May 5

It’s Cinco de Mayo and National Hoagie Day and Oyster Day

ON THIS DAY…
1260 Kublai Khan becomes ruler of the Mongol Empire
1762 Russia and Prussia sign the Treaty of St. Petersburg
1809 The Swiss canton of Aargau denies citizenship to Jews
1814 The British attack the American forces at Ft. Ontario, Oswego, NY
1832 The US government passed an act authorizing the first vaccination program to protect Native Americans against smallpox and allotted $12,000 to pay doctors $6 a day for their services
1847 The AMA (American Medical Association) was organized in Philadelphia, PA
1865 In North Bend, OH the first train robbery in the US takes place
1877 Sitting Bull leads his band of Lakota into Canada to avoid harassment by the US Army under Colonel Nelson Miles
1881 Louis Pasteur tested inoculations against anthrax upon an ox, several cows and 25 sheep; his experiment proved successful, and was a milestone in the treatment of disease
1891 The Music Hall in New York (now known as Carnegie Hall) has its grand opening and first public performance, with Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky as the guest conductor
1893 A crash on the New York Stock Exchange starts a depression
1904 Pitching against the Philadelphia Athletics at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Cy Young of the Boston Americans threw the first perfect game in the modern era of baseball
1920 Anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were arrested for murder
1921 Chanel No. 5 perfume, created by perfumer Ernst Beaux for Coco Chanel, is launched
1922 In The Bronx, construction begins on Yankee Stadium
1925 Biology teacher John Scopes is arrested for teaching the theory of evolution, which is outlawed in Tennessee public schools; he is later convicted in the so-called “Monkey Trial”
1926 Sinclair Lewis refused a 1925 Pulitzer Prize for Arrowsmith
1934 Larry, Moe, and Curly swore off dames in Woman Haters, a Three Stooges two-reeler debuting in US theaters
1936 Edward Ravenscroft received a patent for the screw-on bottle cap with a pour lip
1940 In London, a Norwegian government in exile is formed
1943 The film curator of the Library of Congress, Howard Walls, announces that about 5,000 films will be preserved in the library
1944 Mohandas Gandhi is freed from prison
1945 The only WW II deaths of civilians on the mainland of the US resulted from a Japanese bomb dropped over Gearhart Mountain, Oregon by an unmanned balloon; it was disturbed and exploded, killing those civilians who discovered it during a picnic: five local children and Elsie Mitchell, the pregnant wife of a minister
1952 I Love Lucy presented the “Lucy Does a TV Commercial” episode in which Lucille Ball hawks Vitameatavegamin
1955 Damn Yankees opened on Broadway
1955 The Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) became a sovereign state
1961 Astronaut Alan Shepard makes a 15-minute suborbital flight, becoming the first American to travel in space
1963 The world’s first human liver transplant was performed by Dr. Thomas E. Starlz at a Denver, CO hospital
1986 It was announced that Cleveland, OH had been chosen as the city where the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame would be built
1992 Wolfenstein 3D is released, the first-ever first-person shooter computer game
1994 American Michael P. Fay is caned in Singapore as punishment for spray-painting two cars
1995 British film producer Ray Santilli unveils his alien autopsy footage to a group of UFO researchers; the film is widely regarded as a hoax
2000 A conjunction of the five bright planets – Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn – formed a rough line across the sky with the Sun and Moon
2000 The final episode of Boy Meets World aired on ABC

BORN:
1818 Karl Marx, philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary (The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital)
1830 John B. Stetson, hat manufacturer; the stetson hat was named for him
1876 John Garstang, archaeologist who made major contributions to the study of the ancient history and prehistory of Asia Minor and Palestine and best known for excavating Ancient Jericho
1905 Floyd Gottfredson, cartoonist best known for his defining work on the Mickey Mouse comic strip
1914 Tyrone Power, actor (In Old Chicago, Jesse James, The Mark of Zorro, Blood and Sand, Witness for the Prosecution)
1915 Alice Faye, actress-singer-dancer (Poor Little Rich Girl, In Old Chicago, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, State Fair)
1937 Delia Derbyshire, musician and composer who was a pioneer of electronic music (Doctor Who, The Legend of Hell House)
1938 Michael Murphy, character actor (MASH, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, The Year of Living Dangerously, Tanner ’88, Batman Returns)
1940 Lance Henriksen, actor (Damien: Omen II, The Right Stuff, The Terminator, Aliens, Near Dark)
1940 Michael Lindsay-Hogg, director (Let It Be, Brideshead Revisited, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, ‘Master Harold’… and the Boys)
1942 Tammy Wynette, Grammy Award-winning country music singer-songwriter (“Stand by Your Man,” “I Don’t Wanna Play House,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E”)
1943 Michael Palin, CBE, actor-writer-television presenter (Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Time Bandits, A Fish Called Wanda, Michael Palin’s New Europe)
1944 John Rhys-Davies, actor (Shogun, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Reilly: Ace of Spies, Sliders, The Lord of the Rings)
1944 Roger Rees, actor (Star 80, Robin Hood: Men in Tights, M.A.N.T.I.S., A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Prestige)
1957 Richard E. Grant, actor (Withnail & I, Warlock, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Spice World, Doctor Who – “Scream of the Shalka”)
1959 Ian McCullough, musician (Echo and the Bunnymen)
1973 Tina Yothers, actress (Family Ties, Louis L’Amour’s The Cherokee Trail)
1979 Vincent Kartheiser, actor (Angel, Mad Men, Alpha Dog, The Indian in the Cupboard)

DIED:
1821 Napoleon Bonaparte, military and political leader who had significant impact on modern European history; he was a general during the French Revolution, the ruler of France as Premier Consul of the French Republic, Empereur des Français, King of Italy, Mediator of the Swiss Confederation and Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, dies in exile on the island of St. Helena at 51
1994 Tom Blake, inventor of the hollow-core surfboard, dies at 92
2007 Theodore Maiman, physicist who built the first working laser, dies at 69