May 18
It’s No Dirty Dishes Day and Visit Your Relatives Day and International Museum Day and National Cheese Souffle Day and Rooster Day
ON THIS DAY…
1096 Before embarking on the First Crusade to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim Turks, Count Emich von Leiningen and his army swept through their own German homeland, murdering thousands of Jews, whom they had declared “murderers of Christ”
1152 Henry II marries Eleanor of Aquitaine
1268 The Principality of Antioch, a crusader state, falls to the Mamluk Sultan Baibars in the Battle of Antioch; Baibars’ destruction of the city of Antioch was so great as to permanently negate the city’s importance
1593 Playwright Thomas Kyd’s accusations of heresy lead to an arrest warrant for Christopher Marlowe
1642 The Canadian city of Montreal was founded
1643 Queen Anne, the widow of Louis XIII, was granted sole and absolute power as regent by the Paris parliament, overriding the late king’s will
1652 A law was passed in Rhode Island banning slavery in the colonies but it caused little stir and seemed unlikely to be enforced
1787 Glass was engraved for the first time in Toulouse, France
1804 Napoleon Bonaparte is proclaimed emperor of France by the Senate and Tribunate
1830 English mechanic Edwin Beard Budding, inventor of the lawn mover, signed a manufacturing agreement with John Ferrabee, Phoenix Iron Works
1852 Massachusetts ruled that all school-age children must attend school
1876 Wyatt Earp starts work in Dodge City, KS under Marshall Larry Deger
1896 The US Supreme Court ruled 7 to 1 to give states the authority to segregate people according to race
1897 A public reading of Bram Stokers new novel, Dracula, or, The Un-dead, was staged at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in London, an event that roughly coincided with the books publication
1914 The first commercial cargo began its passage through the Panama Canal
1917 The US Congress passed the Selective Service act, calling up soldiers to fight World War I
1923 The first patent application on a rotary-dial telephone was submitted in France by Antoine Barnay
1927 Impresario Sid Grauman opened his Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA
1927 A schoolhouse in Bath, MI was blown up with explosives planted by local farmer Andrew Kehoe, who then set off a dynamite-laden automobile; the attacks killed 38 children and six adults, including Kehoe, who had earlier killed his wife
1933 The Tennessee Valley Authority Act was signed by President Roosevelt; the TVA proceed to build damns in the Tennessee Valley
1934 The US Congress approved an act, known as the “Lindberg Act,” that called for the death penalty in interstate kidnapping cases
1934 TWA began commercial service
1942 New York ended night baseball games for the duration of World War II
1949 Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America incorporated
1952 Professor Willard F. Libby determined the age of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain, England, at about 1848 BC (+/- 275 years) through analysis of the carbon-14 radioisotope in charcoal remains excavated there there
1953 Jacqueline Cochran became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a North American F-86 Canadair over Rogers Dry Lake, CA
1958 An F-104 Starfighter sets a world speed record of 1,404.19 mph
1967 The first legalization of human artificial insemination in the US was enacted by the state of Oklahoma
1969 The Apollo 10 was launched to be a complete staging of the Apollo 11 mission without actually landing on the Moon
1971 The Abominable Dr. Phibes opened in US movie theaters
1971 Elizabeth Anne Porteous was murdered; she was the final victim of Canadian serial killer Wayne Boden, “the Vampire Rapist”
1972 Me & The Chimp last aired on CBS-TV
1974 “The Streak,” a novelty song by Ray Stevens, topped the US pop charts
1974 India became the sixth nation to explode an atomic bomb; India conducted its first nuclear tests and then halted testing
1980 At 8:32 a.m. Mount Saint Helens volcano in Washington state erupts, causing an outbreak of fires, mudslides, and floods; 57 people die in the largest eruption in US history
1989 In China a million protesters filled Tiananmen Square
1991 Helen Sharman became the first Briton to rocket into space as she flew aboard a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft with two cosmonauts on an eight-day mission
1994 Lisa Marie Presley married Michael Jackson; they would divorce in 1996
1998 The US Justice Dept. filed an antitrust action against Microsoft Corp. for embedding its own browser in its operating system, thus limiting competition from others such as Netscape
2000 Sante Kimes and Kenneth Kimes, mother-and-son grifters, were convicted in New York of murdering Irene Silverman in a plot to steal her elegant townhouse mansion; the body of the 82-year-old millionaire widow has never been found
2001 Shrek opens in US movie theaters
2003 Les Miserables closed on Broadway after more than 16 years and 6,680 performances
2007 Shrek the Third opens in US movie theaters
2007 Amy Winehouse marries Blake Fielder-Civil
BORN:
1048 Omar Khayyam, poet, mathematician, and astronomer; his contributions to other fields of science included developing methods for the accurate determination of specific gravity
1711 Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich, astronomer and mathematician who gave the first geometric procedure for determining the equator of a rotating planet from three observations of a surface feature and for computing the orbit of a planet from three observations of its position
1804 Arsène-Jules-Étienne-Juvénal Dupuit, engineer and economist who was one of the first to analyze the cost-effectiveness of public works
1850 Oliver Heaviside, physicist who predicted the existence of the ionosphere
1859 Harry Fielding Reid, seismologist and glaciologist who introduced the term “elastic rebound” in a 1910 report on the 1906 San Francisco earthquake
1868 Nicholas II of Russia (Nikolay Alexandrovich Romanov), the last Tsar of Russia, King of Poland, and Grand Duke of Finland; his official title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is currently regarded as Saint Nicholas The Passion Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church
1872 Bertrand Russell, mathematical logician, analytical philosopher and writer; he worked to establish foundations of mathematics and developed contemporary formal logic
1875 Robert E. Horton, hydraulic engineer, who is regarded as the father of modern hydrology, and who developed and refined techniques for systematic separation of rainfall drainage into the components such as infiltration, evaporation, interception, transpiration and overland flow
1883 Walter Gropius, architect and founder of Bauhaus; he is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of “modern” architecture
1889 Thomas Midgley, Jr., engineer and chemist who discovered the effectiveness of tetraethyl lead (C2H5)4Pb in 1921 as an antiknock additive for gasoline
1897 Frank Capra, 3-time Academy Award-winning director (It Happened One Night, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, You Can’t Take It with You)
1901 Vincent du Vigneaud, biochemist and winner of the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1955 for his work on biochemically important sulfur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypeptide hormone
1902 Meredith Willson, composer, songwriter, conductor and playwright who is best known for writing the book, music, and lyrics for the hit musical The Music Man, which won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 1958, the cast recording of which won the first Grammy Award given for best cast album
1912 Richard Brooks, director and Academy Award-winning screenwriter (Elmer Gantry, The Professionals, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, In Cold Blood, Blackboard Jungle)
1913 Perry Como, singer and TV personality who sold millions of records for RCA and also pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history
1915 Elman Rogers Service, anthropological theorist and formulator of the nomenclature now in standard use to categorize primitive societies as bands, tribes, chiefdoms, and states
1920 Pope John Paul II (Karol Józef Wojty?a), reigned as the 264th Pope of the Roman Catholic Church; he was the only Polish pope, and was the first non-Italian pope since the Dutch Adrian VI in the 1520s
1928 Pernell Roberts, actor (Bonanza, Trapper John, M.D., Hotel, Centennial)
1931 Don Martin, cartoon artist whose best-known work appeared in MAD Magazine from 1956 to 1988
1931 Robert Morse, Emmy Award-winning and 2-time Tony Award-winning actor (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, Tru, Mad Men, Pound Puppies)
1934 Dwayne Hickman, actor (The Bob Cummings Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Cat Ballou, How to Stuff a Wild Bikini, Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, A Night at the Roxbury)
1941 Miriam Margolyes, OBE, BAFTA Award-winning actress (The Age of Innocence, Flushed Away, Marple: The Murder at the Vicarage, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Babe, Blackadder’s Christmas Carol)
1946 Reggie Jackson, nicknamed “Mr. October” for his clutch hitting in the post season, is an American former Major League Baseball right fielder who played for five different teams from 1967 to 1987 who won three consecutive World Series titles as a member of the Oakland A’s in the early 1970s and also won 2 consecutive titles with the New York Yankees; he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1993
1950 Mark Mothersbaugh, musician, composer, singer, and painter (Devo)
1951 Denny Dillon, actress (Dream On, United 93, Ice Age, Roseanne: An Unauthorized Biography, Saturday Night Live, Saturday Night Fever)
1952 Diane Duane, science fiction and fantasy author (Young Wizards series, The Middle Kingdoms series, Star Trek: The Wounded Sky, Star Trek: Dark Mirror)
1955 Chow Yun-Fat, actor (Hard Boiled, The Killer, The Replacement Killers, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon)
1958 Toyah Wilcox, singer, actress, TV presenter (Teletubbies, Murder: Ultimate Grounds for Divorce, The Quatermass Conclusion, Quadrophenia, Jubilee)
1962 Nathaniel Parker, actor (Stardust, Inspector Lynley Mysteries, Bleak House, The Bodyguard)
1970 Tina Fey, actress and Emmy Award-winning producer and writer (30 Rock, Saturday Night Live, Mean Girls)
DIED:
1911 Gustav Mahler, acknowledged as among the most important late-romantic composers, although his music was never completely accepted by the musical establishment of Vienna while he was still alive, dies at 50
1922 Alphonse Laveran, physician, pathologist, and parasitologist who discovered the parasite that causes human malaria in the red blood cells; he founded the medical field of protozoology, doing important work on other protozoal diseases, including sleeping-sickness and kala-azar, dies at 76
1967 Andy Clyde, character actor whose career lasted more than 40-years; began as an extra in Mack Sennett comedies, but he was soon moved up to featured player, usually the sidekick or second banana to the lead but is best remembered, however, for his many roles as the comedy-relief sidekick in scores of westerns, usually paired with William Boyd in the “Hopalong Cassidy” series of films, dies at 75
1980 Ian Curtis, vocalist and lyricist of the band Joy Division, commits suicide at 23
1981 Arthur O’Connell, character actor (Picnic, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Gidget, Anatomy of a Murder, Operation Petticoat, Pocketful of Miracles, The Great Race, The Silencers), dies at 73
1988 Daws Butler, one of the premier voice-over actors in Hollywood- providing the voices for such well- known characters as Yogi Bear, Huckleberry Hound, Quick-Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss, Jinks the cat, Dixie the mouse, Augie Doggie, Peter Potamus, Wally Gator, Hokey Wolf, Super Snooper, Blabber Mouse, Cogswell Cogs, Elroy Jetson and many others, dies at 71
1990 Jill Ireland, actress (Hell Drivers, Carry On Nurse, The Mechanic), dies at 54
1992 Skip Stephenson, comedian, DJ and TV presenter (Real People), dies at 52
1992 Marshall Thompson, actor (They Were Expendable, To Hell and Back, Science Fiction Theatre, It! The Terror from Beyond Space, First Man Into Space, Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion, Daktari) dies at 66
1993 Ron Haver, film historian and preservationist, served for over 20 years as director of film programs for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, dies at 54
1995 Elizabeth Montgomery, actress (Bewitched, The Legend of Lizzie Borden, Mrs. Sundance, The Corpse Had a Familiar Face), dies at 62
1995 Elisha Cook Jr., character actor (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, House on Haunted Hill, Rosemary’s Baby, Blacula, Electra Glide in Blue), dies at 91
1995 Robert Harris, actor (King Lear, Henry V, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, Edward & Mrs. Simpson), dies at 95
1995 Henri Marie Laborit, neurologist and discoverer of some of the earliest known tranquilizing drugs, including chlorpromazine, dies at 80
2001 Maurice J. Noble, animator-storyboardist-director (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, Duck Amuck, Ali Baba Bunny, What’s Opera, Doc?, Robin Hood Daffy, Duck Dodgers in the 24½th Century), dies at 91
2007 Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, physicist who was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physics for “discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers,” dies at 74