This Day in History......

[moreluck]

May 10, 1869

At Promontory, Utah, California Governor Leland Stanford pounds in a ceremonial golden spike that completes the nation's first transcontinental railway. After failing to hit the spike on his first attempt, Stanford raised the heavy sledgehammer again and struck a solid square blow. For the first time in American history, railways linked together east and west, the realization of a dream that began two decades earlier

 

[moreluck]

http://www.nwhp.org/news/history_of_mothersday.php

 

[moreluck]

The body of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh’s baby is found on this day in 1932, more than two months after he was kidnapped from his family’s Hopewell, New Jersey, mansion.

 

[moreluck]

May 13, 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.

 

[moreluck]

"Mack The Knife," which held the #1 spot on the Billboard pop chart for an incredible nine weeks in 1959, was a big enough hit for Bobby Darin that it cemented him in many people's minds as the consummate cool-cat crooner. But Bobby Darin was no mere lounge act. His knack for keeping people guessing first showed itself in his shift from rock-and-roll teen idol to finger-snapping Vegas headliner, but his tendency to move in and out and back and forth among diverse musical genres also took him through phases as a writer-performer of protest-folk, folk-rock and even country-western music. Bobby Darin, one of the most versatile pop stars of his generation, was born Walden Robert Cassotto in the Bronx, New York, on this day in 1936.

 

[moreluck]

On May 15, 1973, California Angel Nolan Ryan strikes out 12 Kansas City Royals and walks three to pitch the first no-hitter of his career. The game was played under protest, as Royals Manager Jack McKeon complained that Ryan wasn’t maintaining contact with the pitching rubber while throwing.

 

[moreluck]

On this day in 1929, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences hands out its first awards, at a dinner party for around 250 people held in the Blossom Room of the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood, California

 

[moreluck]

Based on outcry from parents who bought into what may have started as an idle rumor, the FBI launched a formal investigation in 1964 into the supposedly pornographic lyrics of the song "Louie, Louie." That investigation finally neared its conclusion on this day in 1965, when the FBI Laboratory declared the lyrics of "Louie Louie" to be officially unintelligible.

 

[moreluck]

May 18, 1980

At 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens, a volcanic peak in southwestern Washington, suffers a massive eruption, killing 57 people and devastating some 210 square miles of wilderness.

 

[moreluck]

On this day in 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.

 

[moreluck]

May 21, 1924

Fourteen-year-old Bobbie Franks is abducted from a Chicago, Illinois, street and killed in what later proves to be one of the most fascinating murders in American history. The killers, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, were extremely wealthy and intelligent teenagers whose sole motive for killing Franks was the desire to commit the "perfect crime."

 

[moreluck]

On this day in 1934, notorious criminals Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow are shot to death by Texas and Louisiana state police while driving a stolen car near Sailes, Louisiana.

 

[moreluck]

May 24, 1883

After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River is opened, connecting the great cities of New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history. Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan Island turned out to witness the dedication ceremony, which was presided over by President Chester A. Arthur and New York Governor Grover Cleveland. Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date.

 

[moreluck]

May 25, 1977

Science-fiction fans and movie buffs in general have cause to celebrate on this day in 1977, when 20th Century Fox releases George Lucas' space odyssey Star Wars.

 

[moreluck]

On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000.

 

[rod]

On May 27, 1941, the British navy sinks the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic near France. The German death toll was more than 2,000.

Damn those Germans for all they did:

 

[moreluck]

John, we hardly knew ye !!

 

[moreluck]

May 28, 1998

On this day in 1998, the comedian and actor Phil Hartman, famous for his work on Saturday Night Live and NewsRadio, is shot to death by his troubled wife, Brynn, in a murder-suicide. He was 49.

 

[moreluck]

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

 

[moreluck]

May 30, 1911

On this day in 1911, Ray Harroun drives his single-seater Marmon Wasp to victory in the inaugural Indianapolis 500, now one of the world's most famous motor racing competitions.