May 22

It’s Buy-A-Musical Instrument Day

ON THIS DAY…
334BC The Greek army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus
1455 At the First Battle of St Albans, Richard, Duke of York, defeats and captures King Henry VI of England
1761 The first life insurance policy in the US was issued, in Philadelphia
1807 A grand jury indicts former Vice President of the United States Aaron Burr on a charge of treason
1819 The SS Savannah leaves port at Savannah, GA on a voyage to become the first steamship to cross the Atlantic Ocean
1840 The transporting of British convicts to the New South Wales colony is abolished
1841 Henry Kennedy, a cabinetmaker and upholsterer of Philadelphia, PA was issued the first US patent for a reclining chair
1843 The first wagon train with over 1,000 people departed Independence, Missouri for Oregon
1849 Abraham Lincoln became the first President to be issued a patent; his patent for “buoying boats over shoals” utilized inflated cylinders to float grounded vessels through shallow water
1856 On the floor of the US Senate, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina, pro-slavery Democrat, beats Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts, a Republican abolitionist, unconscious with a gutta-percha cane; Sumner was beaten unconscious and was unable to resume duties for three years
1863 The US War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops
1868 Near Marshfield, IN, The “Great Train Robbery” took place; the take for the seven member Reno Gang was $96,000 in cash, gold and bonds
1872 President Ulysses S. Grant signs the Amnesty Act of 1872 into law restoring full civil rights to all but about 500 Confederate sympathizers
1892 Dr. Washington Sheffield invented the collapsible metal toothpaste tube
1899 The Plain Dealer reporter Charles Shanks first used the French word “automobile” in a series of articles he writes about a road trip with car magnate Alexander Winton from Cleveland to NY
1908 The Wright Brothers patent their aircraft
1915 Lassen Peak erupts with a powerful force, and is the only mountain to erupt other than Mount St. Helens in the continental US during the 20th century
1931 The first sale of canned rattlesnake meat was made by George Kenneth End of Arcadia, FL
1936 Aer Lingus is founded by the Irish government as the national airline of the Republic of Ireland
1939 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed a military alliance between Germany and Italy known as the “Pact of Steel”
1942 Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox enlists in the United States Marine Corps as a flight instructor
1954 Robert Zimmerman (Bob Dylan) is bar mitzvahed in Hibbing, Minnesota
1955 After 23 years on network radio, Jack Benny aired his final live broadcast, turning his attention to the television version of his program
1961 The Top Of The Needle restauraunt in the Space Needle in Seattle, WA was dedicated; it was the first revolving restaurant in the US and is 500 feet above the ground
1965 The Beatles’ single “Ticket to Ride” hits number one on the US charts
1967 Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, the longest-running children’s series on US television, airs its first episode
1967 The final episode of To Tell the Truth program was seen on CBS-TV
1968 The nuclear-powered submarine the USS Scorpion sinks with 99 men aboard 400 miles southwest of the Azores
1968 Walt Disney Travel Company is incorporated in Florida
1969 Apollo 10’s lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles of the moon’s surface
1972 Ceylon adopts a new constitution, changes its name to Sri Lanka, and joins the British Commonwealth
1973 Robert Metcalfe wrote a memo describing a way to transmit data from the early generation of personal computers to a new device, the laser printer; he called his multipoint data communications system Ethernet, and today it continues to dominate as the standard computer network
1975 John Milius’ The Wind and the Lion starring Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith and John Huston premieres in New York City
1977 Janet Guthrie set the fastest time of the second weekend of qualifying, becoming the first woman to earn a starting spot in the Indianapolis 500 since its inception in 1911
1977 Final European scheduled run of Orient Express took place after 94 years
1978 Italy legalized abortion
1979 The discovery of a Clovis type projectile point found in association with mastodon remains provided the first solid evidence of the coexistence of humans and the American mastodon in Eastern North America
1989 The first successful transfer of cells containing foreign genes into a human being is performed at the National Institutes of Health; altered cancer-fighting cells are placed in the blood of a cancer-patient
1990 Microsoft released Windows 3.0
1992 Alien³ starring Sigourney Weaver opens in US theaters
1992 Johnny Carson hosted NBC’s Tonight Show for the last time after a reign lasting nearly 30 years, telling his audience: “I bid you a very heartfelt good night.”
1995 The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that states cannot limit service in Congress without amending the Constitution
1995 The CBS Evening News resumed a single-anchor format with Dan Rather, after Connie Chung was dropped from the broadcast
1995 Astronomers Amanda S. Bosh and Andrew S. Rivkin found two new moons of Saturn in photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope
1997 The US Postal Service released a Bugs Bunny commemorative stamp, the first animated character on a US stamp
2002 The remains of Chandra Levy, former intern to CA Representative Gary Condit, were found in Rock Creek Park, Washington DC
2002 A jury in Birmingham, Alabama, convicts former Ku Klux Klan member Bobby Frank Cherry of the 1963 murders of four girls in the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church
2003 In Fort Worth, TX Annika Sörenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years; she ended the day at 1-over par
2006 Seven-year-old Braxton Bilbrey of Arizona swam from Alcatraz Island to San Francisco in 47 minutes
2008 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens in US theaters

BORN:
1770 Princess Elizabeth, the 7th child and 3rd daughter of George III of the United Kingdom
1783 William Sturgeon, electrical engineer who devised the first electromagnet capable of supporting more than its own weight
1813 Richard Wagner, composer, conductor, music theorist and essayist, primarily known for his operas; the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen
1828 Albrecht von Gräfe, eye surgeon, who is regarded as a founder of scientific opthalmology
1845 Mary Cassatt, painter and printmaker who often created images of the social and private lives of women, with particular emphasis on the intimate bonds between mothers and children
1846 Oliver Perry Hay, paleontologist whose catalogs of fossil vertebrates greatly organized existing knowledge and became standard references
1859 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, novelist, physician, spiritualist who is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger
1879 Alla Nazimova, actress-writer-producer-director (Salome, A Doll’s House, Camille, Madame Peacock)
1903 Yves-André Rocard, mathematician and physicist who contributed to the development of the French atomic bomb and to the understanding of such diverse fields of research as semiconductors, seismology, and radio astronomy
1907 Lord Laurence Olivier, director, Emmy, BAFTA and Academy Award-winning actor (Hamlet, Richard III, Oh! What a Lovely War, Long Day’s Journey Into Night, The Moon and Sixpence, Love Among the Ruins, King Lear)
1907 Hergé (Georges Prosper Remi), comics writer and artistbest-known and most substantial work is The Adventures of Tintin; he was inducted into the Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2003
1910 Johnny Olson, TV announcer (To Tell the Truth, Concentration, The Price is Right)
1915 George Baker, writer cartoonist and animator who created the comic strip “The Sad Sack”
1920 Thomas Gold, astronomer known for a steady-state theory of the universe, explaining pulsars, and naming the magnetosphere
1922 Quinn Martin, TV producer (The Untouchables, The Fugitive, The Invaders, Dan August, The Streets of San Francisco, Cannon, Barnaby Jones, The F.B.I.)
1930 Harvey Milk, politician and gay rights activist, and the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco, CA; he was, according to Time magazine, “the first openly gay man elected to any substantial political office in the history of the planet”
1938 Richard Benjamin, actor-director (My Favorite Year, Diary of a Mad Housewife, Westworld, Quark, Love at First Bite)
1938 Susan Strasberg, actress (Picnic, Stage Struck, The Trip)
1939 Paul Winfield, Emmy Award-winning actor (Picket Fences, Sounder, Damnation Alley, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, The Charmings)
1942 Theodore Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, is a mathematician who carried out a campaign of bombings and mail bombings which killed three people and wounded 23
1946 George Best, football player, best known for his years with Manchester United; he was a winger whose game combined pace, acceleration, balance, two-footedness, goalscoring and the ability to beat defenders
1950 Bernie Taupin, lyricist most famous for his collaboration with Elton John (“Your Song”, “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road”, “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”, “Honky Cat”)
1959 Steven Morrissey, writer, singer and lyricist (The Smiths)
1982 Apolo Anton Ohno, short track speed skating competitor and a two-time gold medalist in the Winter Olympics (2002 and 2006), fourth season Dancing With the Stars Champion

DIED:
1885 Victor-Marie Hugo, poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights campaigner, and perhaps the most influential exponent of the Romantic movement in France (The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, Les Misérables, The Man Who Laughs), dies at 83
1961 Eddie Cline, director-writer who started in the film business as an actor with Keystone in 1915 and worked a lot with Buster Keaton on his independent silent 2-reelers and feature films (Hook, Line and Sinker, My Little Chickadee, The Bank Dick, Never Give a Sucker an Even Break, Private Buckaroo), dies at 68
1972 Dame Margaret Rutherford, Academy Award-winning actress (The V.I.P.s, Blithe Spirit, I’m All Right Jack, The Mouse on the Moon, and four films as Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple), dies at 80
1985 Wolfgang “Woolie” Reitherman, director, producer and part of the inner circle of Disney animators known as the “nine old men” (One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree, The Jungle Book, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, The AristoCats, Robin Hood, The Rescuers), dies at 75
1990 Rocky Graziano, world boxing champion who was considered one of the greatest knockout artists in boxing history, often displaying the capacity to take his opponent out with a single punch, dies at 71
1998 John Derek, actor-director (All the King’s Men, Rogues of Sherwood Forest, The Ten Commandments, Exodus, Tarzan, the Ape Man), dies at 71
2004 Richard Biggs, actor (Days of Our Lives, Babylon 5, Strong Medicine), dies at 44
2005 Thurl Ravenscroft, a voice actor who supplied Tony the Tiger’s “They’re grrrrreeeat!” for more than 50 years (It is also Ravenscroft’s deep voice you hear singing “You’re A Mean One, Mr. Grinch” on the holiday TV classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas), dies at 91