I read the book The Day the World Ended https://www.amazon.com/Day-World-Ended-Gordon-Thomas/dp/0812885104
This would make one hell of a movie.
May 16, 1866: The U.S. Congress replaces the “half dime” coin with the five cent piece, or “nickel".
Half dimes (or “half dismes”), minted since 1792, are much smaller than dimes in diameter and thickness, appearing to be “half dimes”. In the 1860s, powerful nickel interests successfully lobby for the creation of new coins, which would be made of a copper-nickel alloy. Production of such coins began in 1865, and were struck in two denominations — three and five cents (the latter introduced in 1866).
The introduction of the copper-nickel five-cent pieces will make the silver coins of the same denomination redundant, and they will be discontinued in 1873.
I agree.
May 16,1918: The Sedition Act of 1918is enacted, making it illegal to criticize the US Government during wartime. The law is repealed in 1920.
May 17, 1990: The General Assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO) eliminates homosexuality from their list of psychiatric diseases.
For a long time in Germany, May 17 had been unofficially labelled as a sort of “Gay Day.” Written in the date format “17.5.”, it had a natural affinity with Paragraph 175 of the Penal Code, the rule dealing with homosexuality (homosexuals were called "one hundred seventy-fivers”).
The day, as a concept, will be conceived in 2004. A year-long campaign will culminate in the first International Day Against Homophobia on May 17, 2005. 24,000 individuals as well as organizations will sign an appeal to support the “IDAHO initiative”. Activities for the day will take place in many countries, including the first LGBT events ever to take place in the Congo, China, and Bulgaria. This day will now be known as the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, and aims to coordinate international events that raise awareness of LGBT rights violations, and stimulate interest in LGBT rights work worldwide. By 2016, the commemorations will place in 132 countries across the globe.
May 18, 1927: The Bath Township School Massacre leaves 45 dead including the killer, Andrew Kehoe. Another 58 are wounded. 36 of the dead are children. This is America’s deadliest school killing spree.
May 18, 1980: Mount St. Helens (known as Lawetlat’la to the indigenous Cowlitz people, and Loowit or Louwala-Clough to the Klickitat) erupts in Washington State, killing 57 people and causing $3 billion in damage. It is an active stratovolcano located in Skamania County, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It takes its English name from the British diplomat Lord StHelens, a friend of explorer George Vancouver, who made a survey of the area in the late 18th century. The volcano is located in the Cascade Range and is part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc, a segment of the Pacific Ring of Fire that includes over 160 active volcanoes. This volcano is well known for its ash explosions and pyroclastic flows.
This major eruption will be the deadliest and most economically destructive volcanic event in U.S. history. Fifty-seven people will be killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles of railways, and 185 miles of highway will be destroyed. A massive debris avalanche triggered by an earthquake measuring 5.1 on the Richter scale has caused an eruption that will reduce the elevation of the mountain’s summit from 9,677feet to 8,363feet, leaving a 1 mile-wide horseshoe-shaped crater. The debris avalanche will be up to 0.7 cubic miles in volume. The Mount St. Helens National Volcanic Monument will be created to preserve the volcano and allow for the eruption’s aftermath to be scientifically studied.
May 19, 1864: Nathaniel Hawthorne dies.
May 19, 1962: A 45th birthday salute to U.S. President John F. Kennedy takes place at Madison Square Garden, New York City, attended by more than 15,000 people. The highlight is Marilyn Monroe’s rendition of "Happy Birthday.”
Monroe’s dress is made of a sheer flesh-colored marquisette fabric, with 2,500 shimmering rhinestones sewn into it. The dress is so tight-fitting that she has difficulty putting it on; she wears nothing under it.
Monroe sings the traditional “Happy Birthday to You” lyrics in a sultry, intimate voice, with “Mr. President” inserted as Kennedy’s name. She continues the song with a snippet from the classic song, “Thanks for the Memory”, for which she has written new lyrics specifically aimed at Kennedy.
*Thanks, Mr. President
For all the things you've done
The battles that you've won
The way you deal with U.S. Steel
And our problems by the ton
We thank you so much*
Afterwards, as an enormous birthday cake is presented to him, President Kennedy comes on stage and jokes about Monroe’s version of the song, saying, “I can now retire from politics after having had Happy Birthday sung to me in such a sweet, wholesome way,” alluding to Marilyn’s delivery, skintight dress, and image as a sex symbol.
The performance is to be one of Monroe’s last major public appearances before her death less than three months later on August 5, 1962.
May 20, 1891: The first public display of Thomas Edison’s prototype Kinetoscope, an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope is designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope is not a movie projector, but introduces the basic approach that will become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video. It creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. A process using roll film had been used by Edison in 1889, and subsequently developed by his employee William Dickson between 1889 and 1892.
The first public demonstration of a prototype Kinetoscope is given at the laboratory for approximately 150 members of the National Federation of Women’s Clubs. The New York Sun will describe what the club women see in the “small pine box” they encountered:
“In the top of the box was a hole perhaps an inch in diameter. As they looked through the hole they saw the picture of a man. It was a most marvelous picture. It bowed and smiled and waved its hands and took off its hat with the most perfect naturalness and grace. Every motion was perfect….”
The man is Dickson; the little movie, approximately three seconds long, will be referred to as the Dickson Greeting.
May 21, 1936: Sada Abe is arrested after asphyxiating her lover, Kichizō Ishida, and wandering the streets of Tokyo for days with his severed genitals in her kimono. Her story soon will soon become one of Japan’s most notorious scandals.
With a notorious background in prostitution, Abe had begun work as an apprentice at the Yoshidaya restaurant on February 1, 1936. The owner of this establishment, Kichizō Ishida, 42 at the time, was married. The two of them soon entered into a sexual relationship. Of Ishida, Abe later said, "It is hard to say exactly what was so good about Ishida. But it was impossible to say anything bad about his looks, his attitude, his skill as a lover, the way he expressed his feelings. I had never met such a sexy man.”
After a two-week encounter ended, Abe became agitated and began drinking excessively. She said that with Ishida she had come to know true love for the first time in her life, and the thought of Ishida being back with his wife made her intensely jealous. On the morning of May 18, 1936, as Ishida was asleep, Abe wrapped her sash twice around his neck and strangled him to death. After lying with Ishida’s body for a few hours, she next severed his genitalia with a kitchen knife and and kept them until her arrest three days later.
Abe is arrested and interrogated over eight sessions. When asked why she had severed Ishida’s genitalia, Abe replies, "Because I couldn’t take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories.”
After her arrest, Ishida’s (average-sized) penis and testicles will be moved to Tokyo University Medical School’s pathology museum. They will be put on public display soon after the end of World War II, but will have since disappeared.
The story will become a national sensation in Japan, acquiring mythic overtones, and will be interpreted by artists, philosophers, novelists and filmmakers. Abe will be released after having served five years in prison and will go on to write an autobiography. She will live until 1971.
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.
Called “Buoying Vessels Over Shoals,” Lincoln envisions a system of waterproof fabric bladders that could be inflated when necessary to help ease a stuck ship over obstacles. When crew members knew their ship was stuck, or at risk of hitting a shallow, Lincoln’s invention could be activated, which would inflate the air chambers along the bottom of the watercraft to lift it above the water’s surface, providing enough clearance to avoid a disaster. As part of the research process, Lincoln designed a scale model of a ship outfitted with the device. This model (built and assembled with the assistance of a Springfield, Ill., mechanic named Walter Davis) will be on display at the Smithsonian Institution.
May 22, 1915: The Quintinshill Rail Accident in Scotland near Gretna Green kills 226 and injures 246. Errors and shift changes by the signalmen at a crossing lead to a collision between a standing train and a moving train. A third speeding passenger train then collides with the initial wreck. This is Britain’s deadliest rail accident. The two signalmen were found guilty of neglect and sentenced to a year in jail. After release, both were re-employed by the railroad.
May 23, 1934: Infamous bank robbers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are ambushed by police and killed on a rural road in Bienville Parish, Louisiana.
On May 21, posse members from Texas were in Shreveport, Louisiana when they learned that Barrow and Parker were to go to Bienville Parish that evening with Frank Methvin. The full posse set up an ambush along Louisiana State Highway 154 south of Gibsland. The group was in place by 9p.m. and waited through the whole next day with no sign of the murderers.
At approximately 9:15 a.m. on May 23, the posse are still concealed in the bushes and almost ready to concede defeat, when they hear Barrow’s stolen Ford V8 approaching at a high speed. Their official report has Barrow stopping to speak with Methvin’s father, who has been planted there with his truck that morning to distract Barrow and force him into the lane closer to the posse. The lawmen open fire, killing Barrow and Parker while shooting about 130 rounds. Barrow is killed instantly by a head shot, Parker screams as she realizes that Barrow is dead, before the shooting begins in her direction. The officers empty all their weapons at the car.
According to statements made by two of the officers:
“Each of us six officers had a shotgun and an automatic rifle and pistols. We opened fire with the automatic rifles. They were emptied before the car got even with us. Then we used shotguns…. There was smoke coming from the car, and it looked like it was on fire. After shooting the shotguns, we emptied the pistols at the car, which had passed us and ran into a ditch about 50 yards on down the road. It almost turned over. We kept shooting at the car even after it stopped. We weren’t taking any chances.”
Parish coroner Dr. J. L. Wade’s 1934 report will list 17 separate entrance wounds on Barrow’s body and 26 on Parker’s, including several headshots on each, and one that had snapped Barrow’s spinal column. Undertaker C. F. “Boots” Bailey will have difficulty embalming the bodies because of all the bullet holes.
May 24, 1883: The Brooklyn Bridge, connecting Manhattan and Brooklyn, is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction. Although technically a suspension bridge, it uses a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge design. The towers are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The limestone was quarried at the Clark Quarry in Essex County, New York. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New York by schooner.
Over the years, the Brooklyn Bridge will undergo several reconfigurations; upon opening it carries horse-drawn vehicles and elevated railway lines, but in the future will carry vehicular, pedestrian, and bicycle traffic. Commercial vehicles will be banned from the bridge.
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 will visit one of the cellars about 102 years later, in 1978, it will discover, on the wall, a fading inscription reading: "Who loveth not wine, women and song, he remaineth a fool his whole life long.”
May 25, 1925: John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution in Tennessee.
The Scopes Trial, formally known as The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, is an American legal case in July 1925 in which a substitute high school teacher, John T. Scopes, is accused of violating Tennessee’s Butler Act, which has made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. The trial is deliberately staged in order to attract publicity to the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, where it will be held. Scopes is unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he purposely incriminates himself so that the case could have a defendant.
Scopes will be found guilty and fined $100, but the verdict will be overturned on a technicality. The trial will serve its purpose of drawing intense national publicity, as national reporters flock to Dayton to cover the big-name lawyers who had agreed to represent each side. William Jennings Bryan, three-time presidential candidate, will argue for the prosecution, while Clarence Darrow, the famed defense attorney, will speak for Scopes.
Bryan will chastise evolution for teaching children that humans were but one of 35,000 types of mammals, and bemoaned the notion that human beings were descended “Not even from American monkeys, but from old world monkeys”.
May 26, 1868: The Impeachment of President Andrew Johnson ends with his acquittal by one vote.
Impeachment procedings began on February 24, when the House of Representatives adopted eleven articles of impeachment detailing his “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The House’s primary charge against Johnson was violation of the Tenure of Office Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in March 1867, over the President’s veto.
The House approved the articles of impeachment on March 2–3, and forwarded them to the Senate. The trial in the Senate began three days later, with Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase presiding. On May 16, the Senate failed to convict Johnson on one of the articles, with the 35–19 vote in favor of conviction falling short of the necessary two-thirds majority by a single vote. A ten-day recess was called before attempting to convict him on additional articles.
The delay does not change the outcome, however, as on May 26, it fails to convict the President on two articles, both by the same margin; after which the trial is adjourned.
This is the first impeachment of a President since creation of the office in 1789. It is the culmination of a lengthy political battle between Johnson, a lifelong Democrat, and the Republican majority in Congress over how best to deal with the defeated Southern states following the conclusion of the Civil War. The impeachment and subsequent trial (and acquittal) of Johnson will be among the most dramatic events in the political life of the nation during the Reconstruction Era.
May 27, 1933: The Walt Disney Company releases the cartoon Three Little Pigs, with its hit song "Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” The title characters are cast as Fifer Pig, Fiddler Pig and Practical Pig. The first two are depicted as both frivolous and arrogant. The story has been somewhat softened. The first two pigs still get their houses blown down, but escape from the wolf. Also, the wolf is not boiled to death but simply burns his behind and runs away. Three sequels will soon follow in 1934, 1936 and 1939 respectively as a result of the short’s popularity.
“Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf” is written by Frank Churchill with additional lyrics by Ann Ronell, which originally features in the cartoon, where it is sung by Fiddler Pig and Fifer Pig (voiced by Mary Moder and Dorothy Compton, respectively) as they arrogantly believe their houses of straw and twigs will protect them from the Big Bad Wolf (voiced by Billy Bletcher). The song’s theme will make it a huge hit during the 1930s and it will remain one of the most well-known Disney songs, being covered by numerous artists and musical groups. Additionally, it will be the inspiration for the title of Edward Albee’s 1963 play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
May 28, 1937: Near Callander, Ontario, Canada, the Dionne quintuplets are born to Oliva and Elzire Dionne; they will be the first quintuplets known to have survived their infancy.
The Dionne girls are born two months premature. After four months with their family, they will be made wards of the state for the next nine years under the Dionne Quintuplets’ Guardianship Act, 1935. The Ontario provincial government and those around them will profit by making them a significant tourist attraction.
The identical quintuplet girls are, in order of birth:
- Yvonne Édouilda Marie Dionne (will die in 2001)
- Annette Lillianne Marie Allard (will still be alive in 2019)
- Cécile Marie Émilda Langlois (will still be alive in 2019)
- Émilie Marie Jeanne Dionne (will die in 1954)
- Marie Reine Alma Houle (will die in 1970)
Their mother, Elzire, will report having had cramps in her third month of pregnancy, and passing a strange object, which may have been a sixth fetus.
May 29, 1913: Igor Stravinsky’s ballet score The Rite of Spring receives its premiere performance in Paris, France, provoking a riot.
Paris’s Théâtre des Champs-Élysées is a new structure, and a dress rehearsal was held in the presence of members of the press and invited guests. According to Stravinsky, all went peacefully. However, one critic foresaw possible trouble; he wondered how the public would receive the work, and suggested that they might react badly if they thought they were being mocked.
On the evening of May 29, the disturbances in the audience begin during the Introduction, and grow noisier when the curtain rises on the stamping dancers in “Augurs of Spring”. But a music historian will assert, “it was not Stravinsky’s music that did the shocking. It was the ugly earthbound lurching and stomping devised by Vaslav Nijinsky.” It is soon impossible to hear the music on the stage. In his autobiography, Stravinsky will write that the derisive laughter that greeted the first bars of the Introduction disgusted him, and that he left the auditorium to watch the rest of the performance from the stage wings. The demonstrations, he says, grew into “a terrific uproar” which, along with the on-stage noises, drowned out the voice of Nijinsky who was shouting the step numbers to the dancers.
At this time, a Parisian ballet audience typically consists of two diverse groups: the wealthy and fashionable set, who are expecting to see a traditional performance with beautiful music, and a “Bohemian” group who would acclaim anything that is new. The trouble begins when the two factions begin attacking each other, but their mutual anger is soon diverted towards the orchestra: “Everything available was tossed in our direction, but we continued to play on”. Around forty of the worst offenders are ejected. Through all the disturbances the performance continues without interruption. The unrest recedes significantly during Part II, and by some accounts the final “Sacrificial Dance” is watched in reasonable silence. At the end there are several curtain calls for the dancers, for the orchestra, and for Stravinsky and Nijinsky before the evening’s program continues.
May 30, 1883: A stampede on the recently-opened Brooklyn Bridge.
The tragic incident starts when a woman trips and falls descending the wooden stairs on the Manhattan side of the bridge. This causes another woman to scream at the top of her lungs, which causes those nearby to rush towards the scene. The commotion sparks a chain reaction of confusion, as more and more people panic and mob the narrow staircase, creating a massive pileup. Thousands are on the promenade, quickly turning the situation deadly.
Believing a collapse is imminent, terrified pedestrians scramble for the exit, trampling one another. Panicked men, women and children pile on top of each another and become trapped against the iron fences that line the narrow promenade. In true old-time New York fashion, pickpockets come to rob the helpless victims.
Eventually, some quick-thinking workers are able to cut away some of the iron fence, allowing trapped victims to escape from the promenade onto the streetcar tracks below. Afterwards, The New York Times will describe a vivid, gruesome scene, littered with gloves, shawls, handkerchiefs, smashed jewelry, crumpled men’s and women’s hats, and shredded trimming from ladies’ dresses. Broken canes and torn parasols spattered with blood are strewn about the roadway. 12 are dead on the stairs, and more than 35 are wounded.