This Day In History

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 13

1568 - At the Battle of Langside, the forces of Mary Queen of Scots are defeated by a confederacy of Scottish Protestants under James Stewart, the regent of her son, King James VI of Scotland. During the battle, which was fought out in the southern suburbs of Glasgow, a cavalry charge routed Mary’s 6,000 Catholic troops, and they fled the field. Three days later, Mary escaped to Cumberland, England, where she sought protection from Queen Elizabeth I.

1607 - Some 100 English colonists arrive along the west bank of the James River in Virginia to found Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in North America. Dispatched from England by the London Company, the colonists had sailed across the Atlantic aboard the Susan Constant, Godspeed and Discovery.

1981 - Pope John Paul II is shot and critically wounded by Turkish gunman Mehemet Ali Agca in St Peter's Square, Vatican City.

 

[MVeeI]

May 15

1869 - In New York, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton form the National Woman Suffrage Association.

1928 - Mickey Mouse premieres in his first cartoon, Plane Crazy.

1940 - McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernadino, California.

1941 - Joe DiMaggio begins a 56-game hitting streak.

1958 - The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 3.

1988 - The Soviet Army begins to withdraw 115,000 troops from Afghanistan.

Birthdays

1859 - Pierre Curie, French physicist.

1905 - Joseph Cotten, actor.

1905 - Abraham Zapruder, filmed the assassination of President Kennedy.

 

[MVeeI]

May 20

1902 - Cuba gains independence from the United States.

1932 - Amelia Earhart begin the world's first non-stop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by a female pilot. She lands in Ireland the next day.

1940 - The first prisoners arrive at a new concentration camp at Auschwitz.

1950 - The first airborne H-bomb is dropped over Bikini Atoll.

Birthdays

1818 - William Fargo, businessman. He co-founded Wells-Fargo and American Express.

1904 - Margery Allingham, English author of detective fiction.

1908 - James Stewart, actor.

1913 - William Redington Hewlett, engineer. Cofounded Hewlett-Packard.

1944 - Joe Cocker, English singer-songwriter.

1946 - Cher, singer-songwriter, producer and actress.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 20 (on this side of the IDL)

1498 - Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama arrives at Calicut, India becoming the first European to reach India by sea.

1873 - San Francisco businessman Levi Strauss and Reno, Nevada, tailor Jacob Davis are given a patent to create work pants reinforced with metal rivets, marking the birth of one of the world’s most famous garments: blue jeans.

1927 - American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh takes off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York, on the world’s first solo, nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean and the first ever nonstop flight between New York to Paris.

1956 - The United States conducts the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 22

334 BC - The Macedonian army of Alexander the Great defeats Darius III of Persia in the Battle of the Granicus River

1455 - In the opening battle of England’s War of the Roses, the Yorkists defeat King Henry VI’s Lancastrian forces at St. Albans, 20 miles northwest of London. Many Lancastrian nobles perished, including Edmund Beaufort, the duke of Somerset, and the king was forced to submit to the rule of his cousin, Richard of York. The dynastic struggle between the House of York, whose badge was a white rose, and the House of Lancaster, later associated with a red rose, would stretch on for 30 years.

1781 - Major General Nathanael Greene and 1,000 Patriots attempt an attack on the critical village of Ninety Six in the South Carolina backcountry. After failing to seize the fortified settlement, they began a siege of it, which lasted until their retreat on June 18, making it the longest of the Revolutionary War.

1939 - Italy and Germany agree to a military and political alliance, giving birth formally to the Axis powers, which will ultimately include Japan.

 

[MVeeI]

May 25

1925 - John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee.

1953 - At the Nevada Test Site the U.S. conducts and only nuclear artillery test.

1953 - The first public tv station in the U.S. officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.

1961 - President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

Birthdays

1805 - Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and philosopher.

1889 - Igor Sikorsky, aircraft designer.

1897 - Gene Tunney, boxer.
May 25

1925 - John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in Tennessee.

1953 - At the Nevada Test Site the U.S. conducts and only nuclear artillery test.

1953 - The first public tv station in the U.S. officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.

1961 - President Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade.

Birthdays

1805 - Ralph Waldo Emerson, poet and philosopher.

1889 - Igor Sikorsky, aircraft designer.

1897 - Gene Tunney, boxer.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

May 27

1703 - After winning access to the Baltic Sea through his victories in the Great Northern War, Czar Peter I founds the city of St. Petersburg (Leningrad) as the new Russian capital.

1905 - The Russian Baltic Fleet is nearly destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima Strait during the Russo-Japanese War. The decisive defeat, in which only 10 of 45 Russian warships escaped to safety, convinced Russian leaders that further resistance against Japan’s imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless.

1941 - The British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000.

 

[MVeeI]

May 30

1922 - The Lincoln Memorial is dedicated in Washington, D.C.

1937 - Chicago police kill ten labor demonstrators. A total of 50 were shot and 100 beaten with clubs.

1943 - Josef Mengelebecomes the chief medical officer at Auschwitz concentration camp.

1974 - The Airbus A300 passenger aircraft goes into service.

Birthdays

1909 - Benny Goodman, bandleader.

1918 - Bob Evans, businessman. He founded Bob Evans Restaurants.

1943 - Gale Sayers, football player.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 1

1215 - Beijing, under control of Jurchen ruler Emperor Xuanzong of Jin, is captured by the Mongols under Genghis Khan, ending the Battle of Beijing. This forced Jin Emperor Xuanzong to move his capital south to Kaifeng, and opened the Yellow River valley to further Mongol ravages. Kaifeng also fell to the Mongols after a siege in 1232.

1533 - Anne Boleyn is crowned queen consort of England in a magnificent ceremony at Westminster Abbey. She was the last queen consort of England to be crowned separately from her husband. Unlike any other queen consort, Anne was crowned with St Edward's Crown, which had previously been used to crown only a monarch.

1962 - SS officer Adolf Eichmann is executed in Israel after being found guilty of war crimes.

 

[MVeeI]

June 5

1851 - Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin starts a 10-month run in the abolitionist newspaper The National Era.

1956 - Elvis Presley introduces a new single Hound Dog on the Milton Berle Show.

1968 - Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.

Birthdays

1878 - Pancho Villa, general and politician.

1883 - John Maynard Keynes, economist and philosopher.

1895 - William Cassidy, actor. He portrayed Hopalong Cassidy.

1951 - Suze Orman, financial advisor.

 

[Doc4]

6th of June, 1944 ... D-Day.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 8

632 - In Medina, located in present-day Saudi Arabia, Muhammad, one of the most influential religious and political leaders in history, dies in the arms of Aisha, his third and favorite wife.

1191 - King Richard I of England arrives at Acre in modern day Israel to join the Siege of Acre during the Third Crusade

1955 - Dodgers option Tommy Lasorda to make room on roster for Sandy Koufax

 

[MVeeI]

June 10

1854 - The United States Naval Academy graduated its first class of students.

1924 - Fascists kidnap and kill Italian Socialist leader Giacomo Mateotti in Rome.

1935 - Dr. Robert Smith takes his last drink and he and Bill Wilson found Alcoholics Anonymous.

1947 - Saab produces its first automobile.

1963 -- The Equal Pay Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex, is signed into law by President Kennedy.

1964 - The U.S. Senate breaks a 75-day filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, leading to the bill's passage.

Birthdays

1886 - Sessue Hayakawa, Japanese actor and producer.

1895 - Hattie McDaniel, actress.

1910 - Howlin' Wolf, singer-songwriter and guitarist.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

Also on June 10

1540 - Thomas Cromwell was arrested in Westminster and sent to the Tower of London. An Act of Attainder convicted him of heresy and treason but it also denied Cromwell the right to a proper trial where he could defend himself.

1692 - In Salem Village in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Bridget Bishop, the first colonist to be tried in the Salem witch trials, is hanged after being found guilty of the practice of witchcraft.

1752 - Benjamin Franklin flies a kite during a thunderstorm and collects ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar, enabling him to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity.

1845 - Andrew Jackson's African Grey parrot "Poll" is removed from his funeral for swearing at The Hermitage, Tennessee. Funeral attendee William Menefee Norment recorded: "Before the sermon and while the crowd was gathering, a wicked parrot that was a household pet got excited and commenced swearing so loud and long as to disturb the people and had to be carried from the house”

1940 - After two months of desperate resistance, the last surviving Norwegian and British defenders of Norway are overwhelmed by the Germans, and the country is forced to capitulate to the Nazis.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 11

1963 - Facing federalized Alabama National Guard troops, Alabama Governor George Wallace ends his blockade of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa and allows two African American students, Vivian Malone and James A. Hood, to enroll.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 12

1963 - In the driveway outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi, African American civil rights leader Medgar Evers is shot to death by white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith.

 

[oc_in_fw]

June 12, 1967- the Supreme Court ruled that laws forbidding interracial marriage were unconstitutional in Loving v Virginia. Today is Loving Day.

Loving Day - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

same day, 1994- I proposed to my wife, and OJ ran from the law in his white Bronco.

What a coincidence, the Lovings, the Simpsons, and me and the wife are/were in interracial marriages.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 15

1094 - Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar [El Cid] occupies Valencia on the Moren

1215 - English King John met the barons at Runnymede on the Thames and set his seal to the Articles of the Barons, which after minor revision was formally issued as Magna Carta.

1300 - Poet Dante Alighieri becomes one of six priors of Florence, active in governing the city. Dante’s political activities, which include the banishment of several rivals, lead to his own exile from Florence, his native city, after 1302. He will write his great work, The Divine Comedy, as a virtual wanderer, seeking protection for his family in town after town.

 

[Bakker1964]

1094 - Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar [El Cid] occupies Valencia on the Moren

If EVER a movie was ripe for a "reboot", it is EL CID. It alternates with Princess Bride as my favourite movie of all time.

 

[Mr. Scruffy]

June 16

1815 - French troops of the Armée du Nord under the command of Napoleon I defeated part of a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher, near Ligny in present-day Belgium. The battle resulted in a tactical victory for the French, but the bulk of the Prussian army survived the battle in good order and played a pivotal role two days later at the Battle of Waterloo, having been reinforced by Prussian troops who had not participated at Ligny. The battle of Ligny was the last victory in Napoleon's military career.

1858 - Newly nominated senatorial candidate Abraham Lincoln addresses the Illinois Republican Convention in Springfield and warns that the nation faces a crisis that could destroy the Union. Speaking to more than 1,000 delegates in an ominous tone, Lincoln paraphrased a passage from the New Testament: “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

1963 - Aboard Vostok 6, Soviet Cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova becomes the first woman to travel into space. After 48 orbits and 71 hours, she returned to earth, having spent more time in space than all U.S. astronauts combined to that date.