If you are a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies, like I am, this may be of interest to you.
Here is a rare interview with the man who had his heart ripped out, while still alive, in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom".
Just click on the link below:
Meet the Man Who Had His Heart Ripped Out in 'Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom' by Gwynne Watkins, May 23, 2014
https://www.yahoo.com/movies/meet-the-man-who-had-his-heart-ripped-out-in-indiana-86601308007.html
Saturday, May 31, 2014
FW DeKlerk Warns That Israel Risks Moving Towards Apartheid
The comparisons to the situation that appears to be developing more and more in Israel presently with that which existed in South Africa during the days of apartheid seem to be growing with time.
John Kerry, the present Secretary of State under President Obama, warned that Israel might be headed in that direction, and he received a ton of criticism for it - particularly from those who defend Israel's actions at all costs. But he was not the only one who warned of such a possibility.
Remember when former President Jimmy Carter was in the midst of enormous controversy because of the title of his book, "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid"? He did suggest that a de facto (and perhaps, even official) apartheid was a distinct possibility, but rested his hopes on a more promising potential future of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, and official statehood recognition for Palestine, with a mutual tolerance, of not acceptance, between Israel and Palestine (as well as neighboring states), recognizing the right of each to exist. Still, despite this, and despite President Carter's proven track record of working with both Israel and Egypt to help broker a peace agreement between the two nations, many people began to criticize Carter mercilessly, and some even suggested that he had a "Jewish problem."
In fact, such criticisms have been leveled at pretty much anyone who even hinted at such comparisons, or even was remotely critical of Israel and it's policies and actions. Anyone who has followed this blog regularly would have come across the stories of Roger Waters receiving criticism up to and including insinuations that he was a rabid anti-Semite!
Obviously, not everyone feels that such comparisons are warranted.
Still, it appears that comparisons can be made, or so many people would not be making them so often. President Carter pointed out that there were situations specifically in the occupied territories in the West Bank where a de facto apartheid did exist. Not only were Jewish settlers kept strictly segregated from the Arabic Palestinians in terms of their homes, but they even enjoyed their own roads, which Palestinians were not allowed to traverse. Segregated buses even exist. Those are things that existed, and were widely condemned around the world, in South Africa, during the darkest, most divisive days of apartheid.
And the truth of the matter is that someone who knew the situation in South Africa would know best, right? Perhaps some may criticize President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry for mentioning apartheid, in relation to Israel and/or the occupied territories, but what about those who lived through apartheid in South Africa, and who were among the most vocal leaders and activists to end it there? That was the case with Nelson Mandela, and it is the case with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Now, former President FW DeKlerk, the last white president of South Africa, who helped to bring about the end of apartheid there, is adding his voice, and warning Israel that it is moving towards apartheid, if it does not come to a solution, specifically, a two-state solution, soon. And time is running out, he feels.
Here are some of the quotes from FW DeKlerk, taken from Tia Goldenberg's article, "South Africa's de Klerk: Israel must reach peace" (May 28, 2014), regarding the situation in Israel, and where it might be heading:
"The test will be (does) everybody living then in such a unitary state, will everybody have full political rights?" de Klerk said. "Will everybody enjoy their full human rights? If they will, it's not an apartheid state."
He added: "There will come in Israel a turning point where if the main obstacles at the moment which exist to a successful two-state solution are not removed, the two-state solution will become impossible."
Does that mean that DeKlerk feels that Israel is an apartheid state? No, not at all. In fact, he is quick to point out that it would be "unfair" to suggest that apartheid exists in Israel today. However, he warns, that is indeed a distinct possibility. And if Israel is to avoid that fate, it needs to act now:
"The two-state solution might be the best one," de Klerk said. "You'll have to move fast. See the window of opportunity. Jump through it. It might close."
All of the quotes that I used in this blog entry were taken from this article (see link below):
South Africa's de Klerk: Israel must reach peace by Tia Goldenberg, May 28, 2014:
http://news.yahoo.com/south-africas-klerk-israel-must-reach-peace-134724414.html
John Kerry, the present Secretary of State under President Obama, warned that Israel might be headed in that direction, and he received a ton of criticism for it - particularly from those who defend Israel's actions at all costs. But he was not the only one who warned of such a possibility.
Remember when former President Jimmy Carter was in the midst of enormous controversy because of the title of his book, "Palestine, Peace Not Apartheid"? He did suggest that a de facto (and perhaps, even official) apartheid was a distinct possibility, but rested his hopes on a more promising potential future of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, and official statehood recognition for Palestine, with a mutual tolerance, of not acceptance, between Israel and Palestine (as well as neighboring states), recognizing the right of each to exist. Still, despite this, and despite President Carter's proven track record of working with both Israel and Egypt to help broker a peace agreement between the two nations, many people began to criticize Carter mercilessly, and some even suggested that he had a "Jewish problem."
In fact, such criticisms have been leveled at pretty much anyone who even hinted at such comparisons, or even was remotely critical of Israel and it's policies and actions. Anyone who has followed this blog regularly would have come across the stories of Roger Waters receiving criticism up to and including insinuations that he was a rabid anti-Semite!
Obviously, not everyone feels that such comparisons are warranted.
Still, it appears that comparisons can be made, or so many people would not be making them so often. President Carter pointed out that there were situations specifically in the occupied territories in the West Bank where a de facto apartheid did exist. Not only were Jewish settlers kept strictly segregated from the Arabic Palestinians in terms of their homes, but they even enjoyed their own roads, which Palestinians were not allowed to traverse. Segregated buses even exist. Those are things that existed, and were widely condemned around the world, in South Africa, during the darkest, most divisive days of apartheid.
And the truth of the matter is that someone who knew the situation in South Africa would know best, right? Perhaps some may criticize President Jimmy Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry for mentioning apartheid, in relation to Israel and/or the occupied territories, but what about those who lived through apartheid in South Africa, and who were among the most vocal leaders and activists to end it there? That was the case with Nelson Mandela, and it is the case with Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Now, former President FW DeKlerk, the last white president of South Africa, who helped to bring about the end of apartheid there, is adding his voice, and warning Israel that it is moving towards apartheid, if it does not come to a solution, specifically, a two-state solution, soon. And time is running out, he feels.
Here are some of the quotes from FW DeKlerk, taken from Tia Goldenberg's article, "South Africa's de Klerk: Israel must reach peace" (May 28, 2014), regarding the situation in Israel, and where it might be heading:
"The test will be (does) everybody living then in such a unitary state, will everybody have full political rights?" de Klerk said. "Will everybody enjoy their full human rights? If they will, it's not an apartheid state."
He added: "There will come in Israel a turning point where if the main obstacles at the moment which exist to a successful two-state solution are not removed, the two-state solution will become impossible."
Does that mean that DeKlerk feels that Israel is an apartheid state? No, not at all. In fact, he is quick to point out that it would be "unfair" to suggest that apartheid exists in Israel today. However, he warns, that is indeed a distinct possibility. And if Israel is to avoid that fate, it needs to act now:
"The two-state solution might be the best one," de Klerk said. "You'll have to move fast. See the window of opportunity. Jump through it. It might close."
All of the quotes that I used in this blog entry were taken from this article (see link below):
South Africa's de Klerk: Israel must reach peace by Tia Goldenberg, May 28, 2014:
http://news.yahoo.com/south-africas-klerk-israel-must-reach-peace-134724414.html
On This Day in History - May 31 Big Ben Begins, and a Major Day in South African History
Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!
This day in history was particularly important in southern Africa. The HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin inside of it, anchored by the Cape of Good Hope. The doomed Conference of Bloemfontein was on this day, and a year later, the British occupied Johannesburg on this date. The Boer War ended on this date, and South Africa The Union of South Africa was proclaimed, and the Cape of Good Hope became part of South Africa. Much later in the century, South Africa signed an agricultural treaty with the Netherlands. Later still, it became a republic, and withdrew from the British Commonwealth on this date. Zimbabwe declared it's independence. The civil war in Angola ended. A busy day in history for southern Africa indeed.
Other interesting things that happened on this date: Rameses II became Pharaoh of Egypt. Rome captured walls of Jerusalem. Massachusetts annexed Maine. Big Ben went into operation in London. There was a treaty between Hawaii and the United States. American troops entered China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. The Titanic was launched. Babe Ruth had a disappointing last at bat. British Prime Minister Churchill flew to France to meet with Petain and, two decades later, American President John F. Kennedy went to France to meet with Charles de Gaulle. Eichmann's sentence of hanging was executed in Israel. An earthquake in Peru killed over 50,000 people. Guatemala approved a new constitution.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/big-ben-goes-into-operation-in-london
May 31, 1859: Big Ben goes into operation in London
The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high St. Stephen's Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859.
After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster--the headquarters of the British Parliament--in October 1834, a standout feature of the design for the new palace was a large clock atop a tower. The royal astronomer, Sir George Airy, wanted the clock to have pinpoint accuracy, including twice-a-day checks with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. While many clockmakers dismissed this goal as impossible, Airy counted on the help of Edmund Beckett Denison, a formidable barrister known for his expertise in horology, or the science of measuring time.
Denison's design, built by the company E.J. Dent & Co., was completed in 1854; five years later, St. Stephen's Tower itself was finished. Weighing in at more than 13 tons, its massive bell was dragged to the tower through the streets of London by a team of 16 horses, to the cheers of onlookers. Once it was installed, Big Ben struck its first chimes on May 31, 1859. Just two months later, however, the heavy striker designed by Denison cracked the bell. Three more years passed before a lighter hammer was added and the clock went into service again. The bell was rotated so that the hammer would strike another surface, but the crack was never repaired.
The name "Big Ben" originally just applied to the bell but later came to refer to the clock itself. Two main stories exist about how Big Ben got its name. Many claim it was named after the famously long-winded Sir Benjamin Hall, the London commissioner of works at the time it was built. Another famous story argues that the bell was named for the popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt, because it was the largest of its kind.
Even after an incendiary bomb destroyed the chamber of the House of Commons during the Second World War, St. Stephen's Tower survived, and Big Ben continued to function. Its famously accurate timekeeping is regulated by a stack of coins placed on the clock's huge pendulum, ensuring a steady movement of the clock hands at all times. At night, all four of the clock’s faces, each one 23 feet across, are illuminated. A light above Big Ben is also lit to let the public know when Parliament is in session.
1279 BC - Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
70 - Rome captures 1st wall of the city of Jerusalem
1223 - Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol armies of Genghis Khan lead by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans.
1417 - Jacoba van Bavarian becomes countess of Holland/Zealand/Henegouwen
1433 - Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor (Germany)
1495 - Emperor Maximilian, Pope Alexander VI, Milan, King Ferdinand, Isabella and Venice sign anti-French Saint League
1531 - "Women's Revolt" in Amsterdam: wool house in churchyard aborted
1564 - Battle on Gotland: Lubeck and Denmark beat Sweden
1578 - Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London.
1621 - Sir Francis Bacon thrown into Tower of London for 1 night
1634 - US colony Massachusetts Bay annexes Maine colony
1659 - Netherlands, England and France sign Treaty of The Hague
1665 - Jerusalem's rabbi Sjabtai Tswi proclaims himself Messiah
1669 - Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.
1696 - John Salomonsz elected chief of Saint-Eustatius
1727 - France, England and Netherlands sign accord of Paris
1744 - French troops conquer Kortrijk
1759 - The Province of Pennsylvania bans all theater productions.
1790 - The first U.S. Copyright Law was enacted, protecting books, maps, and other original materials.
1790 - Alferez Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1813 - In Australia, Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, reached Mount Blaxland, effectively marking the end of a route across the Blue Mountains.
1821 - Cathedral of Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary, first US Catholic cathedral, is dedicated in Baltimore
1836 - HMS Beagle anchors in Simons Bay, Cape of Good Hope
1837 - Astor Hotel opens in NYC, it later becomes the Waldorf-Astoria
1847 - Rotterdam-Hague Railway opens
1849 - Last edition of Orange sheet "Journal de La Haye"
1853 - Elisha Kane's Arctic expedition leaves NY aboard Advance
1854 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed by the U.S. Congress.
1859 - The Philadelphia Athletics were formally organized to play the game of "Town Ball", which would eventually become baseball some twenty years down the line..
1859 - In London, Big Ben went into operation. The name Big Ben initially referred to the bell inside the tower but later came to refer to the tower.
1861 - Gen Beauregard is given command of Confederate Alexandria Line
1861 - Mint at New Orleans closes
1862 - Battle of Seven Pines VA (Fair Oaks)
1864 - Raid at Morgan's Kentucky
1868 - First Memorial Day parade held in Ironton, Ohio
1868 - Dr James Moore (UK) wins 1st recorded bicycle race, (2k) velocipede race at Parc fde St Cloud, Paris
1870 - Congress passes 1st Enforcement Act (rights of blacks)
1870 - E.J. DeSemdt patented asphalt.
1875 - Reciprocity Treaty between US and Hawaii ratified
1878 - German battleship Grosser Kurfurst sinks, 284 killed
1878 - US Congress accept decrease in dollar circulation
1879 - 1st electric railway opens at Berlin Trades Exposition
1879 - New York's Madison Square Garden opened.
1880 - The first U.S. national bicycle society was formed in Newport, RI. It was known as the League of American Wheelman.
1883 - French fleet under Pierre begins siege of Tamatave, Madagascar
1884 - Dr John Harvey Kellogg patented "flaked cereal"
1889 - Johnstown Flood: 2,209 die in Penn after heavy rains caused the South Fork Dam to collapse, sending 20 million tons of water into Johnstown, Pa. The town was nearly destroyed.
1891 - Work on trans-Siberian railway begins
1893 - Whitcomb Judson, Chicago, patents a hookless fastening (zipper)
1899 - -June 5] Conference of Bloemfontein fails
1899 - Bronx acquires Keltch Memorial Park
1900 - British troops under Lord Roberts occupy Johannesburg
1900 - U.S. troops arrived in Peking to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.
1900 - Piet de Law captures Lt-Col Spragges Irish Yeomanry
1900 - Tom Hayward scores 1,000th cricket run of season (sets record 1074)
1902 - Australia Cricket all out 36 v England, Edgbaston, their lowest ever
1902 - The Boer War ended between the Boers of South Africa and Great Britain with the Treaty of Vereeniging. The Treaty of Unity signed, Britain annexes Transvaal
1905 - Emperor Wilhelm II lands in Tanger
1906 - Attack on King Alfonso XIII & Victoria von Battenberg in Madrid
1907 - The first taxis arrived in New York City. They were the first in the United States.
1908 - Miss Pottelsberghe de la Pottery is 1st airplane passenger (Belgium)
1909 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its first conference (United Charities Building, NYC)
1910 - The Union of South Africa was founded. Cape of Good Hope becomes part of Union of South Africa
1910 - Glenn Curtiss flies from Albany to NYC
1910 - Union of South Africa declares independence from UK
1911 The hull of the R.M.S. Titanic was launched in Belfast. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, “Not even God himself could sink this ship.”
1912 - US marines land on Cuba
1913 - Alexis Ahlgren runs world record maraton (2:36:06.6)
1913 - The 17th Amendment went into effect. It provided for popular election of U.S. senators.
1914 - Chic White Sox Joe Benz no-hits Cleve Indians, 6-1
1915 - A German LZ-38 Zeppelin makes an air raid on London
1916 - Battle of Skagerrak: Brit-German sea battle at Jutland (10,000 dead)
1916 - British battle cruiser Invincible explodes, killing all but 6
1917 - 1st jazz record released (Dark Town Strutters Ball)
1919 - NC-4 aircraft commanded by AC Read completes 1st crossing of Atlantic
1921 - Suffy McInnis (1st base) begins an errorless string of 1,700
1923 - China and USSR exchange diplomats
1926 - Portuguese president Bernardino Machedo resigns after coup
1926 - Sesquicentennial Exposition opens in Philadelphia
1927 - Ford Motor Company produced the last "Tin Lizzie" in order to begin production of the Model A.
1927 - Tiger 1st baseman Johnny Neun makes an unassisted triple play
1928 - 1st aerial cross of Pacific takes off from Oakland
1928 - Charlie Hallows scores his 1,000th run of Cricket season
1929 - Atlantic City Convention Center opens
1929 - In Beverly, MA, the first U.S. born reindeer were born.
1930 - Bradman gets his 1,000th run of the English Cricket season
1930 - Building begins on Albert Canal in Belgium
1930 - Comet 73P/1930 (Schwassmann-Wachmann 3) approaches 0.0617 AUs of Earth
1931 - 7.1 magnitude Earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
1935 - Babe Ruth grounds out in his final at bat
1935 - Quake kills 50,000 in Quetta Pakistan
1937 - 1st quadruplets to finish college (Baylor University)
1937 - Bkln Dodgers snap NY Giant Carl Hubbell's 24-game winning streak
1937 - German battleships bomb Almeria Spain
1938 - Bill Edrich scores his 1,000th run of cricket season, all at Lord's
1940 - Gen-major Bernard Montgomery leaves Duinkerken
1940 - Premier Winston Churchill flies to Paris to meet with Marshal August Pétain who announces he is willing to make a separate peace with Germany
1941 - -June 1) 32.0 cm rain falls on Burlington Kansas (state record)
1941 - The first issue of "Parade: The Weekly Picture Newspaper" went on sale.
1941 - 41 U boats sunk this month (325,000 ton)
1941 - British troops vacate Kreta
1941 - German occupiers forbids Jews access to beach and swimming pools
1941 - A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland claims 38 lives.
1942 - Luftwaffe bombs Canterbury
1943 - "Archie" (best known for comic strip) was aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System for the first time.
1943 - Cards Mort Cooper pitches 1st of back-to-back one-hitters
1944 - Allied breakthrough in Italy
1947 - 79th Belmont: Ruperto Donoso aboard Phalanx wins in 2:29.6
1947 - Communists seized control of Hungary.
1947 - Eastern DC-4 crashes between Ft Deposit & Perryville Md, kills 53
1947 - Italian government of Gasperi forms
1948 - Tommy Lasorda strikes out 25 Amsterdam Rugmakers (in 15 innings)
1949 - Charley Lupica begins stay on 4 foot square platform atop a 60' pole, vowing to stay until Indians clinch pennant. (They don't, and stays 117 days)
1950 - Due to rain, Indy 500 shortened to 345 miles, Johnny Parson wins
1950 - Laker takes 14-12-2-8 in Test Cricket trial
1951 - Neth and; South Africa sign cultural accord
1953 - Lebanese president Camille Shamun disbands government
1953 - WSUN TV channel 38 in St Petersburg-Tampa, FL (IND) 1st broadcast
1955 - Construction begins on Soviet cosmodrome launch facilities
1955 - Great Britain proclaims emergency crisis due to railroad strike
1955 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that all states must end racial segregation "with all deliberate speed."
1956 - Mickey Mantle HR just misses clearing Yankee Stadium's roof
1957 - Great Britain performs nuclear test at Christmas Island (atmospheric)
1958 - Dick Dale invents "surf music" with "Let's Go Trippin"
1958 - US performs nuclear test at Bikini Island (atmospheric tests)
1961 - Benfica wins 6th Europe Cup 1 at Bern
1961 - Chuck Berry's amusement park, Berryland in St Louis, opens
1961 - JFK visits Charles de Gaulle in Paris
1961 - Judge Irving Kaufman orders Board of Ed of New Rochelle, to integrate
1961 - Union of South Africa becomes a republic, leaves Commonwealth
1962 - Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel. Eichmann had been a Gestapo official and was executed for his actions in the Nazi Holocaust.
1962 - "Tell It To Groucho" last airs on CBS-TV
1962 - The West Indies Federation dissolves.
1964 - Charles Schmid kills first Pied Piper victim
1964 - SF Giants beat NY Mets, 8-6, in 23 innings (2nd game) (7 hrs 32 mins)
1965 - Jim Clark becomes 1st foreigner in 49 years to win Indy
1967 - Bayern Munchen wins 7th Europe Cup II at Neurenberg
1969 - "Dear World" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 132 perfs
1969 - "Gitarzan" by Ray Stevens peaks at #8
1969 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance"
1969 - Stevie Wonder releases "My Cherie Amore"
1970 - An earthquake in Peru left more than 50,000 dead. At 03:23 PM, Yungay Peru levelled by 7.75 earthquake (50-70,000 die)
1970 - KDUB TV channel 40 in Dubuque, IA (ABC) begins broadcasting
1971 - WDXR (now WKPD) TV channel 29 in Paducah, KY (PBS) begins broadcasting
1972 - Ajax wins Europe Cup 1 in Rotterdam
1973 - Glenn Turner scores his 1,000th cricket run of English season
1974 - Israel and Syria sign an agreement concerning Golan Heights
1974 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1975 - "Goodtime Charley" closes at Palace Theater NYC after 104 performances
1975 - Fred Newman makes 12,874 baskets in a one-day exhibition
1976 - Loudest PA (76 KW) for Who's Quadrophenia in London
1977 - "Beatlemania" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 920 performances
1977 - Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani becomes heir apparent to throne of Qatar
1977 - The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was finished after 3 years of construction.
1979 - "I Remember Mama" opens at Majestic Theater NYC for 108 performances
1979 - Radio City Music Hall (NYC) reopens
1979 - Zimbabwe proclaims independence
1980 - "Love Stinks" by J Geils Band peaks at #38
1980 - Police and youthful rebels battle in Zurich
1982 - "Best Little Whorehouse in Tx" opens at Eugene O'Neill NYC for 63 perf
1983 - 37th NBA Championship: Phila 76ers sweep LA Lakers in 4 games
1984 - 57th National Spelling Bee: Daniel Greenblatt wins spelling luge
1984 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1984 - Viv Richards hits 189* (170 balls) v England, ODI cricket record
1985 - 41 tornadoes hit Northeast US, killing 88
1985 - Guatemala adopts constitution
1985 - New Orleans Saints are sold for $70,204,000
1985 - Tornados in Penn, Ohio, NY and Canada kill 88 and injured more than 1,000
1985 - 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
1985 - Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) became a Schedule I drug in the United States.
1987 - Cindy Rarick wins LPGA Corning Golf Classic
1987 - Saul Ballesteros drives 3 golf balls off Mt McKinley, Alaska
1987 - Stanley Cup: Edmonton Oilers beat Phila Flyers, 4 games to 3
1989 - "Rambling with Gambling" 20,000th radio program on WOR-AM (NYC)
1989 - First International Rock Awards
1989 - First presentation of rock n roll Elvis awards
1989 - Speaker of House Jim Wright resigns
1990 - 63rd National Spelling Bee: Amy Marie Dimak wins spelling fibranne
1990 - BPAA US Women's Bowling Open won by Dana Miller-Mackie
1990 - NYC's Zodiac killer shoots 3rd victim, Joseph Ponce
1990 - Seinfeld starring Jerry Seinfeld, debuts on NBC as Seinfeld Chronicles
1991 - Sides in Angola sign a treaty ending 16 year civil war
1992 - 46th Tony Awards: Dancing at Lughnasa & Crazy For You win
1992 - 5th Children's Miracle Network Telethon raises $1,060,000
1993 - President Dobrica Cosic of little Yugoslavia flees
1994 - Padres scores 13 in 2nd vs Pirates
1994 - The U.S. announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.
1995 - Bob Dole singled out Time Warner for "the marketing of evil" in movies and music. Dole later admitted that he had not seen or heard much of what he had been criticizing.
1996 - Mark Van Thillo and Abigail Alling, former biospherian win $100,000 lawsuit against Biospheric Development for Space Biospheres Ventures
1997 - "Once Upon a Matress," closes at Broadhurst Theater NYC after 187 perf 1997 - Donovan Bailey beats Michael Johnson in 150m race
1997 - The Confederation Bridge opens, linking Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick.
2002 - The New Jersey Nets defeat the Boston Celtics 96-88 in Game 6 of the NBA's Eastern Conference Championship, winning the series 4 games to 2 to advance to their first NBA Finals appearance.
2003 - In North Carolina, Eric Robert Rudolph was captured. He had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for five years for several bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing.
2004 - Alberta Martin, 97, one of the last widows of a U.S. Civil War veteran, died. She had married Confederate veteran William Martin in 1927 when she was 21 and he was 81.
2008 - Usain Bolt breaks the world record in the 100m sprint, with a wind-legal (+1.7m/s) 9.72 seconds.
2010 - Nine people are dead after an Israeli navy commando attacks a flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats on their way to Gaza to provide aid and supplies for the area. Shayetet 13 soldiers tried to stop the flotilla that wanted to break the blockade on Gaza Strip. During the boarding on the MV Mavi Marmara ship, a violent confrontation had started. It caused the death of 9 activists who were on board, and several more injured activists. Moreover, several israeli soldiers were injured.
2012 - Egypt formally ends its 31 year state of emergency
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may31.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
This day in history was particularly important in southern Africa. The HMS Beagle, with Charles Darwin inside of it, anchored by the Cape of Good Hope. The doomed Conference of Bloemfontein was on this day, and a year later, the British occupied Johannesburg on this date. The Boer War ended on this date, and South Africa The Union of South Africa was proclaimed, and the Cape of Good Hope became part of South Africa. Much later in the century, South Africa signed an agricultural treaty with the Netherlands. Later still, it became a republic, and withdrew from the British Commonwealth on this date. Zimbabwe declared it's independence. The civil war in Angola ended. A busy day in history for southern Africa indeed.
Other interesting things that happened on this date: Rameses II became Pharaoh of Egypt. Rome captured walls of Jerusalem. Massachusetts annexed Maine. Big Ben went into operation in London. There was a treaty between Hawaii and the United States. American troops entered China to help put down the Boxer Rebellion. The Titanic was launched. Babe Ruth had a disappointing last at bat. British Prime Minister Churchill flew to France to meet with Petain and, two decades later, American President John F. Kennedy went to France to meet with Charles de Gaulle. Eichmann's sentence of hanging was executed in Israel. An earthquake in Peru killed over 50,000 people. Guatemala approved a new constitution.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/big-ben-goes-into-operation-in-london
May 31, 1859: Big Ben goes into operation in London
The famous tower clock known as Big Ben, located at the top of the 320-foot-high St. Stephen's Tower, rings out over the Houses of Parliament in Westminster, London, for the first time on this day in 1859.
After a fire destroyed much of the Palace of Westminster--the headquarters of the British Parliament--in October 1834, a standout feature of the design for the new palace was a large clock atop a tower. The royal astronomer, Sir George Airy, wanted the clock to have pinpoint accuracy, including twice-a-day checks with the Royal Greenwich Observatory. While many clockmakers dismissed this goal as impossible, Airy counted on the help of Edmund Beckett Denison, a formidable barrister known for his expertise in horology, or the science of measuring time.
Denison's design, built by the company E.J. Dent & Co., was completed in 1854; five years later, St. Stephen's Tower itself was finished. Weighing in at more than 13 tons, its massive bell was dragged to the tower through the streets of London by a team of 16 horses, to the cheers of onlookers. Once it was installed, Big Ben struck its first chimes on May 31, 1859. Just two months later, however, the heavy striker designed by Denison cracked the bell. Three more years passed before a lighter hammer was added and the clock went into service again. The bell was rotated so that the hammer would strike another surface, but the crack was never repaired.
The name "Big Ben" originally just applied to the bell but later came to refer to the clock itself. Two main stories exist about how Big Ben got its name. Many claim it was named after the famously long-winded Sir Benjamin Hall, the London commissioner of works at the time it was built. Another famous story argues that the bell was named for the popular heavyweight boxer Benjamin Caunt, because it was the largest of its kind.
Even after an incendiary bomb destroyed the chamber of the House of Commons during the Second World War, St. Stephen's Tower survived, and Big Ben continued to function. Its famously accurate timekeeping is regulated by a stack of coins placed on the clock's huge pendulum, ensuring a steady movement of the clock hands at all times. At night, all four of the clock’s faces, each one 23 feet across, are illuminated. A light above Big Ben is also lit to let the public know when Parliament is in session.
1279 BC - Rameses II (The Great) (19th dynasty) becomes pharaoh of Ancient Egypt.
70 - Rome captures 1st wall of the city of Jerusalem
1223 - Mongol invasion of the Cumans: Battle of the Kalka River - Mongol armies of Genghis Khan lead by Subutai defeat Kievan Rus and Cumans.
1417 - Jacoba van Bavarian becomes countess of Holland/Zealand/Henegouwen
1433 - Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor (Germany)
1495 - Emperor Maximilian, Pope Alexander VI, Milan, King Ferdinand, Isabella and Venice sign anti-French Saint League
1531 - "Women's Revolt" in Amsterdam: wool house in churchyard aborted
1564 - Battle on Gotland: Lubeck and Denmark beat Sweden
1578 - Martin Frobisher sails from Harwich, England to Frobisher Bay, Canada, eventually to mine fool's gold, used to pave streets in London.
1621 - Sir Francis Bacon thrown into Tower of London for 1 night
1634 - US colony Massachusetts Bay annexes Maine colony
1659 - Netherlands, England and France sign Treaty of The Hague
1665 - Jerusalem's rabbi Sjabtai Tswi proclaims himself Messiah
1669 - Citing poor eyesight, Samuel Pepys records the last event in his diary.
1696 - John Salomonsz elected chief of Saint-Eustatius
1727 - France, England and Netherlands sign accord of Paris
1744 - French troops conquer Kortrijk
1759 - The Province of Pennsylvania bans all theater productions.
1790 - The first U.S. Copyright Law was enacted, protecting books, maps, and other original materials.
1790 - Alferez Manuel Quimper explores the Strait of Juan de Fuca.
1813 - In Australia, Lawson, Blaxland and Wentworth, reached Mount Blaxland, effectively marking the end of a route across the Blue Mountains.
1821 - Cathedral of Assumption of Blessed Virgin Mary, first US Catholic cathedral, is dedicated in Baltimore
1836 - HMS Beagle anchors in Simons Bay, Cape of Good Hope
1837 - Astor Hotel opens in NYC, it later becomes the Waldorf-Astoria
1847 - Rotterdam-Hague Railway opens
1849 - Last edition of Orange sheet "Journal de La Haye"
1853 - Elisha Kane's Arctic expedition leaves NY aboard Advance
1854 - The Kansas-Nebraska Act passed by the U.S. Congress.
1859 - The Philadelphia Athletics were formally organized to play the game of "Town Ball", which would eventually become baseball some twenty years down the line..
1859 - In London, Big Ben went into operation. The name Big Ben initially referred to the bell inside the tower but later came to refer to the tower.
1861 - Gen Beauregard is given command of Confederate Alexandria Line
1861 - Mint at New Orleans closes
1862 - Battle of Seven Pines VA (Fair Oaks)
1864 - Raid at Morgan's Kentucky
1868 - First Memorial Day parade held in Ironton, Ohio
1868 - Dr James Moore (UK) wins 1st recorded bicycle race, (2k) velocipede race at Parc fde St Cloud, Paris
1870 - Congress passes 1st Enforcement Act (rights of blacks)
1870 - E.J. DeSemdt patented asphalt.
1875 - Reciprocity Treaty between US and Hawaii ratified
1878 - German battleship Grosser Kurfurst sinks, 284 killed
1878 - US Congress accept decrease in dollar circulation
1879 - 1st electric railway opens at Berlin Trades Exposition
1879 - New York's Madison Square Garden opened.
1880 - The first U.S. national bicycle society was formed in Newport, RI. It was known as the League of American Wheelman.
1883 - French fleet under Pierre begins siege of Tamatave, Madagascar
1884 - Dr John Harvey Kellogg patented "flaked cereal"
1889 - Johnstown Flood: 2,209 die in Penn after heavy rains caused the South Fork Dam to collapse, sending 20 million tons of water into Johnstown, Pa. The town was nearly destroyed.
1891 - Work on trans-Siberian railway begins
1893 - Whitcomb Judson, Chicago, patents a hookless fastening (zipper)
1899 - -June 5] Conference of Bloemfontein fails
1899 - Bronx acquires Keltch Memorial Park
1900 - British troops under Lord Roberts occupy Johannesburg
1900 - U.S. troops arrived in Peking to help put down the Boxer Rebellion.
1900 - Piet de Law captures Lt-Col Spragges Irish Yeomanry
1900 - Tom Hayward scores 1,000th cricket run of season (sets record 1074)
1902 - Australia Cricket all out 36 v England, Edgbaston, their lowest ever
1902 - The Boer War ended between the Boers of South Africa and Great Britain with the Treaty of Vereeniging. The Treaty of Unity signed, Britain annexes Transvaal
1905 - Emperor Wilhelm II lands in Tanger
1906 - Attack on King Alfonso XIII & Victoria von Battenberg in Madrid
1907 - The first taxis arrived in New York City. They were the first in the United States.
1908 - Miss Pottelsberghe de la Pottery is 1st airplane passenger (Belgium)
1909 - The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held its first conference (United Charities Building, NYC)
1910 - The Union of South Africa was founded. Cape of Good Hope becomes part of Union of South Africa
1910 - Glenn Curtiss flies from Albany to NYC
1910 - Union of South Africa declares independence from UK
1911 The hull of the R.M.S. Titanic was launched in Belfast. At the ceremony, a White Star Line employee claimed, “Not even God himself could sink this ship.”
1912 - US marines land on Cuba
1913 - Alexis Ahlgren runs world record maraton (2:36:06.6)
1913 - The 17th Amendment went into effect. It provided for popular election of U.S. senators.
1914 - Chic White Sox Joe Benz no-hits Cleve Indians, 6-1
1915 - A German LZ-38 Zeppelin makes an air raid on London
1916 - Battle of Skagerrak: Brit-German sea battle at Jutland (10,000 dead)
1916 - British battle cruiser Invincible explodes, killing all but 6
1917 - 1st jazz record released (Dark Town Strutters Ball)
1919 - NC-4 aircraft commanded by AC Read completes 1st crossing of Atlantic
1921 - Suffy McInnis (1st base) begins an errorless string of 1,700
1923 - China and USSR exchange diplomats
1926 - Portuguese president Bernardino Machedo resigns after coup
1926 - Sesquicentennial Exposition opens in Philadelphia
1927 - Ford Motor Company produced the last "Tin Lizzie" in order to begin production of the Model A.
1927 - Tiger 1st baseman Johnny Neun makes an unassisted triple play
1928 - 1st aerial cross of Pacific takes off from Oakland
1928 - Charlie Hallows scores his 1,000th run of Cricket season
1929 - Atlantic City Convention Center opens
1929 - In Beverly, MA, the first U.S. born reindeer were born.
1930 - Bradman gets his 1,000th run of the English Cricket season
1930 - Building begins on Albert Canal in Belgium
1930 - Comet 73P/1930 (Schwassmann-Wachmann 3) approaches 0.0617 AUs of Earth
1931 - 7.1 magnitude Earthquake destroys Quetta in modern-day Pakistan: 40,000 dead.
1935 - Babe Ruth grounds out in his final at bat
1935 - Quake kills 50,000 in Quetta Pakistan
1937 - 1st quadruplets to finish college (Baylor University)
1937 - Bkln Dodgers snap NY Giant Carl Hubbell's 24-game winning streak
1937 - German battleships bomb Almeria Spain
1938 - Bill Edrich scores his 1,000th run of cricket season, all at Lord's
1940 - Gen-major Bernard Montgomery leaves Duinkerken
1940 - Premier Winston Churchill flies to Paris to meet with Marshal August Pétain who announces he is willing to make a separate peace with Germany
1941 - -June 1) 32.0 cm rain falls on Burlington Kansas (state record)
1941 - The first issue of "Parade: The Weekly Picture Newspaper" went on sale.
1941 - 41 U boats sunk this month (325,000 ton)
1941 - British troops vacate Kreta
1941 - German occupiers forbids Jews access to beach and swimming pools
1941 - A Luftwaffe air raid in Dublin, Ireland claims 38 lives.
1942 - Luftwaffe bombs Canterbury
1943 - "Archie" (best known for comic strip) was aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System for the first time.
1943 - Cards Mort Cooper pitches 1st of back-to-back one-hitters
1944 - Allied breakthrough in Italy
1947 - 79th Belmont: Ruperto Donoso aboard Phalanx wins in 2:29.6
1947 - Communists seized control of Hungary.
1947 - Eastern DC-4 crashes between Ft Deposit & Perryville Md, kills 53
1947 - Italian government of Gasperi forms
1948 - Tommy Lasorda strikes out 25 Amsterdam Rugmakers (in 15 innings)
1949 - Charley Lupica begins stay on 4 foot square platform atop a 60' pole, vowing to stay until Indians clinch pennant. (They don't, and stays 117 days)
1950 - Due to rain, Indy 500 shortened to 345 miles, Johnny Parson wins
1950 - Laker takes 14-12-2-8 in Test Cricket trial
1951 - Neth and; South Africa sign cultural accord
1953 - Lebanese president Camille Shamun disbands government
1953 - WSUN TV channel 38 in St Petersburg-Tampa, FL (IND) 1st broadcast
1955 - Construction begins on Soviet cosmodrome launch facilities
1955 - Great Britain proclaims emergency crisis due to railroad strike
1955 - The U.S. Supreme Court ordered that all states must end racial segregation "with all deliberate speed."
1957 - Great Britain performs nuclear test at Christmas Island (atmospheric)
1958 - Dick Dale invents "surf music" with "Let's Go Trippin"
1958 - US performs nuclear test at Bikini Island (atmospheric tests)
1961 - Benfica wins 6th Europe Cup 1 at Bern
1961 - Chuck Berry's amusement park, Berryland in St Louis, opens
1961 - JFK visits Charles de Gaulle in Paris
1961 - Judge Irving Kaufman orders Board of Ed of New Rochelle, to integrate
1961 - Union of South Africa becomes a republic, leaves Commonwealth
1962 - Adolf Eichmann was hanged in Israel. Eichmann had been a Gestapo official and was executed for his actions in the Nazi Holocaust.
1962 - "Tell It To Groucho" last airs on CBS-TV
1962 - The West Indies Federation dissolves.
1964 - Charles Schmid kills first Pied Piper victim
1964 - SF Giants beat NY Mets, 8-6, in 23 innings (2nd game) (7 hrs 32 mins)
1965 - Jim Clark becomes 1st foreigner in 49 years to win Indy
1967 - Bayern Munchen wins 7th Europe Cup II at Neurenberg
1969 - "Dear World" closes at Mark Hellinger Theater NYC after 132 perfs
1969 - "Gitarzan" by Ray Stevens peaks at #8
1969 - John Lennon and Yoko Ono record "Give Peace a Chance"
1969 - Stevie Wonder releases "My Cherie Amore"
1970 - An earthquake in Peru left more than 50,000 dead. At 03:23 PM, Yungay Peru levelled by 7.75 earthquake (50-70,000 die)
1970 - KDUB TV channel 40 in Dubuque, IA (ABC) begins broadcasting
1971 - WDXR (now WKPD) TV channel 29 in Paducah, KY (PBS) begins broadcasting
1972 - Ajax wins Europe Cup 1 in Rotterdam
1973 - Glenn Turner scores his 1,000th cricket run of English season
1974 - Israel and Syria sign an agreement concerning Golan Heights
1974 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1975 - "Goodtime Charley" closes at Palace Theater NYC after 104 performances
1975 - Fred Newman makes 12,874 baskets in a one-day exhibition
1976 - Loudest PA (76 KW) for Who's Quadrophenia in London
1977 - "Beatlemania" opens at Winter Garden Theater NYC for 920 performances
1977 - Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani becomes heir apparent to throne of Qatar
1977 - The trans-Alaska oil pipeline was finished after 3 years of construction.
1979 - "I Remember Mama" opens at Majestic Theater NYC for 108 performances
1979 - Radio City Music Hall (NYC) reopens
1979 - Zimbabwe proclaims independence
1980 - "Love Stinks" by J Geils Band peaks at #38
1980 - Police and youthful rebels battle in Zurich
1982 - "Best Little Whorehouse in Tx" opens at Eugene O'Neill NYC for 63 perf
1983 - 37th NBA Championship: Phila 76ers sweep LA Lakers in 4 games
1984 - 57th National Spelling Bee: Daniel Greenblatt wins spelling luge
1984 - US performs nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1984 - Viv Richards hits 189* (170 balls) v England, ODI cricket record
1985 - 41 tornadoes hit Northeast US, killing 88
1985 - Guatemala adopts constitution
1985 - New Orleans Saints are sold for $70,204,000
1985 - Tornados in Penn, Ohio, NY and Canada kill 88 and injured more than 1,000
1985 - 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak: Forty-one tornadoes hit Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and Ontario, leaving 76 dead.
1985 - Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) became a Schedule I drug in the United States.
1987 - Cindy Rarick wins LPGA Corning Golf Classic
1987 - Saul Ballesteros drives 3 golf balls off Mt McKinley, Alaska
1987 - Stanley Cup: Edmonton Oilers beat Phila Flyers, 4 games to 3
1989 - "Rambling with Gambling" 20,000th radio program on WOR-AM (NYC)
1989 - First International Rock Awards
1989 - First presentation of rock n roll Elvis awards
1989 - Speaker of House Jim Wright resigns
1990 - 63rd National Spelling Bee: Amy Marie Dimak wins spelling fibranne
1990 - BPAA US Women's Bowling Open won by Dana Miller-Mackie
1990 - NYC's Zodiac killer shoots 3rd victim, Joseph Ponce
1990 - Seinfeld starring Jerry Seinfeld, debuts on NBC as Seinfeld Chronicles
1991 - Sides in Angola sign a treaty ending 16 year civil war
1992 - 46th Tony Awards: Dancing at Lughnasa & Crazy For You win
1992 - 5th Children's Miracle Network Telethon raises $1,060,000
1993 - President Dobrica Cosic of little Yugoslavia flees
1994 - Padres scores 13 in 2nd vs Pirates
1994 - The U.S. announced it was no longer aiming long-range nuclear missiles at targets in the former Soviet Union.
1995 - Bob Dole singled out Time Warner for "the marketing of evil" in movies and music. Dole later admitted that he had not seen or heard much of what he had been criticizing.
1997 - "Once Upon a Matress," closes at Broadhurst Theater NYC after 187 perf 1997 - Donovan Bailey beats Michael Johnson in 150m race
1997 - The Confederation Bridge opens, linking Prince Edward Island with mainland New Brunswick.
2002 - The New Jersey Nets defeat the Boston Celtics 96-88 in Game 6 of the NBA's Eastern Conference Championship, winning the series 4 games to 2 to advance to their first NBA Finals appearance.
2003 - In North Carolina, Eric Robert Rudolph was captured. He had been on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for five years for several bombings including the 1996 Olympic bombing.
2004 - Alberta Martin, 97, one of the last widows of a U.S. Civil War veteran, died. She had married Confederate veteran William Martin in 1927 when she was 21 and he was 81.
2010 - Nine people are dead after an Israeli navy commando attacks a flotilla of cargo ships and passenger boats on their way to Gaza to provide aid and supplies for the area. Shayetet 13 soldiers tried to stop the flotilla that wanted to break the blockade on Gaza Strip. During the boarding on the MV Mavi Marmara ship, a violent confrontation had started. It caused the death of 9 activists who were on board, and several more injured activists. Moreover, several israeli soldiers were injured.
2012 - Egypt formally ends its 31 year state of emergency
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may31.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
Friday, May 30, 2014
Korea, Korea
I saw this earlier, and the contrast really was quite striking.
In comparison pictures, you can see for yourself the difference between the sterile feel of the North Korean scenes, versus the ones in South Korea, where there just seems to be more....well, reality.
A state-run system that tries to control it's people has obviously been tried many times before, but few have doggedly stuck to it like North Korea has. Who knows when, or if, they will ever let go of the reins?
The tensions between the two Koreas, and the two systems that they embody, exist, and are very real. And as imperfect as South Korea, much like the rest of the developed, western world, may be, it again feels far more real than that of North Korea, and the pictures that you can view by clicking on the link below that illustrate this better than anything that I have seen before.
The Stark Difference Between North And South Korea In 10 Stunning Photos, published in The Huffington Post, May 29, 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/dieter-leistner-korea-photos_n_5405585.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
In comparison pictures, you can see for yourself the difference between the sterile feel of the North Korean scenes, versus the ones in South Korea, where there just seems to be more....well, reality.
A state-run system that tries to control it's people has obviously been tried many times before, but few have doggedly stuck to it like North Korea has. Who knows when, or if, they will ever let go of the reins?
The tensions between the two Koreas, and the two systems that they embody, exist, and are very real. And as imperfect as South Korea, much like the rest of the developed, western world, may be, it again feels far more real than that of North Korea, and the pictures that you can view by clicking on the link below that illustrate this better than anything that I have seen before.
The Stark Difference Between North And South Korea In 10 Stunning Photos, published in The Huffington Post, May 29, 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/29/dieter-leistner-korea-photos_n_5405585.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
On this Day in History - May 30 Joan of Arc Becomes a Martyr
Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
May 30, 1431: Joan of Arc martyred
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.
Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In 1415, the Hundred Years War between England and France entered a crucial phase when the young King Henry V of England invaded France and won a series of decisive victories against the forces of King Charles VI. By the time of Henry's death in August 1422, the English and their French-Burgundian allies controlled Aquitaine and most of northern France, including Paris. Charles VI, long incapacitated, died one month later, and his son, Charles, regent from 1418, prepared to take the throne. However, Reims, the traditional city of French coronation, was held by the Anglo-Burgundians, and the Dauphin (heir apparent to the French throne) remained uncrowned. Meanwhile, King Henry VI of England, the infant son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI, was proclaimed king of France by the English.
Joan's village of Domremy lay on the frontier between the France of the Dauphin and that of the Anglo-Burgundians. In the midst of this unstable environment, Joan began hearing "voices" of three Christian saints—St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. In May 1428, she traveled to Vaucouleurs, a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home. In January 1429, she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.
Dressed in men's clothes and accompanied by six soldiers, she reached the Dauphin's castle at Chinon in February 1429 and was granted an audience. Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl.
Charles furnished her with a small army, and on April 27, 1429, she set out for Orleans, besieged by the English since October 1428. On April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of Orleans, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. She brought greatly needed supplies and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance. She personally led the charge in several battles and on May 7 was struck by an arrow. After quickly dressing her wound, she returned to the fight, and the French won the day. On May 8, the English retreated from Orleans.
During the next five weeks, Joan and the French commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over the English. On July 16, the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her standard: an image of Christ in judgment. After the ceremony, she knelt before Charles, joyously calling him king for the first time.
On September 8, the king and Joan attacked Paris. During the battle, Joan carried her standard up to the earthworks and called on the Parisians to surrender the city to the king of France. She was wounded but continued to rally the king's troops until Charles ordered an end to the unsuccessful siege. That year, she led several more small campaigns, capturing the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moitier. In December, Charles ennobled Joan, her parents, and her brothers.
In May 1430, the Burgundians laid siege to Compiegne, and Joan stole into the town under the cover of darkness to aid in its defense. On May 23, while leading a sortie against the Burgundians, she was captured. The Burgundians sold her to the English, and in March 1431 she went on trial before ecclesiastical authorities in Rouen on charges of heresy. Her most serious crime, according to the tribunal, was her rejection of church authority in favor of direct inspiration from God. After refusing to submit to the church, her sentence was read on May 24: She was to be turned over to secular authorities and executed. Reacting with horror to the pronouncement, Joan agreed to recant and was condemned instead to perpetual imprisonment.
Ordered to put on women's clothes, she obeyed, but a few days later the judges went to her cell and found her dressed again in male attire. Questioned, she told them that St. Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for giving in to the church against their will. She was found to be a relapsed heretic and on May 29 ordered handed over to secular officials. On May 30, Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.
As a source of military inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920, Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.
May 30, 1967: Republic of Biafra proclaimed
After suffering through years of suppression under Nigeria's military government, the breakaway state of Biafra proclaims its independence from Nigeria.
In 1960, Nigeria gained independence from Britain. Six years later, the Muslim Hausas in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos in the region, prompting tens of thousands of Igbos to flee to the east, where their people were the dominant ethnic group. The Igbos doubted that Nigeria's oppressive military government would allow them to develop, or even survive, so on May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu and other non-Igbo representatives of the area established the Republic of Biafra, comprising several states of Nigeria.
After diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country, war between Nigeria and Biafra broke out in July 1967. Ojukwu's forces made some initial advances, but Nigeria's superior military strength gradually reduced Biafran territory. The state lost its oil fields--its main source of revenue--and without the funds to import food, an estimated one million of its civilians died as a result of severe malnutrition. On January 11, 1970, Nigerian forces captured the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the last Biafran strongholds, and Ojukwu was forced to flee to the Ivory Coast. Four days later, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria.
May 30, 1913: The First Balkan War ends
On this day in 1913, a peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War, in which the newly aligned Slavic nations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had driven Turkish forces out of Macedonia, a territory of the Ottoman Empire located in the tumultuous Balkans region of southeastern Europe.
After rebellion in Macedonia—led by a secret society of nationalists known as the Young Turks—shook the stability of the sultan's hold on Ottoman territory in Europe in 1908, the Austro-Hungarian empire acted quickly to annex the dual Balkan provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and to encourage Bulgaria, also under Turkish rule, to proclaim its independence. Austria-Hungary's actions clearly upset the delicate balance of power in the Balkans. The small, boisterous monarchy of Serbia was outraged by the annexation, having long regarded Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of its own rightful territory due to their shared South Slavic heritage. Meanwhile, czarist Russia—an important supporter of Serbia and the other great European power with influence in the Balkans region—felt its own interests threatened by its rival's actions.
In the spring of 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece, encouraged by Russia, aligned with the objective of taking control of some or all of the lands still occupied by the Ottoman Empire in Europe. Though the disparate Balkan peoples nursed intense hatreds of one another, they were compelled to join forces and act quickly in order to strike at Turkey—now ensnared in a war with Italy over territory in Libya—in its weakness. On October 8, 1912, Montenegro declared war on Turkey; Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece followed suit on October 17.
Surprisingly, the Ottoman army was quickly and decisively defeated, as the Balkan forces drove the Turks from almost all of their territory in southeastern Europe over the course of a month. The great powers of Europe—Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia—scrambled to exert control over the region in the wake of Turkey's withdrawal, and a congress was convened with representatives of the belligerent nations in London in December 1912 to draw up post-war boundaries in the Balkans. Over the course of the next several months and 63 meetings, as well as renewed hostilities on the battlefield, an agreement was reached, and Macedonia was partitioned between the victors of the First Balkan War. Nevertheless, the peace concluded May 30, 1913, was only tenuous, as Bulgaria felt cheated out of its rightful share by Serbia and Greece.
Exactly a month after the peace treaty was signed, on the night of June 29-30, Bulgaria turned against its former allies, Serbia and Greece, in a surprise attack ordered by King Ferdinand I without consultation with his own government. The attack led to the so-called Second Balkan War, in which Bulgaria was quickly defeated by forces from Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Romania. The Treaty of Bucharest, signed August 10, was negotiated by local states, rather than by the great powers. By its terms, Bulgaria lost a considerable amount of territory and Serbia and Greece received control of most of Macedonia.
Austria-Hungary, which had badly wanted to see Serbia crushed, was shocked and disappointed by the results of the two Balkan wars. Confident that first Turkey and then Bulgaria would prove victorious, Austria-Hungary had neglected to intervene in either conflict; now, the Dual Monarchy became increasingly fearful—with reason—of the growing Slavic influence in the Balkans, the emergence of a powerful and ambitious Serbia, and what it would all mean for the future of its own declining empire.
By 1913, many in both Austria-Hungary and Germany—especially within the countries' military leadership—had decided that a preventive war against Serbia would be necessary to restore the empire's prestige and power; as Russia was almost certain to back Serbia in any such conflict, a third war in the Balkans would most likely proceed directly to a general European one, with Germany and Austria-Hungary facing off against Serbia, Russia, Russia's primary ally, France, and possibly Britain. For the time being, however, both Kaiser Wilhelm, emperor of Germany, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, continued to see the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the Balkans question, though they disputed the means of achieving it. Franz Ferdinand's assassination, by a Serbian nationalist, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, however, put an end to any such negotiations and toppled Europe, already teeming with unresolved conflict and irreconcilable differences between the great powers, headlong into the First World War.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
1035 - Boudouin V van Rijsel becomes earl of Flanders
1087 - German emperor Henry IV crowns his son Koenraad
1100 - Burchard becomes bishop of Utrecht
1381 - English boer uprising begins in Essex
1416 - Jerome of Prague, burned at the stake for heresy by church Council of Constance
1431 - Hundred Years' War: In Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake as a heretic by an English-dominated tribunal.
1434 - Battle at Lipany
1498 - Columbus departs with 6 ships for 3rd trip to America
1522 - French troops driven out of Genoa
1527 - University of Marburg is founded in Germany
1536 - King Henry VIII of England married his 3rd wife, Jane Seymour, 11 days after he had his 2nd wife, Anne Boleyn executed.
1539 - Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer, landed in Florida with 600 soldiers to search for gold.
1574 - Henry III follows brother Charles IX as king of France
1574 - Sea battle at Lillo Belgium (Adolf Van Haemstede vs Louis de Boisot)
1584 - Earl Adolf van Nieuwenaar/Meurs becomes viceroy of Gelderland
1631 - France/Maximilian van Bavarian signs Accord of Fontainebleau
1635 - Emperor Ferdinand II and Saksen sign Peace of Prague
1642 - From this date all honours granted by Charles I are retrospectively annulled by Parliament
1646 - Spain and Netherlands signs temporary cease fire
1783 - The first daily newspaper was published in the U.S. by Benjamin Towner called "The Pennsylvania Evening Post"
1793 - Georges Couthon chosen member of French Committee the Salut Public
1806 - Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy.
1808 - Napoleon annexes Tuscany & gave it seats in French Senate
1814 - Napoleonic Wars: War of the Sixth Coalition - The First Treaty of Paris was declared, which returned France to its 1792 borders.
1821 - James Boyd patents Rubber Fire Hose
1822 - House slave betrays Denmark Vesey conspiracy (37 blacks hanged)
1832 - Evariste Galois give his theory on free assembly (dies in duel May 31)
1832 - The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario is opened.
1842 - John Francis attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria
1848 - Second battle at Gioto: Sardinia-Piemonte beats Austrians
1848 - W.G. Young patented the ice cream freezer.
1848 - Mexico ratifies treaty giving US; New Mexico, California & parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona & Colorado in return for $15 million
1854 - Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed Missouri Compromise opens north slavery
1854 - 1854 - The U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.
1858 - Hudson's Bay Co rights to Vancouver Island revoked
1862 - Battle of Booneville MS - captured Gen Beauregard evacuates Corinth
1864 - Cavalry fight at Battle of Bethesda Church/Totopotomoy Creek Virginia during US Civil War
1866 - Opera "Die Verkaufte Braut" premieres (Prague)
1868 - Memorial Day first observed when 2 women in Columbus Mississippi placed flowers on both Confederate & Union graves
1876 - Ottoman sultan Abd-ul-Aziz is deposed and succeeded by his nephew Murat V.
1879 - William Vanderbilt renamed New York City's Gilmore’s Garden to Madison Square Garden.
1879 - An F4 tornado strikes Irving, Kansas, killing 18 and injuring 60.
1883 - Twelve people were trampled to death in New York City in a stampede when a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge was in danger of collapsing occurred.
1889 - The brassiere was invented.
1890 - First Dodger home run (Dave Foutz)
1894 - Bobby Lowe is first to hit 4 HRs in 1 baseball game
1895 - W G Grace scores his 1,000th Cricket run of the season after 22 days
1896 - First car accident occurs, Henry Wells hit a bicyclist (NYC)
1899 - 24th Preakness: R Clawson aboard Half Time wins in 1:47
1901 - Hall of Fame for Great American on NYU campus dedicated
1901 - Memorial Day is first observed in US
1903 - 28th Preakness: W Gannon aboard Flocarline wins in 1:44.8
1903 - In Riverdale, NY, the first American motorcycle hill climb was held.
1904 - Frank Chance gets hit by pitch 5 times in a doubleheader
1906 - 40th Belmont: Lucien Lyne aboard Burgomaster wins in 2:20
1907 - 41st Belmont: G Mountain aboard Peter Pan wins
1908 - First federal workmen's compensation law approved
1908 - 42nd Belmont: Joe Notter aboard Colin win
1908 - Aldrich Vineland Currency Act forerunner to Federal Reserve System
1908 - Paris advocate E Archdeacon is 1st passenger in a airplane
1908 - US Assay Office in Salt Lake City, Utah authorized
1909 - National Conference on the Negro is held
1909 - Reuben Siegel laid cornerstone of 1st home in Tel-Aviv
1910 - 44th Belmont: James Butwell aboard Sweep wins in 2:22
1911 - 1st Indianapolis 500 car race, Ray Harroun wins at 74.59 MPH (120 KPH)
1911 - Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis Sweepstakes. The 500-mile auto race later became known as the Indianapolis 500. Harroun's average speed was 74.59 miles per hour (120KPH)
1912 - The U.S. Marines were sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.
1913 - First Balkan War ends, Treaty of London
1913 - New country of Albania formed
1913 - John McGraw joins Fred Clarke, Cap Anson, Frank Selee, & Connie Mack
1913 - as managers who have won 1,000 games
1914 - The new and then largest Cunard ocean liner RMS Aquitania, 45,647 tons, sets sails on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
1917 - Alexander I becomes king of Greece.
1921 - Lord Dunsany's "If," premieres in London
1921 - Memorial to Capt Eddie Grant, killed in WW I, unveiled at Polo Grounds
1921 - Salzburg, Austria, votes to join Germany
1921 - The U.S. Navy transferred the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.
1922 - The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, was dedicated by Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
1922 - Latvia and Vatican sign accord
1922 - Cubs swap Max Flack for Cards Cliff Heathcote during middle of doubleheader. Both play for both teams that day
1923 - Howard Hanson's 1st Symphony "Nordic," premieres
1924 - Socialist Matteotti falls in Italian parliament by fascists 1925 - British mariners shoot on demonstrators
1925 - Peter DePaolo became 1st man to average over 100 mph at Indy
1925 - Rogers Hornsby replaces Branch Rickey as manager of Cardinals
1925 - In China protests erupt against the Great Powers infringing on Chinese sovereignty.
1927 - Walter Johnson records 113th and last shutout of his career
1930 - Bill Arnold wins Indianapolis 500 car race (161.6 kph)
1931 - Phillies Chuck Klein homers off Ben Cantwell (Braves) in both ends DH
1933 - Patent on invisible glass installation
1933 - Sally Rand introduced her exotic and erotic fan dance to audiences at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition.
1935 - Babe Ruth's final game, goes hitless for Braves against Phillies
1937 - Memorial Day Massacre - Chicago police shoot on union marchers, 10 die
1937 - Pitcher Carl Hubbell's 24th consecutive victory
1937 - Police kill 10 strikers at Republic Steel Plant in Chicago
1937 - 61,756, 2nd-largest crowd in Polo Grounds history, sees Dodgers ends Carl Hubbell's consecutive-game winning streak at 24
1941 - First anti semitic measures in Serbia
1941 - English Army enters Baghdad, chasing pro-German coup government
1941 - German capture Kreta
1942 - 1,047 bombers bomb Cologne in RAF's raid of WW II
1942 - Reichsfuhrer Himmler arrived in Prague
1942 - Satchel Paige pitches 5 innings to defeat Dizzy Dean All-Stars 8-1
1942 - US aircraft carrier Yorktown leaves Pearl Harbor
1943 - French general De Gaulle arrives in Algiers
1943 - American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
1944 - Transport nr 75 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany
1946 - Braves Bernard Malamud HR shatters Bulova clock in Ebbets Field
1946 - United flight 521 crashes on takeoff at LaGuardia Airport (NY) 42 die
1948 - Schenectady Blue Jays Tom Lasorda strikes out 25 in 15-inning game
1948 - A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
1949 - East German constitution approved
1949 - NPS/VHP win 1st general election in Suriname
1949 - WRTV TV channel 6 in Indianapolis, IN (ABC) begins broadcasting
1951 - Ezzard Charles beats Joey Maxim in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
1952 - Charlie Grimm succeeds Tommy Holmes as manager of Boston Braves
1952 - Darius Milhaud's "West Point Suite," premieres
1953 - First major league network baseball game-Cleveland 7, Chicago 2
1953 - 23rd French Mens Tennis: Ken Rosewall beats V Seixas (63 64 16 62)
1953 - 23rd French Womens Tennis: Maureen Connolly beats Doris Hart (62 64)
1954 - Dutch bishops forbid membership to non-catholic sporting clubs
1954 - Emile Zatopek runs world record 5K (13:57.2)
1954 - Hector Villa-Lobos' "Odisseia de Uma Raca," premieres
1955 - KMVT TV channel 11 in Twin Falls, ID (CBS/NBC/ABC) begins broadcasting
1955 - Said el-Mufti forms Jordan government
1955 - Tunisia begins domestic self governing
1956 - Bus boycott begins in Tallahassee Florida
1956 - Mickey Mantle misses by 18" hitting 1st HR out of Yankee Stadium
1956 - US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
1957 - Real Madrid wins 2nd Europe Cup 1 in Madrid
1957 - Test Cricket debut for Rohan Kanhai v England at Edgbaston
1958 - US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
1958 - Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflicts were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1959 - "First Impressions" closes at Alvin Theater NYC after 84 performances
1959 - "Nervous Set" closes at Henry Miller's Theater NYC after 23 perfs
1959 - Iraq terminates milt assistance pact with US due to neutrality
1959 - Pres Somoza ends emergency crisis in Nicaragua
1959 - Pres Stroessner disbands Paraguay's parliament
1959 - World's 1st hovercraft (SR-N1) tested at Cowes England
1959 - The Auckland Harbour Bridge is officially opened today in Auckland, New Zealand.
1961 - Dutch DC-8 crashes after takeoff at Lisbon, 62 die
1961 - Maris hits his 10th & 11th of 61 HRs
1961 - Long time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic.
1962 - 69 killed in bus crash (Ahmedabad India)
1962 - Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," premieres
1964 - "Beyond the Fringe" closes at John Golden Theater NYC after 673 perfs
1964 - Beatles 1961 record of "Cry for a Shadow" is #1 in Australia
1964 - Beatles' "Love Me Do," single goes #1
1964 - Giants sweep Mets 5-3 & 8-6 in 23 inn, records include elapsed time of 9:50, 47 strikeouts, 7:22 for 2nd game & NY's 22 K's in 2nd games
1965 - France performs nuclear test at Ecker Algeria (Underground)
1965 - Viet Cong offensive against US base Da Nang, begins
1965 - Vivian Malone, is 1st black to graduate from University of Alabama
1966 - 300 US airplanes bomb North Vietnam
1966 - Graham Hill wins Indianapolis 500 car race (232.2 kph)
1966 - US launches Surveyor 1 to Moon \
1967 - The state of Biafra seceded from Nigeria and Civil war erupted.
1967 - Daredevil Evel Knievel jumped 16 automobiles in a row in a motorcycle stunt at Ascot Speedway in Gardena, CA.
1967 - King Hussein of Jordan visits Cairo
1967 - Robert "Evel" Knievel's motorcycle jumps 16 automobiles
1967 - Yankee Whitey Ford, nearing 41, announces his retirement from baseball
1968 - Beatles begin work on their only double album "Beatles"
1968 - President De Gaulle disbands French parliament
1968 - University church in Leipzig German DR, blown up
1968 - West German Parliament accepts emergency crisis law
1969 - Derek Clayton runs world record marathon (2:08:33.6) at Antwerp
1969 - Gibraltar adopts constitution
1969 - People revolt in Willemstad, Curacao
1969 - Riots on the Caribbean island of Curaçao
1970 - "Minnie's Boys" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 80 performances
1970 - Baseball All-Star voting is returned to fans
1971 - 36 hospitalized during Grateful Dead concert; drunk LSD apple juice
1971 - Train crash at Duivendrecht Neth, 5 die
1971 - Mariner 9, the American deep space probe blasted off on a journey to Mars.
1971 - Willie Mays hits his 638th HR, sets NL record of 1,950 runs scored
1972 - 3 Jap PFL terrorists kills 24, wound 72 at Tel Aviv's Lod Intl airport
1972 - The Angry Brigade goes on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout Britain.
1973 - Ajax wins 3rd Europe Cup
1975 - European Space Agency (ESA) forms
1975 - Wings release "Venus & Mars" album
1976 - Bobby Unser sets world record for fastest pit stop (4 seconds)
1977 - Cleveland Indian Dennis Eckersley no-hits California Angels, 2-0
1979 - Nottingham Forrest wins 24th Europe Cup 1 at Munich
1979 - Pat Underwood makes his pitching debut for Detroit beats brother Tom
1979 - Percom Data Company Inc release Microdos for Radio Shack's TRS-80
1979 - Ted Coombs begins a 5,193 mile roller skate from LA to NYC
1980 - First papal visit to France since 1814
1980 - Tiger reliever John Hiller, 37, (who had a 1971 heart attack), retires
1980 - Turner's painting "Juliet & Her Nurse" sells for $6.4 million
1980 - Twins Ken Landreaux ends his hitting streak after 31 games
1981 - "Nightline" extends from 4 nights to 5 nights a week (Friday)
1981 - Bangladesh Pres Ziaur Rahman is shot by group of rebel officers
1981 - LA Dodgers are quickest to get 1,000,000 attendence (22 games)
1981 - In Chittagong, Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated by rebel officers,
1982 - Spain became the 16th NATO member. Spain was the first country to enter the Western alliance since West Germany in 1955.
1982 - "Do Black Patent Leather Shoes..." closes at Alvin NYC after 5 perf
1982 - Closest Indy 500, Gordon Johncock beats Rick Mears by 0.16 seconds
1983 - Surrey all out for 14 vs Essex, their lowest score ever
1983 - AL Pres Lee MacPhail suspends Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for one week, for his public criticism of umpires
1983 - Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry declared a state of emergency and suspended civil rights after bombings by leftist rebels.
1984 - Bomb explodes in rebel leader Eden Pastora headquarters in Nicaragua
1984 - Liverpool wins 29th Europe Cup 1 in Rome
1984 - NL suspends Mario Soto 5 days for Reds-Cubs fight on May 27th
1985 - Stanley Cup: Edmonton Oilers beat Philadelphia Flyers, 4 games to 1
1986 - Ariane-2 (ESA) launched
1986 - Bobby Rahal is 1st to avg over 170 mph in Indianapolis 500
1986 - France performs nuclear test
1987 - Mike Tyson TKOs Pinklon Thomas in 6 for heavyweight boxing title
1987 - North American Philips Company unveils compact disc video
1987 - Tony Tucker TKOs Buster Douglas in 10 for heavyweight boxing title
1987 - West German Mathias Rust lands airplane on Red Square
1989 - The "Goddess of Democracy" statue (33 feet height) was erected in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.
1989 - Margaret Ray pleads guilty to breaking into David Letterman's house
1990 - 135 die in a (6.4) earthquake in Peru
1990 - Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,878.56
1990 - Earthquake hit Peru, killing 135
1991 - 64th National Spelling Bee: Joanne Lagatta wins spelling antipyretic
1991 - Arturo Barrios runs world record one-hour distance (21,096 km)
1991 - Supreme Court rules prosecutors can be sued for legal advice they give police & can be held accountable
1992 - Minnesota Twin Bert Blyleven is 2nd to win as teenager & 40 year old
1992 - NY Lotto pays $30 million to one winner (#s are 12-15-30-33-40-48)
1992 - NY Yankee Scott Sanderson becomes 9th to beat all 26 teams
1992 - UN votes for sanctions against Serb-led Yugoslavia to halt fighting
1996 - 69th National Spelling Bee: Wendy Guey wins spelling vivisepulture
1996 - John Tesh's final day as host of "Entertainment Tonight"
1996 - Albert Belle uses a forearm to break up a double play & nearly breaks Brewer 2nd baseman Fernando Vina's nose, Belle gets 2 game suspension
1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson were granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage.
1997 - Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, NJ, of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka. The 1994 murder inspired "Megan's Law," requiring that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.
1997 - Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, set afire by 12 year old grandson
1997 - Ken Dryden becomes president of NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs
1998 - A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Northern Afghanistan (and subsequent aftershocks) killed an estimated 5,000 and injured at least 1,500. A quake on Feb. 4 in the same area had killed about 2,300.
2012 - A number of nations including Germany, Turkey and Canada, expel Syrian diplomats following the Houla massacre
2012 - Vishwanathan Anand wins his fifth World Chess Championship
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may30.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
May 30, 1431: Joan of Arc martyred
At Rouen in English-controlled Normandy, Joan of Arc, the peasant girl who became the savior of France, is burned at the stake for heresy.
Joan was born in 1412, the daughter of a tenant farmer at Domremy, on the borders of the duchies of Bar and Lorraine. In 1415, the Hundred Years War between England and France entered a crucial phase when the young King Henry V of England invaded France and won a series of decisive victories against the forces of King Charles VI. By the time of Henry's death in August 1422, the English and their French-Burgundian allies controlled Aquitaine and most of northern France, including Paris. Charles VI, long incapacitated, died one month later, and his son, Charles, regent from 1418, prepared to take the throne. However, Reims, the traditional city of French coronation, was held by the Anglo-Burgundians, and the Dauphin (heir apparent to the French throne) remained uncrowned. Meanwhile, King Henry VI of England, the infant son of Henry V and Catherine of Valois, the daughter of Charles VI, was proclaimed king of France by the English.
Joan's village of Domremy lay on the frontier between the France of the Dauphin and that of the Anglo-Burgundians. In the midst of this unstable environment, Joan began hearing "voices" of three Christian saints—St. Michael, St. Catherine, and St. Margaret. When she was about 16, these voices exhorted her to aid the Dauphin in capturing Reims and therefore the French throne. In May 1428, she traveled to Vaucouleurs, a stronghold of the Dauphin, and told the captain of the garrison of her visions. Disbelieving the young peasant girl, he sent her home. In January 1429, she returned, and the captain, impressed by her piety and determination, agreed to allow her passage to the Dauphin at Chinon.
Dressed in men's clothes and accompanied by six soldiers, she reached the Dauphin's castle at Chinon in February 1429 and was granted an audience. Charles hid himself among his courtiers, but Joan immediately picked him out and informed him of her divine mission. For several weeks, Charles had Joan questioned by theologians at Poitiers, who concluded that, given his desperate straits, the Dauphin would be well-advised to make use of this strange and charismatic girl.
Charles furnished her with a small army, and on April 27, 1429, she set out for Orleans, besieged by the English since October 1428. On April 29, as a French sortie distracted the English troops on the west side of Orleans, Joan entered unopposed by its eastern gate. She brought greatly needed supplies and reinforcements and inspired the French to a passionate resistance. She personally led the charge in several battles and on May 7 was struck by an arrow. After quickly dressing her wound, she returned to the fight, and the French won the day. On May 8, the English retreated from Orleans.
During the next five weeks, Joan and the French commanders led the French into a string of stunning victories over the English. On July 16, the royal army reached Reims, which opened its gates to Joan and the Dauphin. The next day, Charles VII was crowned king of France, with Joan standing nearby holding up her standard: an image of Christ in judgment. After the ceremony, she knelt before Charles, joyously calling him king for the first time.
On September 8, the king and Joan attacked Paris. During the battle, Joan carried her standard up to the earthworks and called on the Parisians to surrender the city to the king of France. She was wounded but continued to rally the king's troops until Charles ordered an end to the unsuccessful siege. That year, she led several more small campaigns, capturing the town of Saint-Pierre-le-Moitier. In December, Charles ennobled Joan, her parents, and her brothers.
In May 1430, the Burgundians laid siege to Compiegne, and Joan stole into the town under the cover of darkness to aid in its defense. On May 23, while leading a sortie against the Burgundians, she was captured. The Burgundians sold her to the English, and in March 1431 she went on trial before ecclesiastical authorities in Rouen on charges of heresy. Her most serious crime, according to the tribunal, was her rejection of church authority in favor of direct inspiration from God. After refusing to submit to the church, her sentence was read on May 24: She was to be turned over to secular authorities and executed. Reacting with horror to the pronouncement, Joan agreed to recant and was condemned instead to perpetual imprisonment.
Ordered to put on women's clothes, she obeyed, but a few days later the judges went to her cell and found her dressed again in male attire. Questioned, she told them that St. Catherine and St. Margaret had reproached her for giving in to the church against their will. She was found to be a relapsed heretic and on May 29 ordered handed over to secular officials. On May 30, Joan, 19 years old, was burned at the stake at the Place du Vieux-Marche in Rouen. Before the pyre was lit, she instructed a priest to hold high a crucifix for her to see and to shout out prayers loud enough to be heard above the roar of the flames.
As a source of military inspiration, Joan of Arc helped turn the Hundred Years War firmly in France's favor. By 1453, Charles VII had reconquered all of France except for Calais, which the English relinquished in 1558. In 1920, Joan of Arc, one of the great heroes of French history, was recognized as a Christian saint by the Roman Catholic Church. Her feast day is May 30.
May 30, 1967: Republic of Biafra proclaimed
After suffering through years of suppression under Nigeria's military government, the breakaway state of Biafra proclaims its independence from Nigeria.
In 1960, Nigeria gained independence from Britain. Six years later, the Muslim Hausas in northern Nigeria began massacring the Christian Igbos in the region, prompting tens of thousands of Igbos to flee to the east, where their people were the dominant ethnic group. The Igbos doubted that Nigeria's oppressive military government would allow them to develop, or even survive, so on May 30, 1967, Lieutenant Colonel Odumegwu Ojukwu and other non-Igbo representatives of the area established the Republic of Biafra, comprising several states of Nigeria.
After diplomatic efforts by Nigeria failed to reunite the country, war between Nigeria and Biafra broke out in July 1967. Ojukwu's forces made some initial advances, but Nigeria's superior military strength gradually reduced Biafran territory. The state lost its oil fields--its main source of revenue--and without the funds to import food, an estimated one million of its civilians died as a result of severe malnutrition. On January 11, 1970, Nigerian forces captured the provincial capital of Owerri, one of the last Biafran strongholds, and Ojukwu was forced to flee to the Ivory Coast. Four days later, Biafra surrendered to Nigeria.
May 30, 1913: The First Balkan War ends
On this day in 1913, a peace treaty is signed ending the First Balkan War, in which the newly aligned Slavic nations of Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria and Greece had driven Turkish forces out of Macedonia, a territory of the Ottoman Empire located in the tumultuous Balkans region of southeastern Europe.
After rebellion in Macedonia—led by a secret society of nationalists known as the Young Turks—shook the stability of the sultan's hold on Ottoman territory in Europe in 1908, the Austro-Hungarian empire acted quickly to annex the dual Balkan provinces of Bosnia-Herzegovina and to encourage Bulgaria, also under Turkish rule, to proclaim its independence. Austria-Hungary's actions clearly upset the delicate balance of power in the Balkans. The small, boisterous monarchy of Serbia was outraged by the annexation, having long regarded Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of its own rightful territory due to their shared South Slavic heritage. Meanwhile, czarist Russia—an important supporter of Serbia and the other great European power with influence in the Balkans region—felt its own interests threatened by its rival's actions.
In the spring of 1912, Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro and Greece, encouraged by Russia, aligned with the objective of taking control of some or all of the lands still occupied by the Ottoman Empire in Europe. Though the disparate Balkan peoples nursed intense hatreds of one another, they were compelled to join forces and act quickly in order to strike at Turkey—now ensnared in a war with Italy over territory in Libya—in its weakness. On October 8, 1912, Montenegro declared war on Turkey; Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece followed suit on October 17.
Surprisingly, the Ottoman army was quickly and decisively defeated, as the Balkan forces drove the Turks from almost all of their territory in southeastern Europe over the course of a month. The great powers of Europe—Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia—scrambled to exert control over the region in the wake of Turkey's withdrawal, and a congress was convened with representatives of the belligerent nations in London in December 1912 to draw up post-war boundaries in the Balkans. Over the course of the next several months and 63 meetings, as well as renewed hostilities on the battlefield, an agreement was reached, and Macedonia was partitioned between the victors of the First Balkan War. Nevertheless, the peace concluded May 30, 1913, was only tenuous, as Bulgaria felt cheated out of its rightful share by Serbia and Greece.
Exactly a month after the peace treaty was signed, on the night of June 29-30, Bulgaria turned against its former allies, Serbia and Greece, in a surprise attack ordered by King Ferdinand I without consultation with his own government. The attack led to the so-called Second Balkan War, in which Bulgaria was quickly defeated by forces from Serbia, Greece, Turkey and Romania. The Treaty of Bucharest, signed August 10, was negotiated by local states, rather than by the great powers. By its terms, Bulgaria lost a considerable amount of territory and Serbia and Greece received control of most of Macedonia.
Austria-Hungary, which had badly wanted to see Serbia crushed, was shocked and disappointed by the results of the two Balkan wars. Confident that first Turkey and then Bulgaria would prove victorious, Austria-Hungary had neglected to intervene in either conflict; now, the Dual Monarchy became increasingly fearful—with reason—of the growing Slavic influence in the Balkans, the emergence of a powerful and ambitious Serbia, and what it would all mean for the future of its own declining empire.
By 1913, many in both Austria-Hungary and Germany—especially within the countries' military leadership—had decided that a preventive war against Serbia would be necessary to restore the empire's prestige and power; as Russia was almost certain to back Serbia in any such conflict, a third war in the Balkans would most likely proceed directly to a general European one, with Germany and Austria-Hungary facing off against Serbia, Russia, Russia's primary ally, France, and possibly Britain. For the time being, however, both Kaiser Wilhelm, emperor of Germany, and Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, continued to see the possibility of a peaceful resolution of the Balkans question, though they disputed the means of achieving it. Franz Ferdinand's assassination, by a Serbian nationalist, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, however, put an end to any such negotiations and toppled Europe, already teeming with unresolved conflict and irreconcilable differences between the great powers, headlong into the First World War.
Here's a more detailed look at events that transpired on this date throughout history:
1035 - Boudouin V van Rijsel becomes earl of Flanders
1087 - German emperor Henry IV crowns his son Koenraad
1100 - Burchard becomes bishop of Utrecht
1381 - English boer uprising begins in Essex
1416 - Jerome of Prague, burned at the stake for heresy by church Council of Constance
1431 - Hundred Years' War: In Rouen, France, 19-year-old Joan of Arc is burned at the stake as a heretic by an English-dominated tribunal.
1434 - Battle at Lipany
1498 - Columbus departs with 6 ships for 3rd trip to America
1522 - French troops driven out of Genoa
1527 - University of Marburg is founded in Germany
1536 - King Henry VIII of England married his 3rd wife, Jane Seymour, 11 days after he had his 2nd wife, Anne Boleyn executed.
1539 - Hernando de Soto, the Spanish explorer, landed in Florida with 600 soldiers to search for gold.
1574 - Henry III follows brother Charles IX as king of France
1574 - Sea battle at Lillo Belgium (Adolf Van Haemstede vs Louis de Boisot)
1584 - Earl Adolf van Nieuwenaar/Meurs becomes viceroy of Gelderland
1631 - France/Maximilian van Bavarian signs Accord of Fontainebleau
1635 - Emperor Ferdinand II and Saksen sign Peace of Prague
1642 - From this date all honours granted by Charles I are retrospectively annulled by Parliament
1646 - Spain and Netherlands signs temporary cease fire
1783 - The first daily newspaper was published in the U.S. by Benjamin Towner called "The Pennsylvania Evening Post"
1793 - Georges Couthon chosen member of French Committee the Salut Public
1806 - Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel after Dickinson had accused Jackson's wife of bigamy.
1808 - Napoleon annexes Tuscany & gave it seats in French Senate
1814 - Napoleonic Wars: War of the Sixth Coalition - The First Treaty of Paris was declared, which returned France to its 1792 borders.
1821 - James Boyd patents Rubber Fire Hose
1822 - House slave betrays Denmark Vesey conspiracy (37 blacks hanged)
1832 - Evariste Galois give his theory on free assembly (dies in duel May 31)
1832 - The Rideau Canal in eastern Ontario is opened.
1842 - John Francis attempts to assassinate Queen Victoria
1848 - Second battle at Gioto: Sardinia-Piemonte beats Austrians
1848 - W.G. Young patented the ice cream freezer.
1848 - Mexico ratifies treaty giving US; New Mexico, California & parts of Nevada, Utah, Arizona & Colorado in return for $15 million
1854 - Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed Missouri Compromise opens north slavery
1854 - 1854 - The U.S. territories of Nebraska and Kansas were established.
1858 - Hudson's Bay Co rights to Vancouver Island revoked
1862 - Battle of Booneville MS - captured Gen Beauregard evacuates Corinth
1864 - Cavalry fight at Battle of Bethesda Church/Totopotomoy Creek Virginia during US Civil War
1866 - Opera "Die Verkaufte Braut" premieres (Prague)
1868 - Memorial Day first observed when 2 women in Columbus Mississippi placed flowers on both Confederate & Union graves
1876 - Ottoman sultan Abd-ul-Aziz is deposed and succeeded by his nephew Murat V.
1879 - William Vanderbilt renamed New York City's Gilmore’s Garden to Madison Square Garden.
1879 - An F4 tornado strikes Irving, Kansas, killing 18 and injuring 60.
1883 - Twelve people were trampled to death in New York City in a stampede when a rumor that the Brooklyn Bridge was in danger of collapsing occurred.
1889 - The brassiere was invented.
1890 - First Dodger home run (Dave Foutz)
1894 - Bobby Lowe is first to hit 4 HRs in 1 baseball game
1895 - W G Grace scores his 1,000th Cricket run of the season after 22 days
1896 - First car accident occurs, Henry Wells hit a bicyclist (NYC)
1899 - 24th Preakness: R Clawson aboard Half Time wins in 1:47
1901 - Hall of Fame for Great American on NYU campus dedicated
1901 - Memorial Day is first observed in US
1903 - 28th Preakness: W Gannon aboard Flocarline wins in 1:44.8
1903 - In Riverdale, NY, the first American motorcycle hill climb was held.
1904 - Frank Chance gets hit by pitch 5 times in a doubleheader
1906 - 40th Belmont: Lucien Lyne aboard Burgomaster wins in 2:20
1907 - 41st Belmont: G Mountain aboard Peter Pan wins
1908 - First federal workmen's compensation law approved
1908 - 42nd Belmont: Joe Notter aboard Colin win
1908 - Aldrich Vineland Currency Act forerunner to Federal Reserve System
1908 - Paris advocate E Archdeacon is 1st passenger in a airplane
1908 - US Assay Office in Salt Lake City, Utah authorized
1909 - National Conference on the Negro is held
1909 - Reuben Siegel laid cornerstone of 1st home in Tel-Aviv
1910 - 44th Belmont: James Butwell aboard Sweep wins in 2:22
1911 - 1st Indianapolis 500 car race, Ray Harroun wins at 74.59 MPH (120 KPH)
1911 - Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis Sweepstakes. The 500-mile auto race later became known as the Indianapolis 500. Harroun's average speed was 74.59 miles per hour (120KPH)
1912 - The U.S. Marines were sent to Nicaragua to protect American interests.
1913 - First Balkan War ends, Treaty of London
1913 - New country of Albania formed
1913 - John McGraw joins Fred Clarke, Cap Anson, Frank Selee, & Connie Mack
1913 - as managers who have won 1,000 games
1914 - The new and then largest Cunard ocean liner RMS Aquitania, 45,647 tons, sets sails on her maiden voyage from Liverpool, England to New York City.
1917 - Alexander I becomes king of Greece.
1921 - Lord Dunsany's "If," premieres in London
1921 - Memorial to Capt Eddie Grant, killed in WW I, unveiled at Polo Grounds
1921 - Salzburg, Austria, votes to join Germany
1921 - The U.S. Navy transferred the Teapot Dome oil reserves to the Department of the Interior.
1922 - The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, was dedicated by Chief Justice William Howard Taft.
1922 - Latvia and Vatican sign accord
1922 - Cubs swap Max Flack for Cards Cliff Heathcote during middle of doubleheader. Both play for both teams that day
1923 - Howard Hanson's 1st Symphony "Nordic," premieres
1924 - Socialist Matteotti falls in Italian parliament by fascists 1925 - British mariners shoot on demonstrators
1925 - Peter DePaolo became 1st man to average over 100 mph at Indy
1925 - Rogers Hornsby replaces Branch Rickey as manager of Cardinals
1925 - In China protests erupt against the Great Powers infringing on Chinese sovereignty.
1927 - Walter Johnson records 113th and last shutout of his career
1930 - Bill Arnold wins Indianapolis 500 car race (161.6 kph)
1931 - Phillies Chuck Klein homers off Ben Cantwell (Braves) in both ends DH
1933 - Patent on invisible glass installation
1933 - Sally Rand introduced her exotic and erotic fan dance to audiences at Chicago’s Century of Progress Exposition.
1935 - Babe Ruth's final game, goes hitless for Braves against Phillies
1937 - Memorial Day Massacre - Chicago police shoot on union marchers, 10 die
1937 - Pitcher Carl Hubbell's 24th consecutive victory
1937 - Police kill 10 strikers at Republic Steel Plant in Chicago
1937 - 61,756, 2nd-largest crowd in Polo Grounds history, sees Dodgers ends Carl Hubbell's consecutive-game winning streak at 24
1941 - First anti semitic measures in Serbia
1941 - English Army enters Baghdad, chasing pro-German coup government
1941 - German capture Kreta
1942 - 1,047 bombers bomb Cologne in RAF's raid of WW II
1942 - Reichsfuhrer Himmler arrived in Prague
1942 - Satchel Paige pitches 5 innings to defeat Dizzy Dean All-Stars 8-1
1942 - US aircraft carrier Yorktown leaves Pearl Harbor
1943 - French general De Gaulle arrives in Algiers
1943 - American forces secured the Aleutian island of Attu from the Japanese during World War II.
1944 - Transport nr 75 departs with French Jews to Nazi Germany
1946 - Braves Bernard Malamud HR shatters Bulova clock in Ebbets Field
1946 - United flight 521 crashes on takeoff at LaGuardia Airport (NY) 42 die
1948 - Schenectady Blue Jays Tom Lasorda strikes out 25 in 15-inning game
1948 - A dike along the flooding Columbia River breaks, obliterating Vanport, Oregon within minutes. Fifteen people die and tens of thousands are left homeless.
1949 - East German constitution approved
1949 - NPS/VHP win 1st general election in Suriname
1949 - WRTV TV channel 6 in Indianapolis, IN (ABC) begins broadcasting
1951 - Ezzard Charles beats Joey Maxim in 15 for heavyweight boxing title
1952 - Charlie Grimm succeeds Tommy Holmes as manager of Boston Braves
1952 - Darius Milhaud's "West Point Suite," premieres
1953 - First major league network baseball game-Cleveland 7, Chicago 2
1953 - 23rd French Mens Tennis: Ken Rosewall beats V Seixas (63 64 16 62)
1953 - 23rd French Womens Tennis: Maureen Connolly beats Doris Hart (62 64)
1954 - Dutch bishops forbid membership to non-catholic sporting clubs
1954 - Emile Zatopek runs world record 5K (13:57.2)
1954 - Hector Villa-Lobos' "Odisseia de Uma Raca," premieres
1955 - KMVT TV channel 11 in Twin Falls, ID (CBS/NBC/ABC) begins broadcasting
1955 - Said el-Mufti forms Jordan government
1955 - Tunisia begins domestic self governing
1956 - Bus boycott begins in Tallahassee Florida
1956 - Mickey Mantle misses by 18" hitting 1st HR out of Yankee Stadium
1956 - US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
1957 - Real Madrid wins 2nd Europe Cup 1 in Madrid
1957 - Test Cricket debut for Rohan Kanhai v England at Edgbaston
1958 - US performs nuclear test at Enwetak (atmospheric tests)
1958 - Unidentified soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflicts were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
1959 - "First Impressions" closes at Alvin Theater NYC after 84 performances
1959 - "Nervous Set" closes at Henry Miller's Theater NYC after 23 perfs
1959 - Iraq terminates milt assistance pact with US due to neutrality
1959 - Pres Somoza ends emergency crisis in Nicaragua
1959 - Pres Stroessner disbands Paraguay's parliament
1959 - World's 1st hovercraft (SR-N1) tested at Cowes England
1959 - The Auckland Harbour Bridge is officially opened today in Auckland, New Zealand.
1961 - Dutch DC-8 crashes after takeoff at Lisbon, 62 die
1961 - Maris hits his 10th & 11th of 61 HRs
1961 - Long time Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo is assassinated in Santo Domingo,Dominican Republic.
1962 - 69 killed in bus crash (Ahmedabad India)
1962 - Benjamin Britten's "War Requiem," premieres
1964 - "Beyond the Fringe" closes at John Golden Theater NYC after 673 perfs
1964 - Beatles 1961 record of "Cry for a Shadow" is #1 in Australia
1964 - Beatles' "Love Me Do," single goes #1
1964 - Giants sweep Mets 5-3 & 8-6 in 23 inn, records include elapsed time of 9:50, 47 strikeouts, 7:22 for 2nd game & NY's 22 K's in 2nd games
1965 - France performs nuclear test at Ecker Algeria (Underground)
1965 - Viet Cong offensive against US base Da Nang, begins
1965 - Vivian Malone, is 1st black to graduate from University of Alabama
1966 - 300 US airplanes bomb North Vietnam
1966 - Graham Hill wins Indianapolis 500 car race (232.2 kph)
1966 - US launches Surveyor 1 to Moon \
1967 - The state of Biafra seceded from Nigeria and Civil war erupted.
1967 - Daredevil Evel Knievel jumped 16 automobiles in a row in a motorcycle stunt at Ascot Speedway in Gardena, CA.
1967 - King Hussein of Jordan visits Cairo
1967 - Robert "Evel" Knievel's motorcycle jumps 16 automobiles
1967 - Yankee Whitey Ford, nearing 41, announces his retirement from baseball
1968 - Beatles begin work on their only double album "Beatles"
1968 - President De Gaulle disbands French parliament
1968 - University church in Leipzig German DR, blown up
1968 - West German Parliament accepts emergency crisis law
1969 - Derek Clayton runs world record marathon (2:08:33.6) at Antwerp
1969 - Gibraltar adopts constitution
1969 - People revolt in Willemstad, Curacao
1969 - Riots on the Caribbean island of Curaçao
1970 - "Minnie's Boys" closes at Imperial Theater NYC after 80 performances
1970 - Baseball All-Star voting is returned to fans
1971 - 36 hospitalized during Grateful Dead concert; drunk LSD apple juice
1971 - Train crash at Duivendrecht Neth, 5 die
1971 - Mariner 9, the American deep space probe blasted off on a journey to Mars.
1971 - Willie Mays hits his 638th HR, sets NL record of 1,950 runs scored
1972 - 3 Jap PFL terrorists kills 24, wound 72 at Tel Aviv's Lod Intl airport
1972 - The Angry Brigade goes on trial over a series of 25 bombings throughout Britain.
1973 - Ajax wins 3rd Europe Cup
1975 - European Space Agency (ESA) forms
1975 - Wings release "Venus & Mars" album
1976 - Bobby Unser sets world record for fastest pit stop (4 seconds)
1977 - Cleveland Indian Dennis Eckersley no-hits California Angels, 2-0
1979 - Nottingham Forrest wins 24th Europe Cup 1 at Munich
1979 - Pat Underwood makes his pitching debut for Detroit beats brother Tom
1979 - Percom Data Company Inc release Microdos for Radio Shack's TRS-80
1979 - Ted Coombs begins a 5,193 mile roller skate from LA to NYC
1980 - First papal visit to France since 1814
1980 - Tiger reliever John Hiller, 37, (who had a 1971 heart attack), retires
1980 - Turner's painting "Juliet & Her Nurse" sells for $6.4 million
1980 - Twins Ken Landreaux ends his hitting streak after 31 games
1981 - "Nightline" extends from 4 nights to 5 nights a week (Friday)
1981 - Bangladesh Pres Ziaur Rahman is shot by group of rebel officers
1981 - LA Dodgers are quickest to get 1,000,000 attendence (22 games)
1981 - In Chittagong, Bangladesh, President Ziaur Rahman was assassinated by rebel officers,
1982 - Spain became the 16th NATO member. Spain was the first country to enter the Western alliance since West Germany in 1955.
1982 - "Do Black Patent Leather Shoes..." closes at Alvin NYC after 5 perf
1982 - Closest Indy 500, Gordon Johncock beats Rick Mears by 0.16 seconds
1983 - Surrey all out for 14 vs Essex, their lowest score ever
1983 - AL Pres Lee MacPhail suspends Yankees owner George Steinbrenner for one week, for his public criticism of umpires
1983 - Peru's President Fernando Belaunde Terry declared a state of emergency and suspended civil rights after bombings by leftist rebels.
1984 - Bomb explodes in rebel leader Eden Pastora headquarters in Nicaragua
1984 - Liverpool wins 29th Europe Cup 1 in Rome
1984 - NL suspends Mario Soto 5 days for Reds-Cubs fight on May 27th
1985 - Stanley Cup: Edmonton Oilers beat Philadelphia Flyers, 4 games to 1
1986 - Ariane-2 (ESA) launched
1986 - Bobby Rahal is 1st to avg over 170 mph in Indianapolis 500
1986 - France performs nuclear test
1987 - Mike Tyson TKOs Pinklon Thomas in 6 for heavyweight boxing title
1987 - North American Philips Company unveils compact disc video
1987 - Tony Tucker TKOs Buster Douglas in 10 for heavyweight boxing title
1987 - West German Mathias Rust lands airplane on Red Square
1989 - The "Goddess of Democracy" statue (33 feet height) was erected in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.
1989 - Margaret Ray pleads guilty to breaking into David Letterman's house
1990 - 135 die in a (6.4) earthquake in Peru
1990 - Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,878.56
1990 - Earthquake hit Peru, killing 135
1991 - 64th National Spelling Bee: Joanne Lagatta wins spelling antipyretic
1991 - Arturo Barrios runs world record one-hour distance (21,096 km)
1991 - Supreme Court rules prosecutors can be sued for legal advice they give police & can be held accountable
1992 - Minnesota Twin Bert Blyleven is 2nd to win as teenager & 40 year old
1992 - NY Lotto pays $30 million to one winner (#s are 12-15-30-33-40-48)
1992 - NY Yankee Scott Sanderson becomes 9th to beat all 26 teams
1992 - UN votes for sanctions against Serb-led Yugoslavia to halt fighting
1996 - 69th National Spelling Bee: Wendy Guey wins spelling vivisepulture
1996 - John Tesh's final day as host of "Entertainment Tonight"
1996 - Albert Belle uses a forearm to break up a double play & nearly breaks Brewer 2nd baseman Fernando Vina's nose, Belle gets 2 game suspension
1996 - Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson were granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage.
1997 - Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, NJ, of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka. The 1994 murder inspired "Megan's Law," requiring that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.
1997 - Betty Shabazz, widow of Malcolm X, set afire by 12 year old grandson
1997 - Ken Dryden becomes president of NHL's Toronto Maple Leafs
1998 - A magnitude 6.6 earthquake in Northern Afghanistan (and subsequent aftershocks) killed an estimated 5,000 and injured at least 1,500. A quake on Feb. 4 in the same area had killed about 2,300.
2012 - A number of nations including Germany, Turkey and Canada, expel Syrian diplomats following the Houla massacre
2012 - Vishwanathan Anand wins his fifth World Chess Championship
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/today/events.php
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may30.htm
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory
America's Prison System: A New, Privatized Form of Slavery?
The US prison system has been gaining a lot more attention lately, as the rather staggering implications of having more prisoners than any other nation in the world settles on everyone.
People are beginning to recognize that they have allowed a monster to grow in our midst.
Then again, in an age where everything from the general population to most people's waste lines seems to be growing beyond all previously known boundaries, why would the prison system be any different?
But it kind of makes you wonder just how things got to this point, doesn't it? Why did the United States, supposedly the "land of the free", become home to a bigger prison population than any other nation in the world? For that matter, what does it say about Americans, and the way that we do things?
Well, let us take a look at the Louisiana prison system.
Why Louisiana specifically? Because Louisiana, of all places, has the highest incarceration rate in the world! That's right, the land of the bayou and the Big Easy is also, on average, the capital of imprisonment in the world today! It has three times the incarceration rate of Iran, and seven times the incarceration rate of China!
How did it get this bad? And what are the ramifications of this system on the country?
First, let's examine how it got that way. This might sound complex, but there is one fact that, more than any other single thing, should serve to illustrate why the prison system grew so ridiculously bloated: it is a for profit prison system, which is to say, it has been privatized for corporate interests. A for profit prison system is obviously going to just keep growing and growing, just like every other aspect of our culture, because it is a business, and when business is good, it seeks to expand.
That, in a nutshell, is why the United States (and in the example cited above, Louisiana specifically) has grown so ridiculously high in recent years.
Remember when President Bush warned us that terrorists were going to stop at nothing to keep attacking us, because they hate our freedoms? He also mentioned that Americans enjoyed too many freedoms.
Well, it seems that we are losing our freedoms at an increasingly fast clip. The problem has grown so much, and gotten so systemic, that people are beginning to see it (it has grown so big that it would be very hard to ignore), and now, they are starting to ask questions.
The fact of the matter is that prisoners are costly to every one of us. Prisoners need lodging, they need food every day. The prisons have to be equipped with things, such as cafeterias, laundries, they need other resources. The prisons need to be staffed, as well. So, there are obviously guards, and there are administrators, and there are medical personnel. Also, there are regular deliveries to the prison. And many private security firms have gotten involved with the guard system, with lofty contracts.
In other words, for profit prisons are good for the economy. They add jobs, which is always attractive. Also, for politicians and judges, sending people to prison makes it at least appear that they are doing a good job, keeping the streets safe, and getting tough on crime.
In short, it at least seems like a win-win, which itself seems to assure that the prison system, as it exists right now, will at least continue, and perhaps continue to grow.
Or it did, until the prison system just kept growing and growing, as did the costs. And suddenly, people began to wake up and recognize that maybe this was not such a good thing, after all. Having the dubious distinction of being the country that has more prisoners than anyone else in the world can actually be quite problematic, in fact.
Think about that for a moment. We have a higher rate of incarceration than China, than Iran, than North Korea, or than any of the tyrannical nations in the Middle East. This is not an area that you generally boast about being number one in. Yet, the United States really does rank first in this category, and more and more Americans are questioning this.
Why?
Because indeed, even though some tremendous profits have been seen, so have tremendous costs. We spend significantly more per head for prisoners than we do for our children on education, and that in itself is a staggering statistic.
Also, many are imprisoned on highly trumped up charges, and one of the main points of contention is why non-violent offenders should be sent to prisons, which usually are dominated with violent offenders. What does this do to those sent, who may get out of prison at some point, only to find that their lives have been irrevocably changed, that they cannot land a job, that they have their rights extremely limited, that they often lose their right even to vote?
In an age when our rights, which we previously always took for granted, seem to be lost or well on the way in the process of being lost, the growth of the prison system symbolizes this crackdown on our overall freedom. It seems to be the most glaring and visible symbol of this overall deterioration and erosion of the American Dream, and of traditional American freedoms and values, overall.
Even more important than the symbolism behind it would be that this system affects people in real life. Again, many who are sent to prison find their lives virtually ruined, because the stigma of having been in prison follows them around pretty much for the rest of their lives. Families are broken up. And those who have grown used to prison culture often do not seem able to rejoin mainstream society. In many cases, in fact, people become harden criminals during their time in jail.
When you add the problem of youth detention centers which, far too often, are also for profit, the scope of the problem not only grows, but people who usually might not have any sympathy for any adult who goes to prison, because they can easily be dismissed as "criminals", suddenly become more sympathetic when the discussion turns to kids. Already, some judges have been themselves found guilty of sending kids into for profit youth detention centers on highly trumped up charges. Anything for the almighty buck, huh?
All of this has allowed the questions surrounding our enormous, and enormously costly, prison system to begin to be scrutinized and criticized like never before.
And with good reason, don't you think?
This is an issue that is growing in the public consciousness. The problems are manifold, and increasingly more light is being shed on them. It is an incredibly complex system of justice and punishment that we have, and people would do well to become more familiar with the problem. To that end, I thought it would be beneficial to add some important links to articles expanding on this topic:
Overcrowded Prisons Are Forcing the Government to Think About Victimless Crime, published by The Free Thought Project, April 24, 2014:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/overcrowded-prisons-forcing-government-victimless-crime/
The Overpolicing of America: How Your Daily Actions Are Being Incrementally Criminalized, by Chase Madar of TomDispatch.com, published by The Free Thought Project:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/policing-america-daily-actions-incrementally-criminalized/#LqBkCXfjKKqDtq8T.99
People are beginning to recognize that they have allowed a monster to grow in our midst.
Then again, in an age where everything from the general population to most people's waste lines seems to be growing beyond all previously known boundaries, why would the prison system be any different?
But it kind of makes you wonder just how things got to this point, doesn't it? Why did the United States, supposedly the "land of the free", become home to a bigger prison population than any other nation in the world? For that matter, what does it say about Americans, and the way that we do things?
Well, let us take a look at the Louisiana prison system.
Why Louisiana specifically? Because Louisiana, of all places, has the highest incarceration rate in the world! That's right, the land of the bayou and the Big Easy is also, on average, the capital of imprisonment in the world today! It has three times the incarceration rate of Iran, and seven times the incarceration rate of China!
How did it get this bad? And what are the ramifications of this system on the country?
First, let's examine how it got that way. This might sound complex, but there is one fact that, more than any other single thing, should serve to illustrate why the prison system grew so ridiculously bloated: it is a for profit prison system, which is to say, it has been privatized for corporate interests. A for profit prison system is obviously going to just keep growing and growing, just like every other aspect of our culture, because it is a business, and when business is good, it seeks to expand.
That, in a nutshell, is why the United States (and in the example cited above, Louisiana specifically) has grown so ridiculously high in recent years.
Remember when President Bush warned us that terrorists were going to stop at nothing to keep attacking us, because they hate our freedoms? He also mentioned that Americans enjoyed too many freedoms.
Well, it seems that we are losing our freedoms at an increasingly fast clip. The problem has grown so much, and gotten so systemic, that people are beginning to see it (it has grown so big that it would be very hard to ignore), and now, they are starting to ask questions.
The fact of the matter is that prisoners are costly to every one of us. Prisoners need lodging, they need food every day. The prisons have to be equipped with things, such as cafeterias, laundries, they need other resources. The prisons need to be staffed, as well. So, there are obviously guards, and there are administrators, and there are medical personnel. Also, there are regular deliveries to the prison. And many private security firms have gotten involved with the guard system, with lofty contracts.
In other words, for profit prisons are good for the economy. They add jobs, which is always attractive. Also, for politicians and judges, sending people to prison makes it at least appear that they are doing a good job, keeping the streets safe, and getting tough on crime.
In short, it at least seems like a win-win, which itself seems to assure that the prison system, as it exists right now, will at least continue, and perhaps continue to grow.
Or it did, until the prison system just kept growing and growing, as did the costs. And suddenly, people began to wake up and recognize that maybe this was not such a good thing, after all. Having the dubious distinction of being the country that has more prisoners than anyone else in the world can actually be quite problematic, in fact.
Think about that for a moment. We have a higher rate of incarceration than China, than Iran, than North Korea, or than any of the tyrannical nations in the Middle East. This is not an area that you generally boast about being number one in. Yet, the United States really does rank first in this category, and more and more Americans are questioning this.
Why?
Because indeed, even though some tremendous profits have been seen, so have tremendous costs. We spend significantly more per head for prisoners than we do for our children on education, and that in itself is a staggering statistic.
Also, many are imprisoned on highly trumped up charges, and one of the main points of contention is why non-violent offenders should be sent to prisons, which usually are dominated with violent offenders. What does this do to those sent, who may get out of prison at some point, only to find that their lives have been irrevocably changed, that they cannot land a job, that they have their rights extremely limited, that they often lose their right even to vote?
In an age when our rights, which we previously always took for granted, seem to be lost or well on the way in the process of being lost, the growth of the prison system symbolizes this crackdown on our overall freedom. It seems to be the most glaring and visible symbol of this overall deterioration and erosion of the American Dream, and of traditional American freedoms and values, overall.
Even more important than the symbolism behind it would be that this system affects people in real life. Again, many who are sent to prison find their lives virtually ruined, because the stigma of having been in prison follows them around pretty much for the rest of their lives. Families are broken up. And those who have grown used to prison culture often do not seem able to rejoin mainstream society. In many cases, in fact, people become harden criminals during their time in jail.
When you add the problem of youth detention centers which, far too often, are also for profit, the scope of the problem not only grows, but people who usually might not have any sympathy for any adult who goes to prison, because they can easily be dismissed as "criminals", suddenly become more sympathetic when the discussion turns to kids. Already, some judges have been themselves found guilty of sending kids into for profit youth detention centers on highly trumped up charges. Anything for the almighty buck, huh?
All of this has allowed the questions surrounding our enormous, and enormously costly, prison system to begin to be scrutinized and criticized like never before.
And with good reason, don't you think?
This is an issue that is growing in the public consciousness. The problems are manifold, and increasingly more light is being shed on them. It is an incredibly complex system of justice and punishment that we have, and people would do well to become more familiar with the problem. To that end, I thought it would be beneficial to add some important links to articles expanding on this topic:
Overcrowded Prisons Are Forcing the Government to Think About Victimless Crime, published by The Free Thought Project, April 24, 2014:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/overcrowded-prisons-forcing-government-victimless-crime/
The Overpolicing of America: How Your Daily Actions Are Being Incrementally Criminalized, by Chase Madar of TomDispatch.com, published by The Free Thought Project:
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/policing-america-daily-actions-incrementally-criminalized/#LqBkCXfjKKqDtq8T.99
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Good Workouts For Men Over 40
I saw this earlier, and even though I am not quite there yet, I will be soon enough.
Still, it seemed to be good information to pass down, so here it is:
Best Workout For Men Over 40:
https://shine.yahoo.com/video/best-workout-men-over-40-214007534.html
Still, it seemed to be good information to pass down, so here it is:
Best Workout For Men Over 40:
https://shine.yahoo.com/video/best-workout-men-over-40-214007534.html
Elliot Rodger and the Very Real Stigma of Sexual Activity in the United States
Elliot Rodger assumed that, since women were not interested in him (evidently), that it was essentially their fault, and that he could not possibly be doing anything wrong, or that his approach just was not working.
It apparently drove him nuts, quite literally.
And perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that there is (and perhaps always has been) a stigma attached to virginity in this country that makes people who are virgins, or not yet sexually active, feel like there is something really wrong with them.
That may sound like some sort of a joke, but the tragedy that unfolded from the completely legally purchased guns of Elliot Rodger most certainly are deadly serious. Whatever else may have been wrong with him, or with his life, the fact of the matter is that it is all too easy to imagine just how much this fact that he was a virgin was really bothering him.
Yes, I know that Rodger was obviously crazy, that he reached that rare point where something snapped, and he literally just went berserk, going on his murderous rampage as some distorted cry of help, or whatever it was that you could call the massacre.
I know, also, that I wrote a blog entry about gun control in response, simply because I am of the belief that this tragedy, much like so many of the other mass shootings that the United States sees just far, far too much of, could have been completely unavoidable if you at least limit free and easy access to guns at least a little bit.
Frankly, my position has not changed on that, either. What's the big deal about background checks? Technically, our right to alcohol is guaranteed by the Constitution, since the end of the Prohibition was enforced by an amendment. Yet, no one looks twice at the fact that we need to verify someone's age, because we know it would be irresponsible to sell alcohol to minors, right? That same logic, with even more validity, could be applied to guns, particularly guns that serve no other purpose but to kill people.
Why do people that have absolutely no business possessing these monstrous machines of murder keep getting their hands on these weapons here in the United States, and not so much in other countries?
But I digress....the focus for this blog entry was supposed to be a bit different. It just seems to me that the stigma for being a virgin in a society that clearly, de facto, endorses being sexually active as some sign of success, is becoming unbearable, particularly to those who are too young to really cope with the pressure. I am not excusing the thinking and behavior, much less the action, of Elliot Roger. But the fact of the matter is that, while officially, many "leaders" in government and church, and in communities throughout the country would officially endorse abstinence, the reality is that if you actually do abstain from sexual activities or, worse, find yourself on the outside but constantly looking into the facade of a culture that, at least outwardly, shows every sign of being completely obsessed with sex, it can be an exercise in torture. It can consume you, until it is all that you think about. And it cheapens both men and women, as the act of sex becomes all that really matters, and I think that is part of the problem.
This may sound like a "light" issue, or perhaps it is something that serves as one of our many, and frankly, unfortunate, taboos in this society. It has been seemingly an endless source of jokes and even the inspiration for many movies, such as American Pie (which i enjoyed, by the way), for fictional virgins to make it their mission to finally end their virginity and "do it", so that they no longer are burdened by the very real stigma of the lower class status of being a virgin. The reality in the United States today, in a very real sense, seems to be that if you are a virgin, there is something wrong with you, and that is no joke, even if movies and comedians (and perhaps others) laugh about the subject. In other cultures, tests of adulthood (specifically manhood) did not exclusively deal with ending virginity, but it seems that we are heading towards that direction. Never mind the very adult responsibilities that you assume, never mind the less than glamorous aspects of adulthood that kids should become more acclimated with. For many kids in our party-oriented society, sexual activity, and particularly ending one's status as a virgin, become the defining action that proves one's worth, that makes someone, truly, a "man", or a "woman." I use quotes, because of course, in reality, nothing actually changes in your life after having sex, or at least the changes are far more subtle than, say, after you land your first job, or after you begin to pay some real bills, buying your first car, or buying your first home, or having your first child, or other truer measures of actually being an adult. Those are things that immediately and irreversibly change your lifestyle, one way or the other, on an every day level. Having sex generally does not do that, although sexual activity may become more commonplace (and hopefully, less stigmatized and filled with pressure).
The fact of the matter, however, is that sex takes a central part in our American life. Probably, too much. We have adds for viagra and cyalasis all of the time, on television and on the internet. Television shows and movies and comedians and musicians all focus on sex, and it is a measure of one's manhood to be able to be able to boast about keeping a woman happy in bed, and that you are somehow less of a man if you do not. It does not end with the teenage years, although sexual frustrations later in life at least happen to adults who, presumably, are better prepared to cope with it.
Not so young people, particularly young men. And when you get someone where there is something seriously wrong with the wiring in his brain, it can lead to disaster. And in this country in particular, it can have very tragic consequences, because another issue, access to guns, can come into play.
I don't have the answers. I don't know what to do about this particular problem. What I do know is that it is a problem. I was not sexually active during my high school years, but it admittedly was not voluntary. I had some girls that were interested in me, that even made what probably amounted to passes at me. Still, nothing ever happened while I was there. And hearing all of the other kids, the really cool kids, talking in blasé manner about how incredibly sexually active they were made me feel....well, inferior.
Nothing has changed. If anything, it seems that it has grown far worse over time. And it would not surprise me, personally, if the stigma of being a virgin was the cause of many more tragedies, not just this mass shooting, but probably some suicides and attempted suicides. In this society of extreme judgments, being exposed as a virgin, and revealing that, by society's standards, there really is something wrong with you, just because you have not shared intimacy with another person, is itself a sign of some sickness. Just not the kind that most people might assume that it means.
Things will continue on the way that they have been going. People (myself included) will argue within the scope of the gun debate, and let's see if anything happens with that (my guess is that nothing will change).
But it struck me as odd that this kid, stupid and insane though me might have been, made a point of recording his last, torturous thoughts, addressing his status that he felt relegated him as somehow inferior. He blamed it on others, instead of owning up to responsibility on his end. Yet, prior to the shootings, knowing that he was a virgin, many in this country that officially endorse abstinence would have considered his position almost ideal, not seeing the nightmare that he was entangled in. And I can't help but think that there is something there that we really, really need to examine. In this society of extreme everything, where judgments may seem final and haunt us forever more, and where the pressure from being seen as somehow "lesser" is very real, it can really push some troubled minds over the edge. And that, it seems to me, is something that we also need to address as a society, perhaps as much as we need to address the issue of gun violence.
Here were a couple of article that I found interesting, even though they really have little to nothing to do with my topic in this particular blog entry:
Elliot Rodger And the C-Word by Ann Brenoff of The Huffington post, May 28, 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-brenoff/elliot-rodger-and-the-c-word_b_5400621.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
In The Last 33 Years, 70 Of The 71 Mass Murderers In The U.S. All Had 1 Thing In Common by Adam Mordecai of Upworthy:
http://www.upworthy.com/in-the-last-33-years-70-of-the-71-mass-murderers-in-the-us-all-had-1-thing-in-common
It apparently drove him nuts, quite literally.
And perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to me that there is (and perhaps always has been) a stigma attached to virginity in this country that makes people who are virgins, or not yet sexually active, feel like there is something really wrong with them.
That may sound like some sort of a joke, but the tragedy that unfolded from the completely legally purchased guns of Elliot Rodger most certainly are deadly serious. Whatever else may have been wrong with him, or with his life, the fact of the matter is that it is all too easy to imagine just how much this fact that he was a virgin was really bothering him.
Yes, I know that Rodger was obviously crazy, that he reached that rare point where something snapped, and he literally just went berserk, going on his murderous rampage as some distorted cry of help, or whatever it was that you could call the massacre.
I know, also, that I wrote a blog entry about gun control in response, simply because I am of the belief that this tragedy, much like so many of the other mass shootings that the United States sees just far, far too much of, could have been completely unavoidable if you at least limit free and easy access to guns at least a little bit.
Frankly, my position has not changed on that, either. What's the big deal about background checks? Technically, our right to alcohol is guaranteed by the Constitution, since the end of the Prohibition was enforced by an amendment. Yet, no one looks twice at the fact that we need to verify someone's age, because we know it would be irresponsible to sell alcohol to minors, right? That same logic, with even more validity, could be applied to guns, particularly guns that serve no other purpose but to kill people.
Why do people that have absolutely no business possessing these monstrous machines of murder keep getting their hands on these weapons here in the United States, and not so much in other countries?
But I digress....the focus for this blog entry was supposed to be a bit different. It just seems to me that the stigma for being a virgin in a society that clearly, de facto, endorses being sexually active as some sign of success, is becoming unbearable, particularly to those who are too young to really cope with the pressure. I am not excusing the thinking and behavior, much less the action, of Elliot Roger. But the fact of the matter is that, while officially, many "leaders" in government and church, and in communities throughout the country would officially endorse abstinence, the reality is that if you actually do abstain from sexual activities or, worse, find yourself on the outside but constantly looking into the facade of a culture that, at least outwardly, shows every sign of being completely obsessed with sex, it can be an exercise in torture. It can consume you, until it is all that you think about. And it cheapens both men and women, as the act of sex becomes all that really matters, and I think that is part of the problem.
This may sound like a "light" issue, or perhaps it is something that serves as one of our many, and frankly, unfortunate, taboos in this society. It has been seemingly an endless source of jokes and even the inspiration for many movies, such as American Pie (which i enjoyed, by the way), for fictional virgins to make it their mission to finally end their virginity and "do it", so that they no longer are burdened by the very real stigma of the lower class status of being a virgin. The reality in the United States today, in a very real sense, seems to be that if you are a virgin, there is something wrong with you, and that is no joke, even if movies and comedians (and perhaps others) laugh about the subject. In other cultures, tests of adulthood (specifically manhood) did not exclusively deal with ending virginity, but it seems that we are heading towards that direction. Never mind the very adult responsibilities that you assume, never mind the less than glamorous aspects of adulthood that kids should become more acclimated with. For many kids in our party-oriented society, sexual activity, and particularly ending one's status as a virgin, become the defining action that proves one's worth, that makes someone, truly, a "man", or a "woman." I use quotes, because of course, in reality, nothing actually changes in your life after having sex, or at least the changes are far more subtle than, say, after you land your first job, or after you begin to pay some real bills, buying your first car, or buying your first home, or having your first child, or other truer measures of actually being an adult. Those are things that immediately and irreversibly change your lifestyle, one way or the other, on an every day level. Having sex generally does not do that, although sexual activity may become more commonplace (and hopefully, less stigmatized and filled with pressure).
The fact of the matter, however, is that sex takes a central part in our American life. Probably, too much. We have adds for viagra and cyalasis all of the time, on television and on the internet. Television shows and movies and comedians and musicians all focus on sex, and it is a measure of one's manhood to be able to be able to boast about keeping a woman happy in bed, and that you are somehow less of a man if you do not. It does not end with the teenage years, although sexual frustrations later in life at least happen to adults who, presumably, are better prepared to cope with it.
Not so young people, particularly young men. And when you get someone where there is something seriously wrong with the wiring in his brain, it can lead to disaster. And in this country in particular, it can have very tragic consequences, because another issue, access to guns, can come into play.
I don't have the answers. I don't know what to do about this particular problem. What I do know is that it is a problem. I was not sexually active during my high school years, but it admittedly was not voluntary. I had some girls that were interested in me, that even made what probably amounted to passes at me. Still, nothing ever happened while I was there. And hearing all of the other kids, the really cool kids, talking in blasé manner about how incredibly sexually active they were made me feel....well, inferior.
Nothing has changed. If anything, it seems that it has grown far worse over time. And it would not surprise me, personally, if the stigma of being a virgin was the cause of many more tragedies, not just this mass shooting, but probably some suicides and attempted suicides. In this society of extreme judgments, being exposed as a virgin, and revealing that, by society's standards, there really is something wrong with you, just because you have not shared intimacy with another person, is itself a sign of some sickness. Just not the kind that most people might assume that it means.
Things will continue on the way that they have been going. People (myself included) will argue within the scope of the gun debate, and let's see if anything happens with that (my guess is that nothing will change).
But it struck me as odd that this kid, stupid and insane though me might have been, made a point of recording his last, torturous thoughts, addressing his status that he felt relegated him as somehow inferior. He blamed it on others, instead of owning up to responsibility on his end. Yet, prior to the shootings, knowing that he was a virgin, many in this country that officially endorse abstinence would have considered his position almost ideal, not seeing the nightmare that he was entangled in. And I can't help but think that there is something there that we really, really need to examine. In this society of extreme everything, where judgments may seem final and haunt us forever more, and where the pressure from being seen as somehow "lesser" is very real, it can really push some troubled minds over the edge. And that, it seems to me, is something that we also need to address as a society, perhaps as much as we need to address the issue of gun violence.
Here were a couple of article that I found interesting, even though they really have little to nothing to do with my topic in this particular blog entry:
Elliot Rodger And the C-Word by Ann Brenoff of The Huffington post, May 28, 2014:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ann-brenoff/elliot-rodger-and-the-c-word_b_5400621.html?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063
In The Last 33 Years, 70 Of The 71 Mass Murderers In The U.S. All Had 1 Thing In Common by Adam Mordecai of Upworthy:
http://www.upworthy.com/in-the-last-33-years-70-of-the-71-mass-murderers-in-the-us-all-had-1-thing-in-common
On This Day in History - May 29 The End of the Byzantine Empire
Once again, it should be reiterated, that this does not pretend to be a very extensive history of what happened on this day (nor is it the most original - the links can be found down below). If you know something that I am missing, by all means, shoot me an email or leave a comment, and let me know!
Well, here's a biggie: on this day in history, Constantinople fell, not for the first time. But what made this time different was that it marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. It was the beginning of what would become the Ottoman Empire, if memory from my Byzantine history course at Rutgers serves correctly.
Also on this date, South Carolina became an official colony and, quite a few years later, Rhode Island would become the last of the original thirteen states to ratify the Constitution. In between those two dates, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech on this date, railing against the tyranny of the British and the Stamp Act. Some years later, in 1848, Wisconsin became an official state. A year later, Lincoln would coin that famous phrase that a future President would completely butcher, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time." Sojourner Truth addressed a conference for all-black women. Emperor Maximillian arrived in Mexico in 1864. The first running of the Indianapolis 55 took place. The US invaded the Dominican Republic, and would stay for the better part of a decade. The flag of the President on the United States was officially adopted and, not much later, a future President, John F. Kennedy, was born in Brookline, MA. Einstein's light-bending theory was confirmed on this day. Ecuador became an independent nation. World War I veterans marched in Washington for benefits payments that would not arrive for another thirteen years. Bing Crosby would record his famous, and hugely popular, "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" on this day in history
(really? In late May?)
Charles de Gaulle formed a new government in France. The United Nations came to an agreement on sanctions to be imposed on Rhodesia (what is Zimbabwe in the present day), which was then ruled by a white-minority government. A little over a decade later, Bishop Abel Muzorewa would become the first black prime minister of that same country (by then known as Zimbabwe). In the meantime, President Nixon had released 1,200 pages for the Watergate investigation. Colonel Oliver North admitted that profits from weapons sold to Iran went to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua. President Reagan visited Moscow. Chinese students protesting in Beijing built a statue ("The Goddess of Democracy") that was highly influenced by the Statue of Liberty - a small replica of it still stands in Arlington, Virginia. A year later, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of Russia. Olusegun Obasanjo became the first Nigerian civilian president in over a decade in a half. There was a massacre in Saudi Arabia and, a year later, in an election that I personally would take part in, French voters rejected the European Constitution.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit
May 29, 1953: Hillary and Tenzing reach Everest summit
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country's future.
Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or "Mother Goddess of the Land," by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia. The summit of Everest reaches two-thirds of the way through the air of the earth's atmosphere--at about the cruising altitude of jet airliners--and oxygen levels there are very low, temperatures are extremely cold, and weather is unpredictable and dangerous.
The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain. A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who quipped when later asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest, "Because it's there."
A second British expedition, featuring Mallory, returned in 1922, and climbers George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce reached an impressive height of more than 27,000 feet. In another attempt made by Mallory that year, seven Sherpa porters were killed in an avalanche. (The Sherpas, native to the Khumbu region, have long played an essential support role in Himalayan climbs and treks because of their strength and ability to endure the high altitudes.) In 1924, a third Everest expedition was launched by the British, and climber Edward Norton reached an elevation of 28,128 feet, 900 vertical feet short of the summit, without using artificial oxygen. Four days later, Mallory and Andrew Irvine launched a summit assault and were never seen alive again. In 1999, Mallory's largely preserved body was found high on Everest--he had suffered numerous broken bones in a fall. Whether or not he or Irvine reached the summit remains a mystery.
Several more unsuccessful summit attempts were made via Tibet's Northeast Ridge route, and after World War II Tibet was closed to foreigners. In 1949, Nepal opened its door to the outside world, and in 1950 and 1951 British expeditions made exploratory climbs up the Southeast Ridge route. In 1952, a Swiss expedition navigated the treacherous Khumbu Icefall in the first real summit attempt. Two climbers, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay, reached 28,210 feet, just below the South Summit, but had to turn back for want of supplies.
Shocked by the near-success of the Swiss expedition, a large British expedition was organized for 1953 under the command of Colonel John Hunt. In addition to the best British climbers and such highly experienced Sherpas as Tenzing Norgay, the expedition enlisted talent from the British Commonwealth, such as New Zealanders George Lowe and Edmund Hillary, the latter of whom worked as a beekeeper when not climbing mountains. Members of the expedition were equipped with specially insulated boots and clothing, portable radio equipment, and open- and closed-circuit oxygen systems.
Setting up a series of camps, the expedition pushed its way up the mountain in April and May 1953. A new passage was forged through the Khumbu Icefall, and the climbers made their way up the Western Cwm, across the Lhotse Face, and to the South Col, at about 26,000 feet. On May 26, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon launched the first assault on the summit and came within 300 feet of the top of Everest before having to turn back because one of their oxygen sets was malfunctioning.
On May 28, Tenzing and Hillary set out, setting up high camp at 27,900 feet. After a freezing, sleepless night, the pair plodded on, reaching the South Summit by 9 a.m. and a steep rocky step, some 40 feet high, about an hour later. Wedging himself in a crack in the face, Hillary inched himself up what was thereafter known as the Hillary Step. Hillary threw down a rope, and Norgay followed. At about 11:30 a.m., the climbers arrived at the top of the world.
News of the success was rushed by runner from the expedition's base camp to the radio post at Namche Bazar, and then sent by coded message to London, where Queen Elizabeth II learned of the achievement on June 1, the eve of her coronation. The next day, the news broke around the world. Later that year, Hillary and Hunt were knighted by the queen. Norgay, because he was not a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, received the lesser British Empire Medal.
In 1960, a Chinese expedition was the first to conquer the mountain from the Tibetan side, and in 1963 James Whittaker became the first American to top Everest. In 1975, Tabei Junko of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit. Three years later, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria achieved what had been previously thought impossible: climbing to the Everest summit without oxygen. Nearly two hundred climbers have died attempting to summit the mountain. A major tragedy occurred in 1996 when eight climbers from various nations died after being caught in a blizzard high on the slopes.
363 - Roman Emperor Julian defeats the Sassanid army in the Battle of Ctesiphon, under the walls of the Sassanid capital, but is unable to take the city.
757 - St Paul I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1138 - Anti-Pope Victor IV (Gregorio) overthrows self for Innocentius II
1167 - Battle of Monte Porzio - A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel
1176 - Battle at Legnano: Lombard League beats Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire
1414 - Council of Constance deposed Pope John XXIII
1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (Turks), thus ending the Byzantine Empire.
1453 - French banker Jacques Coeurs possessions confiscated
1576 - Spanish army under Mondragon conquerors Zierik sea
1592 - At the Battle of Sacheon, the Korean navy led by Admiral Yi Sun Shin, repels a Japanese army that outnumbers it nearly 3 to 1.
1630 - Gov John Winthrop begins "History of New England"
1652 - English Admiral Robert Blake drives out Dutch fleet under lt-adm Tromp
1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after Puritan Commonwealth
1677 - Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Indians.
1692 - Battle at La Hogue: English and Dutch fleet defeat France
1692 - Royal Hospital Founders Day first celebrated
1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony
1727 - Peter II (11) becomes Tsar of Russia
1733 - The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld at Quebec City.
1753 - Joseph Haydns "Krumme Teufel," premieres
1765 - Patrick Henry historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry of "Treason!" with, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" He denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.
1780 - Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals allegedly after the continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1787 - "Virginia Plan" proposed
1790 - Rhode Island becomes last of original 13 colonies ratifying Constitution
1827 - The first nautical school opened in Nantucket, MA, under the name Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School.
1848 - Wisconsin became the 30th state to join the United States.
1848 - Battle at Curtazone: Austrians beat Sardinia-Piemonte
1849 - Lincoln says "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
1849 - A patent for lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1851 - Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women's Rights Convention (Akron)
1861 - Dorothea Dix offers help in setting up hospitals for Union Army
1864 - Mexican Emperor Maximilian arrives at Vera Cruz
1868 - The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade.
1874 - Present constitution of Switzerland takes effect
1884 - First steam cable trams start in highgate
1889 - August Strindberg's "Hemsoborna," premieres in Copenhagen
1897 - 31st Belmont: J Scherrer aboard Scottish Cheiftain wins in 2:23.25
1900 - 25th Preakness: H Spencer aboard Hindus wins in 1:48.4
1900 - Trademark "Escalator" registered by Otis Elevator Co
1902 - Dutch State Mine law forms
1903 - May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
1905 - Pogrom against Jewish community in Brisk Lithuania
1909 - Frank "Home Run" Baker's 1st career home run.
1910 - Pope's encyclical on Editae Saepe, against church reformers
1910 - An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.
1911 - The first running of the Indianapolis 500 took place.
1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the "Turkey Trot" while on the job.
1913 - Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris, provoking a riot.
1914 - Ship rams Canadian ship Empress of Ireland on St Lawrence R; 1024 die
1916 - NY Giants win 17th consecutive road game
1916 - The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 - U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1917 - John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass.
1919 - Charles Strite files patent for the pop-up toaster
1919 - Einstein's light-bending prediction confirmed by Arthur Eddington
1919 - The Republic of Prekmurje founded
1922 - Ecuador became independent.
1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, and thus not subject to antitrust laws.
1924 - AEK Athens FC is established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks.
1928 - Fritz von Opel reaches 200 kph in experimental rocket car
1932 - World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1935 - Hague local museum opens
1940 - Adolf Kiefer swims world record 100 yards backstroke (58.8 sec)
1940 - Arthur Seyss-Inquart installed as Reich commissar of Hague Netherlands.
1940 - In World War II, Germans capture Ostend and Ypres in Belgium & Lille in France
1942 - Bing Crosby records "White Christmas". It became the greatest selling record to date, as it would go on to sell over 30 million copies.
1943 - Confederacy of Algiers (Churchill-Marshall-Eisenhower)
1943 - Meat and cheese rationed in US
1944 - British troops occupy Aprilia Italy
1945 - US First Marine division conquerors Shuri-castle Okinawa
1946 - KVP wins Provincial National election in Netherlands
1949 - Candid Camera, TV comedy Variety, moves to NBC
1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.
1952 - 2nd Round Conference between Dutch Antilles & Suriname ends
1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1954 - Pope Pius X issues holy declaration
1954 - First of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
1955 - Jordan government of Tewfik Abdul Huda resigns
1956 - Arnold Schoenberg's "Modern Psalm," premieres
1956 - WESH TV channel 2 in Daytona Beach-Orlando, FL (NBC) 1st broadcast
1957 - Algerian rebels kill 336 collaborators
1957 - Laos government of prince Suvanna Phuma resigns
1957 - NYC Mayor Robert Wagner says he plans to confer with the Giants & Dodgers about the proposed move to the west coast
1958 - Real Madrid wins 3rd Europe Cup 1 in Brussels
1959 - Charles de Gaulle formed French government
1960 - Everly Brothers "Cathy's Clown" hits #1
1962 - Barbra Streisand appears on "Garry Moore Show"
1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.
1965 - Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.
1965 - Phillies Dick Allen hits 529' HR out of Connie Mack Stadium
1967 - Australian Paul McManus water skis barefoot for 1:30:19
1967 - Pope Paul VI names 27 new cardinals, including Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, who later became Pope John Paul II
1968 - Manchester United wins 13rd Europe Cup 1 in London
1968 - Truth in Lending Act signed into law
1968 - UN resolved sanctions on white-minority-ruled Rhodesia
1969 - Britain's Trans-Arctic expedition makes first crossing of Arctic Sea ice
1969 - General strike in Cordoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest.
1970 - USSR performs nuclear test (underground)
1971 - Court Room by Clarence Carter hits #61
1973 - Columbia Records fires president Clive Davis for misappropriating $100,000 in funds, Davis will start Arista records
1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1974 - Northern Ireland is brought under direct rule from Westminster
1976 - "One Piece At A Time" by Johnny Cash hits #29
1976 - Only HR of Joe Niekro's 22-year career, comes off brother Phil
1977 - A J Foyt wins Indianapolis 500 for a record 4th time
1977 - NBC News and Information Service (24 hr news) ends on radio
1977 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500
1978 - First class postage now 15 cents (13 cents for 3 years)
1978 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1979 - Bishop Abel Muzorewa is sworn in as Zimbabwe's first black PM
1979 - Radio's 1st rock network "Source" premieres
1980 - "Billy Bishop Goes to War" opens at Morosco Theater NYC for 12 perfs
1980 - 53rd National Spelling Bee: Jacques Bailly wins spelling elucubrate
1980 - Attempted assassination on Vernon Jordan Jr National Urban League pres
1980 - J Turners "Juliet & Her Nurse" sold for $6,400,000 in NYC
1980 - Larry Bird beats out Magic Johnson for NBA rookie of year
1981 - US performed nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1982 - "I Know What Boys Like," by The Waitresses hits #62
1982 - First papal visit to Britain since 1531
1982 - Pentagon plans first strategy to fight a nuclear war
1983 - Yuri Dumchev of USSR throws discus a record 71.86 m
1984 - Boston Red Sox retires #9 (Ted Williams) & #4 (Joe Cronin)
1985 - Juventus wins 30th Europe Cup 1 in Brussels, 39 die in riot
1985 - Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
1985 - Juventus wins 30th Europe Cup 1 in Brussels, Belgium - 39 die in riot.
1986 - Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1987 - "Twilight Zone" director John Landis found innocent in death of actor
1987 - Michael Jackson attempts to buy Elephant Man's remains
1988 - Graeme Hick scores his 1,000th run of 1st-class cricket season
1988 - President Zia ul-Haq fires government/disbands parliament in Pakistan
1988 - U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1988 - NBC aired "To Heal A Nation," the story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 - Student protesters in China construct a replica of Statue of Liberty
1990 - An earthquake hit Peru, killing 56
1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.
1990 - Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,870.49
1990 - Rickey Henderson steals record 893rd base, breaking Ty Cobb's record
1991 - "Les Miserables," opens at ACTEA Theatre, Auckland NZ
1991 - Crevena Zvezda wins 36th Europe Cup I
1992 - White Sox Tim Raines swipes his 700th career base
1993 - Nazi's kill 5 Turkish women in Solingen Germany
1993 - Texas Ranger Jose Canseco pitches 8th inning in 15-1 loss to Red Sox, he gives up 3 runs on 2 hits & 3 walks, he damages his arm
1994 - "Joseph & the Amazing" closes at Minskoff Theater NYC after 223 perfs
1994 - "Picnic" closes at Criterion Theater NYC after 45 performances
1994 - Al Unser Jr wins 78th Indianapolis 500 in 3:06:29.006 (255.89 kph)
1994 - Great comet-iceball seen above North Sea
1994 - Hungary's Socialist Party wins parliamentary election
1996 - Space Shuttle STS 77 Endeavour 11), lands
1997 - 70th National Spelling Bee: Rebecca Sealfon wins spelling euonym
1997 - Jesse Timmedequas, found guilty of rape/murder of Megan Kanka, 7
1997 - Span scientists announce new human species in 780,000 year old fossil
1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.
1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
1999 - Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
2000 - Fiji's military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
2001 - International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers inaugurated.
2004 - The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
2004 - The Al-Khobar massacres in Saudi Arabia kill 22.
2005 - France resoundingly rejected the European Constitution.
2012 - Thousands march in protest in Johannesburg against Brett Murray's controversial painting The Spear
2012 - Facebook's problematic public listing could cost those involved $115 million from technical glitches
2012 - A 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills 24 people near Bologna, northern Italy
2012 - Indonesian police make the biggest drug bust in ten years after seizing over a million ecstasy pills valued at $45 million
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/day/may/29
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may29.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory/May-29
Well, here's a biggie: on this day in history, Constantinople fell, not for the first time. But what made this time different was that it marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. It was the beginning of what would become the Ottoman Empire, if memory from my Byzantine history course at Rutgers serves correctly.
Also on this date, South Carolina became an official colony and, quite a few years later, Rhode Island would become the last of the original thirteen states to ratify the Constitution. In between those two dates, Patrick Henry delivered a famous speech on this date, railing against the tyranny of the British and the Stamp Act. Some years later, in 1848, Wisconsin became an official state. A year later, Lincoln would coin that famous phrase that a future President would completely butcher, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, or all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all the people all of the time." Sojourner Truth addressed a conference for all-black women. Emperor Maximillian arrived in Mexico in 1864. The first running of the Indianapolis 55 took place. The US invaded the Dominican Republic, and would stay for the better part of a decade. The flag of the President on the United States was officially adopted and, not much later, a future President, John F. Kennedy, was born in Brookline, MA. Einstein's light-bending theory was confirmed on this day. Ecuador became an independent nation. World War I veterans marched in Washington for benefits payments that would not arrive for another thirteen years. Bing Crosby would record his famous, and hugely popular, "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" on this day in history
(really? In late May?)
Charles de Gaulle formed a new government in France. The United Nations came to an agreement on sanctions to be imposed on Rhodesia (what is Zimbabwe in the present day), which was then ruled by a white-minority government. A little over a decade later, Bishop Abel Muzorewa would become the first black prime minister of that same country (by then known as Zimbabwe). In the meantime, President Nixon had released 1,200 pages for the Watergate investigation. Colonel Oliver North admitted that profits from weapons sold to Iran went to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua. President Reagan visited Moscow. Chinese students protesting in Beijing built a statue ("The Goddess of Democracy") that was highly influenced by the Statue of Liberty - a small replica of it still stands in Arlington, Virginia. A year later, Boris Yeltsin was elected President of Russia. Olusegun Obasanjo became the first Nigerian civilian president in over a decade in a half. There was a massacre in Saudi Arabia and, a year later, in an election that I personally would take part in, French voters rejected the European Constitution.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit
May 29, 1953: Hillary and Tenzing reach Everest summit
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth. The two, part of a British expedition, made their final assault on the summit after spending a fitful night at 27,900 feet. News of their achievement broke around the world on June 2, the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, and Britons hailed it as a good omen for their country's future.
Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet. Called Chomo-Lungma, or "Mother Goddess of the Land," by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia. The summit of Everest reaches two-thirds of the way through the air of the earth's atmosphere--at about the cruising altitude of jet airliners--and oxygen levels there are very low, temperatures are extremely cold, and weather is unpredictable and dangerous.
The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain. A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who quipped when later asked by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest, "Because it's there."
A second British expedition, featuring Mallory, returned in 1922, and climbers George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce reached an impressive height of more than 27,000 feet. In another attempt made by Mallory that year, seven Sherpa porters were killed in an avalanche. (The Sherpas, native to the Khumbu region, have long played an essential support role in Himalayan climbs and treks because of their strength and ability to endure the high altitudes.) In 1924, a third Everest expedition was launched by the British, and climber Edward Norton reached an elevation of 28,128 feet, 900 vertical feet short of the summit, without using artificial oxygen. Four days later, Mallory and Andrew Irvine launched a summit assault and were never seen alive again. In 1999, Mallory's largely preserved body was found high on Everest--he had suffered numerous broken bones in a fall. Whether or not he or Irvine reached the summit remains a mystery.
Several more unsuccessful summit attempts were made via Tibet's Northeast Ridge route, and after World War II Tibet was closed to foreigners. In 1949, Nepal opened its door to the outside world, and in 1950 and 1951 British expeditions made exploratory climbs up the Southeast Ridge route. In 1952, a Swiss expedition navigated the treacherous Khumbu Icefall in the first real summit attempt. Two climbers, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay, reached 28,210 feet, just below the South Summit, but had to turn back for want of supplies.
Shocked by the near-success of the Swiss expedition, a large British expedition was organized for 1953 under the command of Colonel John Hunt. In addition to the best British climbers and such highly experienced Sherpas as Tenzing Norgay, the expedition enlisted talent from the British Commonwealth, such as New Zealanders George Lowe and Edmund Hillary, the latter of whom worked as a beekeeper when not climbing mountains. Members of the expedition were equipped with specially insulated boots and clothing, portable radio equipment, and open- and closed-circuit oxygen systems.
Setting up a series of camps, the expedition pushed its way up the mountain in April and May 1953. A new passage was forged through the Khumbu Icefall, and the climbers made their way up the Western Cwm, across the Lhotse Face, and to the South Col, at about 26,000 feet. On May 26, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon launched the first assault on the summit and came within 300 feet of the top of Everest before having to turn back because one of their oxygen sets was malfunctioning.
On May 28, Tenzing and Hillary set out, setting up high camp at 27,900 feet. After a freezing, sleepless night, the pair plodded on, reaching the South Summit by 9 a.m. and a steep rocky step, some 40 feet high, about an hour later. Wedging himself in a crack in the face, Hillary inched himself up what was thereafter known as the Hillary Step. Hillary threw down a rope, and Norgay followed. At about 11:30 a.m., the climbers arrived at the top of the world.
News of the success was rushed by runner from the expedition's base camp to the radio post at Namche Bazar, and then sent by coded message to London, where Queen Elizabeth II learned of the achievement on June 1, the eve of her coronation. The next day, the news broke around the world. Later that year, Hillary and Hunt were knighted by the queen. Norgay, because he was not a citizen of a Commonwealth nation, received the lesser British Empire Medal.
In 1960, a Chinese expedition was the first to conquer the mountain from the Tibetan side, and in 1963 James Whittaker became the first American to top Everest. In 1975, Tabei Junko of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit. Three years later, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria achieved what had been previously thought impossible: climbing to the Everest summit without oxygen. Nearly two hundred climbers have died attempting to summit the mountain. A major tragedy occurred in 1996 when eight climbers from various nations died after being caught in a blizzard high on the slopes.
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757 - St Paul I begins his reign as Catholic Pope
1138 - Anti-Pope Victor IV (Gregorio) overthrows self for Innocentius II
1167 - Battle of Monte Porzio - A Roman army supporting Pope Alexander III is defeated by Christian of Buch and Rainald of Dassel
1176 - Battle at Legnano: Lombard League beats Frederick Barbarossa and the Holy Roman Empire
1414 - Council of Constance deposed Pope John XXIII
1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II (Turks), thus ending the Byzantine Empire.
1453 - French banker Jacques Coeurs possessions confiscated
1576 - Spanish army under Mondragon conquerors Zierik sea
1592 - At the Battle of Sacheon, the Korean navy led by Admiral Yi Sun Shin, repels a Japanese army that outnumbers it nearly 3 to 1.
1630 - Gov John Winthrop begins "History of New England"
1652 - English Admiral Robert Blake drives out Dutch fleet under lt-adm Tromp
1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after Puritan Commonwealth
1677 - Treaty of Middle Plantation establishes peace between the Virginia colonists and the local Indians.
1692 - Battle at La Hogue: English and Dutch fleet defeat France
1692 - Royal Hospital Founders Day first celebrated
1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony
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1733 - The right of Canadians to keep Indian slaves is upheld at Quebec City.
1753 - Joseph Haydns "Krumme Teufel," premieres
1765 - Patrick Henry historic speech against the Stamp Act, answering a cry of "Treason!" with, "If this be treason, make the most of it!" He denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.
1780 - Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton massacres Colonel Abraham Buford's continentals allegedly after the continentals surrender. 113 Americans are killed.
1787 - "Virginia Plan" proposed
1790 - Rhode Island becomes last of original 13 colonies ratifying Constitution
1827 - The first nautical school opened in Nantucket, MA, under the name Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School.
1848 - Wisconsin became the 30th state to join the United States.
1848 - Battle at Curtazone: Austrians beat Sardinia-Piemonte
1849 - Lincoln says "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."
1849 - A patent for lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1851 - Sojourner Truth addresses first Black Women's Rights Convention (Akron)
1861 - Dorothea Dix offers help in setting up hospitals for Union Army
1864 - Mexican Emperor Maximilian arrives at Vera Cruz
1868 - The assassination of Michael Obrenovich III, Prince of Serbia, in Belgrade.
1874 - Present constitution of Switzerland takes effect
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1889 - August Strindberg's "Hemsoborna," premieres in Copenhagen
1897 - 31st Belmont: J Scherrer aboard Scottish Cheiftain wins in 2:23.25
1900 - 25th Preakness: H Spencer aboard Hindus wins in 1:48.4
1900 - Trademark "Escalator" registered by Otis Elevator Co
1902 - Dutch State Mine law forms
1903 - May coup d'etat: Alexander Obrenovich, King of Serbia, and Queen Draga, are assassinated in Belgrade by the Black Hand (Crna Ruka) organization.
1905 - Pogrom against Jewish community in Brisk Lithuania
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1910 - Pope's encyclical on Editae Saepe, against church reformers
1910 - An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.
1911 - The first running of the Indianapolis 500 took place.
1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the "Turkey Trot" while on the job.
1913 - Igor Stravinsky's ballet score The Rite of Spring is premiered in Paris, provoking a riot.
1914 - Ship rams Canadian ship Empress of Ireland on St Lawrence R; 1024 die
1916 - NY Giants win 17th consecutive road game
1916 - The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 - U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1917 - John F. Kennedy was born in Brookline, Mass.
1919 - Charles Strite files patent for the pop-up toaster
1919 - Einstein's light-bending prediction confirmed by Arthur Eddington
1919 - The Republic of Prekmurje founded
1922 - Ecuador became independent.
1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, and thus not subject to antitrust laws.
1924 - AEK Athens FC is established on the anniversary of the siege of Constantinople by the Turks.
1928 - Fritz von Opel reaches 200 kph in experimental rocket car
1932 - World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1935 - Hague local museum opens
1940 - Adolf Kiefer swims world record 100 yards backstroke (58.8 sec)
1940 - Arthur Seyss-Inquart installed as Reich commissar of Hague Netherlands.
1940 - In World War II, Germans capture Ostend and Ypres in Belgium & Lille in France
1942 - Bing Crosby records "White Christmas". It became the greatest selling record to date, as it would go on to sell over 30 million copies.
1943 - Confederacy of Algiers (Churchill-Marshall-Eisenhower)
1943 - Meat and cheese rationed in US
1944 - British troops occupy Aprilia Italy
1945 - US First Marine division conquerors Shuri-castle Okinawa
1946 - KVP wins Provincial National election in Netherlands
1949 - Candid Camera, TV comedy Variety, moves to NBC
1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in single engine plane.
1952 - 2nd Round Conference between Dutch Antilles & Suriname ends
1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1954 - Pope Pius X issues holy declaration
1954 - First of the annual Bilderberg conferences.
1955 - Jordan government of Tewfik Abdul Huda resigns
1956 - Arnold Schoenberg's "Modern Psalm," premieres
1956 - WESH TV channel 2 in Daytona Beach-Orlando, FL (NBC) 1st broadcast
1957 - Algerian rebels kill 336 collaborators
1957 - Laos government of prince Suvanna Phuma resigns
1957 - NYC Mayor Robert Wagner says he plans to confer with the Giants & Dodgers about the proposed move to the west coast
1958 - Real Madrid wins 3rd Europe Cup 1 in Brussels
1959 - Charles de Gaulle formed French government
1960 - Everly Brothers "Cathy's Clown" hits #1
1962 - Barbra Streisand appears on "Garry Moore Show"
1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.
1965 - Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.
1965 - Phillies Dick Allen hits 529' HR out of Connie Mack Stadium
1967 - Australian Paul McManus water skis barefoot for 1:30:19
1967 - Pope Paul VI names 27 new cardinals, including Karol Wojtyla, archbishop of Krakow, who later became Pope John Paul II
1968 - Manchester United wins 13rd Europe Cup 1 in London
1968 - Truth in Lending Act signed into law
1968 - UN resolved sanctions on white-minority-ruled Rhodesia
1969 - Britain's Trans-Arctic expedition makes first crossing of Arctic Sea ice
1969 - General strike in Cordoba, Argentina, leading to the Cordobazo civil unrest.
1970 - USSR performs nuclear test (underground)
1971 - Court Room by Clarence Carter hits #61
1973 - Columbia Records fires president Clive Davis for misappropriating $100,000 in funds, Davis will start Arista records
1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1974 - Northern Ireland is brought under direct rule from Westminster
1976 - "One Piece At A Time" by Johnny Cash hits #29
1976 - Only HR of Joe Niekro's 22-year career, comes off brother Phil
1977 - A J Foyt wins Indianapolis 500 for a record 4th time
1977 - NBC News and Information Service (24 hr news) ends on radio
1977 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1977 - Janet Guthrie becomes 1st woman to drive in Indy 500
1978 - First class postage now 15 cents (13 cents for 3 years)
1978 - USSR performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk USSR
1979 - Bishop Abel Muzorewa is sworn in as Zimbabwe's first black PM
1979 - Radio's 1st rock network "Source" premieres
1980 - "Billy Bishop Goes to War" opens at Morosco Theater NYC for 12 perfs
1980 - 53rd National Spelling Bee: Jacques Bailly wins spelling elucubrate
1980 - Attempted assassination on Vernon Jordan Jr National Urban League pres
1980 - J Turners "Juliet & Her Nurse" sold for $6,400,000 in NYC
1980 - Larry Bird beats out Magic Johnson for NBA rookie of year
1981 - US performed nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1982 - "I Know What Boys Like," by The Waitresses hits #62
1982 - First papal visit to Britain since 1531
1982 - Pentagon plans first strategy to fight a nuclear war
1983 - Yuri Dumchev of USSR throws discus a record 71.86 m
1984 - Boston Red Sox retires #9 (Ted Williams) & #4 (Joe Cronin)
1985 - Juventus wins 30th Europe Cup 1 in Brussels, 39 die in riot
1985 - Amputee Steve Fonyo completes cross-Canada marathon at Victoria, British Columbia, after 14 months.
1985 - Juventus wins 30th Europe Cup 1 in Brussels, Belgium - 39 die in riot.
1986 - Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1987 - "Twilight Zone" director John Landis found innocent in death of actor
1987 - Michael Jackson attempts to buy Elephant Man's remains
1988 - Graeme Hick scores his 1,000th run of 1st-class cricket season
1988 - President Zia ul-Haq fires government/disbands parliament in Pakistan
1988 - U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1988 - NBC aired "To Heal A Nation," the story of Jan Scruggs' effort to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 - Student protesters in China construct a replica of Statue of Liberty
1990 - An earthquake hit Peru, killing 56
1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.
1990 - Dow Jones avg hits a record 2,870.49
1990 - Rickey Henderson steals record 893rd base, breaking Ty Cobb's record
1991 - "Les Miserables," opens at ACTEA Theatre, Auckland NZ
1991 - Crevena Zvezda wins 36th Europe Cup I
1992 - White Sox Tim Raines swipes his 700th career base
1993 - Nazi's kill 5 Turkish women in Solingen Germany
1993 - Texas Ranger Jose Canseco pitches 8th inning in 15-1 loss to Red Sox, he gives up 3 runs on 2 hits & 3 walks, he damages his arm
1994 - "Joseph & the Amazing" closes at Minskoff Theater NYC after 223 perfs
1994 - "Picnic" closes at Criterion Theater NYC after 45 performances
1994 - Al Unser Jr wins 78th Indianapolis 500 in 3:06:29.006 (255.89 kph)
1994 - Great comet-iceball seen above North Sea
1994 - Hungary's Socialist Party wins parliamentary election
1996 - Space Shuttle STS 77 Endeavour 11), lands
1997 - 70th National Spelling Bee: Rebecca Sealfon wins spelling euonym
1997 - Jesse Timmedequas, found guilty of rape/murder of Megan Kanka, 7
1997 - Span scientists announce new human species in 780,000 year old fossil
1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.
1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
1999 - Olusegun Obasanjo takes office as President of Nigeria, the first elected and civilian head of state in Nigeria after 16 years of military rule.
2000 - Fiji's military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
2001 - International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers inaugurated.
2004 - The World War II Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
2004 - The Al-Khobar massacres in Saudi Arabia kill 22.
2005 - France resoundingly rejected the European Constitution.
2012 - Thousands march in protest in Johannesburg against Brett Murray's controversial painting The Spear
2012 - Facebook's problematic public listing could cost those involved $115 million from technical glitches
2012 - A 5.9 magnitude earthquake kills 24 people near Bologna, northern Italy
2012 - Indonesian police make the biggest drug bust in ten years after seizing over a million ecstasy pills valued at $45 million
The following links are to web sites that were used to complete this blog entry:
http://www.historyorb.com/day/may/29
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/hillary-and-tenzing-reach-everest-summit
http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may29.htm
http://www.infoplease.com/dayinhistory/May-29
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