May 21, 1936: Sada Abe is arrested after erotically asphyxiating her lover, Kichizo Ishida, and wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with his severed genitals in her kimono. Her story soon becomes one of Japan’s most notorious scandals.
May 22, 1915: Mount Lassen in California erupts. Mount Lassen and Mount St. Helens are the only volcanoes in the lower 48 states to erupt in the twentieth century.
May 22, 1849: Future U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is issued a patent for an invention to lift boats, making him the only U.S. President to ever hold a patent.
May 23, 1964: The Solway Firth Spaceman photographis snapped in Cumbria, England.
A firefighter named Jim Templeton was using his Kodak to take some pictures of his daughter outside wearing her new dress. He is later shocked to find a mysterious Spaceman appearing behind the little girl in one of the developed pictures. The photo gains worldwide attention and weirdness ensues.
May 23, 1934: Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are ambushed by police and killed in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
May 24, 1964: The Estadio Nacional Disaster leaves at least 328 dead in Lima. The scene was a tightly contested soccer match between Argentina and Peru. Late in the game a referee overturns a goal for the home team. Angry fans enter the field. Police respond with tear gas. There is panic as thousands of people try to leave. Shots are fired. People are crushed trying to get out.
This is the deadliest sports stadium disaster in history.
May 24, 1883: The Brooklyn Bridge, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
The bridge was built with numerous passageways and compartments in its anchorages. New York City rented out the large vaults under the bridge’s Manhattan anchorage in order to fund the bridge. The vaults were used to store wine, as they were always at 60 °F (16 °C). This was called the “Blue Grotto” because of a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to an opening at the entrance. When New York visited one of the cellars about 102 years later, in 1978, it discovered, on the wall, a “fading inscription” reading: “Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long.”
May 25, 1950: The Green Hornet Streetcar Accidentkills 34 in Chicago.
May 25, 1925: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in Tennessee.
May 26, 1896: The Point Ellice Bridge Disasterkills 55.
**May 26, 1868: **The Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson ends with his acquittal by one vote.
May 27, 1962: An intentional fire meant to destroy trash in a landfill is set in Centralia, Pennsylvania-- with hopes of cleaning up the area for Memorial Day. The burning garbage ignites a coal seam underground, and the Centralia Mine fireensues. Attempts to put out the fire are fruitless. Years pass. In 1981 a child falls into a sinkhole created by the fire, but he is fortunately rescued. Poisonous gases are determined to be coming from the fire underground, and in 1992 (a full 30 years after the fire began) all of Centralia is condemned. Most of the 1000 or so residents leave. A few resist. Today approximately 7 people still live in Centralia. By agreement once they are gone, their homes can no longer be used. Centralia is now a tourist destination, where the curious can see the remnants of an abandoned Town under which a toxic fire still burns. The fire beneath Centralia is expected to continue there for at least another 250 years.
May 27, 1907: Bubonic plague breaks out in San Francisco.
May 27, 1942 - Doris “Dorie” Miller of Waco, Texas, a cook aboard the USS West Virginia became the first African-American to receive the Navy Cross for displaying “extraordinary courage and disregard for his own personal safety” during Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor
May 28, 1965: The Dhanbad Coal Mine Disaster kills 268 miners in India.
May 28, 1937: The German automobile manufacturer Volkswagen is founded.
May 29, 1914: The ocean liner HMS *Empress of Ireland *collides with the Norwegian ship *Storstad *in heavy fog during the early morning hours on the St Lawrence river. The *Empress of Ireland * sinks in 14 minutes. 1012 of the 1477 people on board die. This accident is often referred to as “Canada’s Titanic” and is the deadliest disaster in Canadian maritime history. Here is another interesting account with personal stories.
There was an unlikely purported link between this disaster and the *Titanic *sinking of two years earlier. One of the stokers who survived the *Empress of Ireland *sinking was William Clark. Clark had also been a survivor from the *Titanic *sinking in 1912. It is said that after this second sinking he decided to give up on a life on the sea.
May 29, 1953: Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest, on Tenzing Norgay’s 39th birthday.
I met Edmund Hillary when I was about 12, following a speech/slide show he gave. He was a very amicable (and tall) man who took the trouble to talk with me for about 10 minutes.
Very cool! Thanks for sharing this!
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May 30, 1937: The Memorial Day Massacre occurs when police fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters in Chicago who were demonstrating in support of steel workers. 9 others suffered permanent disabilities and still others received severe head wounds after being beaten with clubs.