May 7
It’s National Tourism Day and School Nurses Day and National Roasted Leg of Lamb Day
ON THIS DAY…
1274 In France, the Second Council of Lyons opens to regulate the election of the Pope
1429 Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orléans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning wounded to lead the final charge; the victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years’ War
1660 Isaack B. Fubine of Savoy, in The Hague, patents macaroni
1663 The first Theatre Royal was opened in London
1763 Chief Pontiac begins the “Conspiracy of Pontiac” by attacking British forces at Fort Detroit
1789 The first US Presidential Inaugural Ball was held in New York City
1800 The US Congress divided the Northwest Territory into two parts; the western part became the Indiana Territory and the eastern section remained the Northwest Territory
1824 World premiere of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Vienna, Austria; the work was conducted by Michael Umlauf, under the deaf composer’s supervision
1832 Greece is recognized independent by the Treaty of London; Otto of Wittelsbach, Prince of Bavaria is chosen King
1878 Joseph.R. Winters received a patent for a fire escape ladder
1912 The first airplane equipped with a machine gun flew over College Park, MD
1915 The British ship Lusitania is torpedoed by a German submarine off the Ireland coast; 1,198 people are killed, increasing sentiment in the United States to join World War I
1937 In the US, the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast takes place when Herbert Morrison describes the explosion of the airship Hindenburg which took place the day before
1939 Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis
1945 German Nazi forces surrender unconditionally to US General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s army in Reims, France; the European phase of World War II officially ends the next day
1946 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with about 20 employees
1947 Kraft Television Theater debuts, running for the next 11 years
1952 The concept of the integrated circuit chip was first presented, at a Symposium on Progress in Quality Electronic Components in Washington DC., by radar scientist Geoffrey W.A. Dummer
1955 Polio vaccinations with the Salk vaccine were suspended by the US Surgeon General after several children had acquired the disease from the vaccine; the trouble was traced to faulty production at an independent laboratory, but it is the inventor’s name, Jonas Salk, which is unjustly most remembered for the vaccine’s shortcomings
1960 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev announces that his nation is holding American U-2 pilot Gary Powers
1963 The US launched the Telstar II communications satellite on behalf of its private owner, AT&T
1987 Shelley Long exited Cheers, after her final performance as a regular in the series
1991 A judge in Macon, GA dismissed a wrongful death suit against Ozzy Osbourne; a local couple failed to prove their son was inspired to attempt suicide by Ozzy’s music
1992 Three employees at a McDonald’s Restaurant in Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada are brutally murdered and a fourth permanently disabled after a botched robbery; it is the first fast-food murder in Canada
1992 Michigan ratifies a 203-year-old proposed amendment to the United States Constitution making the 27th Amendment law; this amendment bars the US Congress from giving itself a mid-term pay raise
1992 The space shuttle Endeavor blasted off on its maiden voyage
1994 The masterpiece “The Scream”, by Norwegian painter Edvard Munch, is recovered undamaged nearly three months after it was stolen
1997 A report released by the US government said that Switzerland provided Nazi Germany with equipment and credit during World War II; Germany exchanged for gold what had been plundered or stolen and that Switzerland did not comply with postwar agreements to return the gold
1998 Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for US$40 billion and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history
1999 Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope that had visited a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054
1999 A jury finds The Jenny Jones Show and Warner Bros. liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure, after the show purposely deceived Jonathan Schmitz to appear on a secret same-sex crush episode; Schmitz later killed Amedure and the jury awarded Amedure’s family $25 million
2000 The Wonderful World of Disney airs the musical “Geppetto,” starring Drew Carey
2001 Ronnie Biggs, who took part in Britains “Great Train Robbery” in 1963, voluntarily ended 35 years on the run by returning to Britain from Brazil
2003 Teams of US customs agents working with US soldiers in Iraq recover about 700 artifacts and 39,400 ancient manuscripts that had disappeared from the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad
2003 Pete Townshend was cleared of possessing pornographic images of children
2007 The tomb of Herod the Great is discovered
BORN:
1812 Robert Browning, poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian poets (The Ring and the Book, Parleyings with Certain People of Importance In Their Day)
1833 Johannes Brahms, composer of the Romantic period (“Piano Concerto No.1 in D minor”, “Piano Sonata No. 3 in F minor”)
1840 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, composer of the Romantic era (“1812 Overture”, “Romeo and Juliet Overture”, “Marche Slave”)
1855 Oskar von Miller, engineer who fostered the electric-power industry in Germany and founded the Deutsches Museum of science and technology in Munich
1885 George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, character actor and the most famous of Western-movie sidekicks of the 1930s and 1940s (Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, Sons of the Pioneers, My Pal Trigger)
1901 Gary Cooper, two-time Academy Award-winning actor (High Noon, Sergeant York, The Pride of the Yankees, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, For Whom the Bell Tolls)
1907 Alton A. Lindsey, biologist, was a pioneer ecologist and conservationist who mobilized support from scientists, educators and in Congress to preserve the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan
1909 Edwin Herbert Land, inventor and physicist whose one-step process for developing and printing photographs was the greatest innovation in photography since the introduction of roll film
1917 David Tomlinson, actor (Mary Poppins, Tom Jones, The Love Bug, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu)
1919 Eva Perón, second wife of President Juan Domingo Perón who served as the First Lady of Argentina (1946-1952)
1922 Darren McGavin, actor (The Man with the Golden Arm, Riverboat, The Night Stalker, Airport ’77, Captain America)
1923 Anne Baxter, Academy Award-winning actress (The Razor’s Edge, All About Eve, Marcus Welby, M.D., The Ten Commandments)
1933 Johnny Unitas, football player (1955-1973) who was a record-setting quarterback and the National Football League’s most valuable player in 1959, 1964 and 1967; his record of throwing a touchdown pass in 47 consecutive games (between 1956-1960) is unsurpassed
1944 Richard O’Sullivan, actor (The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, Doctor at Large, Doctor in Charge, Man About the House, Robin’s Nest)
1950 Randall ‘Tex’ Cobb, professional boxer and actor (The Champ, Liar Liar, Blind Fury, Fletch Lives)
1954 Amy Heckerling, writer-director-producer (Clueless, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, Look Who’s Talking)
1956 Anne Dudley, original member of Art of Noise and Academy Award-winning composer (The Full Monty, The Crying Game, Jeeves and Wooster, The 10th Kingdom)
1968 Traci Lords, infamous underage porn star turned legit actress (Not of This Earth, Cry-Baby, The Tommyknockers, Underworld)
DIED:
1800 Niccola Piccinni, composer of symphonies, sacred music, chamber music, and opera (some estimates claim he wrote as many as 300 operas), dies at 72
1825 Antonio Salieri, composer and conductor; the Austrian imperial Kapellmeister from 1788 to 1824, he was one of the most important and famous musicians of his time, dies at 74
1896 H. H. Holmes, serial killer who trapped and murdered possibly hundreds of guests at his Chicago hotel, which he opened for the 1893 World’s Fair; he confessed to 27 murders, although only nine have been confirmed – he is often cited as the first American serial killer, is hanged at 35
1941 Sir James George Frazer, anthropologist , folklorist, classical scholar, and author of The Golden Bough, a study in Comparative Religion, which traced the evolution of human behavior, dies at 87
1951 Warner Baxter, Academy Award-winning actor (In Old Arizona, Crime Doctor, The Cisco Kid), dies at 62
1987 Colin Blakely, actor (A Man for All Seasons, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, The Pink Panther Strikes Again, Equus), dies at 56
1998 Eddie Rabbitt, country music singer-songwriter who had 26 number one’s on Billboard Magazine’s country charts (“I Love a Rainy Night,” “Drivin’ My Life Away,” “Step by Step,” “Every Which Way But Loose”), dies at 56
1998 Allan MacLeod Cormack, physicist who formulated the mathematical algorithms that made possible the development of a powerful new diagnostic technique, the cross-sectional X-ray imaging process known as computerized axial tomography (CAT) scanning, dies at 74
2000 Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (Douglas Elton Ulman), actor-producer (Stella Dallas, The Dawn Patrol, Little Caesar, The Prisoner of Zenda, Gunga Din), dies at 90
2002 Seattle Slew, thoroughbred race horse who won the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in 1977, the tenth of eleven horses to accomplish the feat; he remains the only horse to win the Triple Crown while undefeated, dies at 28