioneered the use of photographic methods to determine stellar parallaxes
1881 Theodore Von Karman, aeronautical engineer who designed the Bell X-1 airplane that was the first to fly faster than the speed of sound
1888 Irving Berlin, Academy Award-winning songwriter (“White Christmas”, “Cheek to Cheek,” “Puttin’ on the Ritz”, “God Bless America”)
1892 Dame Margaret Rutherford, Academy Award-winning actress (The V.I.P.s, Blithe Spirit, I’m All Right Jack, Agatha Christie’s Murder at the Gallop)
1904 Salvador Dalí, 1st Marquis of Púbol, surrealist painter who collaborated with Walt Disney on the Academy Award-nominated short cartoon Destino; one of his most famous paintings was The Persistence of Memory – sometimes called “Melting Clocks”
1911 Phil Silvers, Emmy Award-winning actor (The Phil Silvers Show, Four Jills in a Jeep, It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, The Cheap Detective)
1912 Foster Brooks, comedian famous for his drunk act and television character actor who was a frequent guest on talk and variety shows
1918 Richard Feynman, theoretical physicist who was probably the most brilliant, influential, and iconoclastic figure in his field in the post-WW II era
1924 Antony Hewish, astrophysicist who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1974 for his discovery of pulsars
1935 Doug McClure, actor (Checkmate, The Virginian, At the Earth’s Core, Roots, Humanoids of the Deep, Tapeheads)
1946 Robert K. Jarvik, surgeon who invented the Jarvik-7, the first artificial heart used as a permanent implant in a human
1950 Jeremy Paxman, British TV presenter (Newsnight)
1952 Frances Fisher, actress (The Edge of Night, L.A. Story, Unforgiven, Strange Luck, Titanic)
1959 Martha Quinn, one of the original MTV VJ’s
DIED:
1838 Thomas Andrew Knight, horticulturalist who initiated the field of fruit breeding, experimental horticulture while also studying plant physiology with botanical experiments, dies at 78
1960 John D. Rockefeller, Jr., major philanthropist and a pivotal member of the prominent Rockefeller family. He was the sole son and scion of the billionaire Standard Oil industrialist, John D. Rockefeller, dies at 86
1981 Bob Marley, musician, singer-songwriter and Rastafarian dies of cancer at 36
1985 Chester Gould, cartoonist and the creator of the Dick Tracy comic strip, dies at 84
1988 Kim Philby, a high-ranking member of British intelligence, a KGB operative and traitor, dies at 76
2001 Douglas Adams, author, comic radio dramatist, technologist and musician (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, Last Chance to See), dies at 49
2003 Noel Redding, bassist for The Jimi Hendrix Experience, dies at 57