Events:
1861 - American Civil War: In order to help pay for the war effort, the United States government issues the first income tax as part of the Revenue Act of 1861 (3% of all incomes over US $800; rescinded in 1872).
1949 - In Ecuador an earthquake destroys 50 towns and kills more than 6000.
1999 - Mark McGwire becomes the 16th member of the 500 home run club with a home run at Busch Stadium in St. Louis, Missouri. (yay hometown fact)
Births:
1930 - Neil Armstrong, astronaut
1964 - Adam Yauch, American musician (MCA from Beastie Boys)
Presidents used to be inaugurated, I think until 1936. I suppose March 4 was chosen as the day because what with the primitive conditions in 1800 it might take four months to reach Washington after being elected.
996 - Sixteen-year-old Otto III is crowned Holy Roman Emperor.
1856 - Lawrence, Kansas is captured and burned by pro-slavery forces.
1881 - The American Red Cross is established by Clara Barton.
1904 - Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) founded in Paris.
1917 - Great Atlanta fire of 1917
1927 - Charles Lindbergh touchs down at Le Bourget Field in Paris, completing the world’s first solo nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
1932 - Amelia Earhart, because of bad weather, lands in a pasture in Derry, Northern Ireland, becoming the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.
1956 - Nuclear testing: In the Pacific Ocean, Bikini Atoll is nearly obliterated by the first airborne explosion of a hydrogen bomb.
1980 - Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back opens in theaters.
2004 - Sherpa Pemba Dorje climbs Mount Everest in 8 hours 10 minutes, breaking his rival Sherpa Lakpa Gelu’s record from the previous year.
Births
427 BC - Plato, Greek philosopher (d. 347 BC)
1526 - King Philip II of Spain (d. 1598)
1792 - Gaspard-Gustave Coriolis, French scientist (d. 1843)
1844 - Henri Rousseau, French artist (d. 1910)
1972 - The Notorious B.I.G., American musician (d. 1997)
Facts:
1914 - Charlie Chaplin first appears as “The Tramp”, as his first film Kid Auto Races At Venice is released at Keystone Studios.
1964 - The Beatles arrive on their first visit to the United States.
1979 - Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either planet was known to science. (I comment on this to my grade school classmates, and get promptly branded as an idiot. “Everyone knows that Pluto is the farthest planet!”, they exclaim. Attempts to prove that for the next several years, this will not be the case prove fruitless. Moronic science teacher agrees with the rest of the class)
Births:
1962 - Eddie Izzard, British actor and comedian
1965 - Chris Rock, American comedian and actor
Good day for funny mother fuckers to be born.
Deaths:
1979 - Josef Mengele, Nazi war criminal (b. 1911)
Events:
Mutiny on the Bounty (1789)
Admiral Farragut captures New Orleans (1862)
Thor Heyerdahl sets sail on the Kon-Tiki (1947)
(Clearly an auspicious day for sea voyages, unless you’re a Captain in the Royal Navy.)
Births:
Saddam Hussein (1937)
Jessica Alba (1981)
(And people say there’s nothing to astrology!)
Bonus birth: Jorge “Hurley” Garcia (1979)
Death:
Conrad of Montferrat, Crusader King of Jerusalem, assassinated by the original assasins themselves, the Hashshashin (1192)
Make that “noteworthy”. I’m beginning to notice a disturbing undercurrent in my life, though. My unsocial insecurity number ends in “666”. And now I found out I was born on Antichristmas Day. Good thing I’m not stupidstitious.
64 The great fire of Rome
1536 birth of the Church of England
1830 Uruguay adopts its constution
1873 Oscar II crowned king of Norway
1898 Madame Curie discovers…Polonium
1925 Hitler publishes his manifesto (maybe I should have left that one out)
1944 Tojo retires as PM of Japan
1966 Gemini 10 is launched
1976 Nadia Comanechi scores the first ever perfect 10 score
1977 Vietnam joins the UN
Births
1670 Giovanni Bononcini (composer)
1913 Red Skelton (actor/comedian)
1918 Nelson Mandela (politician/nobel prize winner)
1921 John Glenn (astronaut/senator)
1940 James Brolin (better known as Mr Streisand)
1967 Vin Diesel (wannabe actor)
19?? ME!!!
Deaths
1610 Michaelangelo Merisi (artist)
1817 Jane Austen (writer)
1872 Benito Juarez (mexican president)
1918 Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna
Prince Ioann Konstantinovich
Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich
Prince Igor Konstantinovich
Royal members of the Romanov family, executed by the bolsheviks
Events:
1868 - President Andrew Johnson is acquitted during his impeachment trial, by one vote in the United States Senate.
1918 - The Sedition Act is passed by the U.S. Congress, making criticism of the government a jailable offense.
1943 - World War II: The Dambuster Raids by RAF 617 Squadron on German dams.
Births:
1718 - Maria Gaetana Agnesi, Italian mathematician (d. 1799)
1845 - Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov, Russian microbiologist, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (d. 1916)
Deaths:
1620 - William Adams, English navigator and samurai (b.1564)
The version of the LJ meme that came my way asked for two deaths, and I’m just copying and pasting, so.
May 11
Cool Events
1934 - Dust Bowl: A strong two-day dust storm removes massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst dust storms of the Dust Bowl in North America.
1997 - IBM’s Deep Blue chess-playing supercomputer defeats Garry Kasparov in the last game of the rematch, becoming the first computer to beat a world-champion chess player.
2000 - Last performance of the musical Cats (musical) in London’s West End.
Births
1904 - Salvador Dalí, Catalan painter (d. 1989)
1916 - Camilo José Cela, Spanish writer, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2002)
1504 - Michelangelo’s David is unveiled in Florence.
1951 - Treaty of San Francisco: In San Francisco, California, 48 nations sign a peace treaty with Japan in formal recognition of the end of the Pacific War.
1974 - Watergate Scandal: US President Gerald Ford pardons former President Richard Nixon for any crimes Nixon may have committed while in office
Births -
1157 - King Richard I of England (d. 1199)
1841 - Antonin Dvorak, Czech composer (d. 1904)
1979 - Pink, American singer
Deaths -
701 - Pope Sergius I
1949 - Richard Strauss, German composer (b. 1864)
1965 - Dorothy Dandridge, American actress (b. 1922)
1492 - Christopher Columbus’s expedition makes landfall in the Caribbean. The indigenous gov’t denies his visa due to new immigration policies.
1960 - Cold War: Nikita Khrushchev pounds his shoe on a desk at United Nations General Assembly meeting over the shortage of left shoes.
1999 - The Day of 6 Billion: The 6 billionth human in the world is born. The other 5,999,999,999 humans hate this johnny-come-lately.
1875 - Aleister Crowley, English occultist and author (d. 1947)
1968 - Hugh Jackman, Australian actor and singer
1978 - Nancy Spungen, Girlfriend of Sex Pistol Sid Vicious b. 1958)
1567 - James VI is crowned King of Scotland
1921 - Adolph Hitler becomes the leader of the National Socialists German Workers Party
1958 - The U.S. Congress formally creates the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Births:
1883 - Benito Mussolini - Italian dictator
1938 - Peter Jennings - Canadian born tv journalist
1966 - Martina McBride - American country singer
1810- P.T. Barnum
1996- Dolly the sheep, the first cloned animal.
Died:
2002-Ted Williams
Events:
1865- The world’s first maximum speed law is implemented in England.
1934- “Bloody Thursday” Police open fire on striking longshoremen in San Francisco.
1954- Elvis has his first commercial recording session. Widely regarded as the birth of rock and roll.
Events:
1978 - Karol Józef Wojtyła becomes Pope John Paul II
1970 - Canada - In response to the October Crisis terrorist kidnapping, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau invokes the War Measures Act
1912 - Bulgarian pilots Radul Milkov and Prodan Toprakchiev perform the first bombing with an airplane in history
Births:
1925 - Angela Lansbury
1962 - Flea (of the Red Hot Chili Peppers)
Death:
1793 - Marie Antoinette, Queen of France, was beheaded at the guillotine
June 12
Facts
1964 - Nelson Mandela sentenced to life in prison.
1979 - Successful human-powered flight across the English Channel.
1987 - Reagan gives “tear down this wall” speech.
Births
1915 David Rockefeller
1924 George Bush Snr
1929 - Anne Frank (she received the famous diary as a birthday present in '42)
