edit: doublepost

 

04th May

1942 - The Battle of the Coral Sea commenced as American and Japanese carriers launched their attacks at each other.

1942 - The United States began food rationing.

1945 - The Nazis surrendered in Holland, north Germany and Denmark.

1961 - Secretary of State Dean Rusk reported that Viet Cong forces have grown to 12,000 men and that they had killed or kidnapped more than 3,000 people in 1960.

 

On this day in history, May 4, 1979, 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher becomes first female PM of the UK
Born in 1925, Thatcher became prime minister at age 54, led Britain for nearly 12 years.


In this 1980 file photo, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher poses for a photograph in London.

On this day in history, May 4, 1979, Margaret Thatcher — who led the United Kingdom's Conservative Party and ultimately came to be called the "Iron Lady" for her politics and leadership style — became the first female prime minister of the U.K.

An Oxford-educated lawyer and chemist, Thatcher took office the day after the Conservatives won the 44-seat majority in general parliamentary elections, according to History.com.

"During the election campaign," noted the BBC, "Thatcher said the Conservatives would cut income tax, reduce public expenditure, make it easier for people to buy their own homes and curb the power of the unions."

She was born Margaret Hilda Roberts in Grantham, England, in 1925, History.com notes.

Her esteemed career included being the first female president of the Oxford University Conservative Association; in 1950, she ran for Parliament in Dartford.

In 1959, after marrying Denis Thatcher, a businessman, and later becoming a mother of twins, Thatcher was elected to Parliament as a Conservative for Finchley, a north London district, History.com notes.

During the decade of 1960, she quickly rose within the Conservative Party — and in 1967 joined the shadow cabinet sitting in opposition to Harold Wilson’s ruling Labor cabinet, the same source says.

She served as Britain's prime minister for almost 12 years, between 1979 and 1990, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation reports.

"She was the first woman ever to hold that job, or to lead any big country in Europe or America, and became famous the world over," the foundation says.

Often referred to as "the Iron Lady," Thatcher, the same foundation notes, was pleased when she was given that nickname — by a Russian journalist, as it turned out — because she believed in being a strong leader.

 

1959: First Grammy Awards held in New York and Los Angeles
The National Academy of Recording Arts and Services hosts black-tie dinners on both coasts to give out the first Grammy Awards. Attendees include Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and Dean Martin. 'Volare' wins Song and Record of the Year, and Henry Mancini's 'The Music From Peter Gunn' takes Album of the Year.

 

On This Day In History
May 4, 1776
Rhode Island becomes first colony to renounce allegiance to George III

On May 4, 1776, Rhode Island, the colony founded by the most radical religious dissenters from the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony, becomes the first North American colony to renounce its allegiance to King George III. Ironically, Rhode Island would be the last state to ratify the new American Constitution more than 14 years later on May 29, 1790.

Rhode Island served as a mercantile center of the transatlantic slave trade in the 18th century. West Indian molasses became rum in Rhode Island distilleries, which was then traded on the West African coast for enslaved workers. After taking their human cargo across the notorious middle passage from Africa across the Atlantic to the Caribbean islands, Rhode Island merchants would then sell those who survived the boats’ wretched conditions and rough ocean crossing to West Indian plantation owners for use as enslaved workers in exchange for a fresh shipment of molasses.

The desire to protect this lucrative triangle trade led Rhode Islanders to bristle at British attempts to tighten their control over their colonies’ commerce, beginning with the Sugar Act of 1764, which tightened trade regulations and raised the duty on molasses. Two major incidents involving Rhode Islanders took place during the ensuing colonial protests of British regulation in the late 1760s and early 1770s. On June 10, 1768, British customs officials confiscated John Hancock’s sloop Liberty because it had previously been used to smuggle Madeira wine, inciting a riot in the streets of Boston. Four years later, near Providence, the British customs boat Gaspee ran aground, and Rhode Islanders, angered by continued British attempts to tax them in ways they perceived as unfair, boarded and burned it, wounding the ship’s captain.

Rhode Island's mercantile strength caused almost as much trouble for the new American nation as it had the old British empire. Because it had independent wealth and trade coming through the two vibrant ports of Providence and Newport, Rhode Island was the only small state that could theoretically survive independent of the proposed federal union in 1787. The state had no desire to lose income in the form of import duties to the new federal government. As a result, Rhode Island was the last state to ratify the Constitution in 1790, when it was finally confronted with the prospect of the greater financial impositions it would suffer from being treated as a foreign country from the United States.

 

May 5

1260 - Kubla Khan, grandson of Genghis Khan, becomes emperor of the Mongul Empire.

1893 - Panic of 1893 causes a large crash on the New York Stock Exchange.

1941 -Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie returns triumphantly to Addis Ababa.

1955 - West Germany is granted full sovereignty by its three occupying powers. United States, Great Britain and France. Take that Soviet Union and shove it.

1965 - First large scale United States ground units arrive in South Vietnam.

1981 - After 66 days on hunger strike, 26 year old Provisional IRA member and British MP, Bobby Sands dies. Nine more would die in the next three months.

1904 - Cy Young pitches first perfect game in "modern" baseball.Boston Americans defeat Philadelphia Athletics 3 to 0.

1818 - Karl Marx is born. What a waste of air.

1942 - Tammy Wynette is born.

1821 - Napoleon Bonaparte dies

 

May 5, 1945 marked the deaths of the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II. Mrs. Elsie Mitchell, who was pregnant at the time, and five neighborhood children were having a picnic on Gearhart Mountain, Oregon when they found a Japanese balloon in the woods.

Without knowing that the balloon was armed with a 15-kilogram high-explosive anti-personnel bomb, they attempted to drag it and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it.

The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford and Dick and Joan Patzke, the five slain children.

One of the best kept secrets of the war involved the Japanese balloon bomb offensive named 'Fu-Go'. Prompted by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese developed the balloon bombs as a means of direct reprisal against the U.S. mainland. The balloons, made of paper or rubberized silk, carried anti-personnel and incendiary bombs. The first operational launches took place on Nov. 3, 1944, and over 9,000 were sent across the Pacific.

Mrs. Mitchell and the children are the only known casualties.

There may still be unfound and dangerous balloons in remote wilderness areas. In late 2014, a couple of forestry workers in Lumby, British Columbia — about 250 miles north of the U.S. border — happened upon a 70-year-old Japanese balloon bomb.

 

On this day in history, May 5, 1904, Cy Young pitches first perfect game in World Series Era
Rare feat of pitching dominance achieved only 23 times over 236,000 games since 1876.


Cy Young, pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, warms up before a game at Huntingdon Ave. Grounds in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1908.

Cy Young, pitching for the recently established Boston Americans, threw the first perfect game of the World Series era on this day in history, May 5, 1904.

Young mowed down 27 straight batters in front of 10,267 fans at the former Huntington Avenue Grounds in Boston as the Americans — later renamed the Red Sox — beat the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0.

Perfect games are one of the rarest feats in all of sports — with an average of less than 1 per 10,000 games.

The imposing 6-foot-2-inch, 210-pound fireballer played 22 seasons of big-league baseball, won 511 games — a record that has never been approximated — and is the namesake of the award given to the best pitcher in each Major League Baseball league every year.

Young was also the ace of the Boston team that won the first World Series in 1903.

"It’s no job for me to pick out my greatest day in baseball," the Gilmore, Ohio farmboy turned all-time great said years later, in an interview provided by Major League Baseball.

"It was May 5, 1904, when I was pitching … and beat the Philadelphia Athletics without a run, hit or man reaching first. Of all the 906 games I pitched in the big leagues, that one stands clearest in my mind."

The performance was part of an incredible streak of dominance by Young, who stands high on the short list of greatest pitchers ever.

"What seems of interest to me is that Young’s perfect game came in the middle of a no-hit streak that lasted 25 1/3 innings and a scoreless string that ran to 45 innings," John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, told Fox News Digital.

Young’s 45 consecutive innings of scoreless ball, the equivalent of five complete games without yielding a run, was matched later that season by Doc White of the Chicago White Sox.

It has been topped only seven times since.

No player in 119 years has matched Young’s stunning steak of more than 25 innings without yielding a hit.

 

May 6

1527 - Spanish and German Imperial troops sack Rome ending the Renaissance. Charles III, Duke of Bourbon was killed in the assault removing any restraint for the victorious troops.

1626 - Dutch colonist Peter Minuit organized the purchase of Manhattan from Native Americans.

1937 - German airship Hindenburg explodes in flames while landing in Lakehurst, New Jersey. Killing 35 people on board and on the ground.

1941 - Joseph Stalin becomes premiere of the Soviet Union, replacing his foreign minister Vyachesslav Molotov.

2004 - TV sitcom "Friends" airs it finale at the end of its tenth season.

1966 - The Rolling Stones release their single "Paint it Black in the U.S. featuring prominent sitar played by Brian Jones.

1856. - Cokehead Sigmund Freud was born.

1895 - Rudolph Valentino was born.

1931 - Willy Mays was born.

1992 - Marlene Dietrich passe away

 

May 6, 1980 saw the passing of legendary guitarist Barney Kessell due to a brain tumor. While not well known outside of the jazz community, Kessell played on some of the best known and loved hits of the 1960s - as an original member of 'The Wrecking Crew' a group of musicians assembled by Phil Spector as a standard backing band for various artists.

Kessell performed on such hits as The Righteous Brothers'“You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”; The Crystals’ “Then He Kissed Me”; Sam Cooke’s “Another Saturday Night”; Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe”; Ike & Tina Turner’s “River Deep Mountain High”; the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations”; and many more.

He also played on albums by Jefferson Airplane, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, The Monkees, Evie Sand and the list goes on and on. B. B. King once said he was “awestruck” by Kessel’s guitar playing. The Who’s Pete Townshend was such an admirer that, in 1975, he wrote and recorded the svelte tribute “To Barney Kessel.”

Also an excellent teacher, I had the privilege of attending a presentation by him at the Musicians Institute.

 

Hindenburg Disaster.



Historical Context

The German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in the United States.

Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), there were 35 fatalities. One worker on the ground was also killed, making a total of 36 dead.

The disaster, caught on newsreel coverage and in photographs shattered public confidence in the giant, passenger carrying Zeppelins and marked the end of the airship era.

 

1954: Bannister breaks the four-minute mile
England's Roger Bannister does what some track-and-field experts considered impossible – he runs a mile in under 4 minutes. His finishing time for the historic Oxford run is 3 min 59.4 seconds, a record that will stand for just 46 days.

 

On This Day In History
May 6, 1994
Paula Jones accuses Bill Clinton of sexual harassment.

Paula Jones, a former Arkansas state clerk, files suit against President Bill Clinton in the federal court in Little Rock, Arkansas, on May 6, 1994, asking for $700,000 in damages.

Jones claimed that Clinton, while governor of Arkansas, sexually harassed her and then defamed her after she went public with her accusations. The following August, Clinton’s lawyers filed a motion to dismiss Jones’ suit citing presidential immunity. The federal district judge ruled that Clinton could not stand trial until leaving office, but that the investigation into Jones’ allegations could proceed. Jones appealed and in 1996 won the right to proceed to trial in the Supreme Court; Clinton then filed a request to delay the trial until he left office. The timing of the decision, which coincided with the November 1996 presidential election, bought Clinton a reprieve.

The Paula Jones case was one of four major scandals that coalesced to threaten Clinton’s second term. While working on the Paula Jones investigation, independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr uncovered Clinton’s alleged affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Starr was also pursuing ongoing investigations into allegedly illegal real-estate deals made by the Clintons (known as the Whitewater scandal) and a dispute concerning allegations of cronyism in the firing of workers at the White House travel agency. When questioned about the Lewinksy affair, the president was decidedly less than forthcoming, leading to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Though Democratic leaders preferred to censure the president, Congress began the impeachment process against Clinton in 1998; a divided House of Representatives impeached him on December 19. The issue then passed to the Senate, where after a 5-week trial, he was acquitted.

 

May 7

1429 - The English siege of Orleans was broke by Joan of Arc and the French army.

1867 - Swedish chemist Alfred Nobell patents dynamite in England, the first of three of his patents he would receive for explosives.

1915 - RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine off the coast of southern Ireland killing 1,198 people.

1992 - Champion Puerto Rican jockey retired after 7,057 thoroughbred horse race wins.

 

On May 7, 1824, Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony debuted at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna. Completely deaf at the premier, Beethoven pretended to conduct the first performance, although the musicians were instructed to ignore the composer and instead follow Michael Umlauf, the actual conductor.

Well established as one of the greatest composers of the era in the early 1800s, Beethoven had almost completely lost his hearing by 1814 but continued to compose. The Ninth Symphony required the largest orchestra ever employed by Beethoven, and was unusual at the time for its use of voices in addition to instruments. Beethoven hand-picked two young singers, 18-year-old Henriette Sontag and 20-year-old Caroline Unger, for the soprano and alto parts.

At the conclusion of the debut performance, Beethoven could not hear the thunderous applause, and legend has it that it was Caroline Unger who approached the maestro and turned him around to face the audience and see the adoring ovation.

The choral section, adapted from the Friedrich Schiller poem 'Ode to Joy,' has transcended the world of classical music and become one of the most often-played and easily recognizable musical pieces of all time.

Beethoven's Ninth is now widely considered to be one of the greatest pieces of music ever written.



My favorite film iteration of the 'Ode to Joy'

 

On this day in history, May 7, 1977, the song 'Hotel California' by the Eagles hits No. 1
Mysterious song is neither about satan worship nor drug addiction, said Don Henley.



The rock group The Eagles are shown here. Left to right: Don Felder, Don Henley, Joe Walsh, Glenn Frey and Randy Meisner.

On this day in history, May 7, 1977, the song "Hotel California" reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

The six minute and eight second-long song by the Eagles spent one week atop the charts before it was bumped down to the number three spot by the song "When I Need You" by Leo Sayer, the website Best Classic Bands notes.

The album "Hotel California" was released on Dec. 8, 1976, but the title song was released as a single two months later on Feb. 22, 1977, according to rock music website SuperSeventies.

"Every band has its creative peak," said Don Henley, founding member of the Eagles, to USA Today in 2020 of the album "Hotel California."

"I think that was ours," he continued. "We’d become very adept in the studio. We knew a lot about production. We knew more about songwriting. We had the musicianship."

He added, "We were willing to make some changes and take some risks and try to do something different from anything we’d done before."

Henley also said, "And you know, the astronauts in the Space Station get a wakeup call every day. A lot of times the folks in the [NASA] control center would play 'Hotel California.'"

The musician laughed and then said, "Personally, I don’t know if I would want to start the day with that," as USA Today noted.

The enigmatic song has led to a variety of wild theories about its meaning, some of which amused Henley.

Rumors also spread that the song was actually about "heroin addiction or satan worship," said Rolling Stone — something Henley vehemently denied.

"We were all middle-class kids from the Midwest," Henley told that publication. "'Hotel California' was our interpretation of the high life in Los Angeles."

 

1965: Keith Richards gets 'Satisfaction'
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has placed a tape recorder next to his bed in a Clearwater, Florida, motel room, and he awakes to find that at some point in the early morning he’d laid down the opening riff of ‘(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.’ The Stones will record the song, with its distinctive guitar hook, just days later and it will make them superstars.

 

On This Day In History
May 7, 1843
First Japanese immigrant arrives in the U.S.

Called the U.S.'s first ambassador to Japan, a 14-year-old fisherman by the name of Manjiro is considered America's first Japanese immigrant, arriving in the country on May 7, 1843, by way of a whaling ship.

According to the National Endowment of the Humanities, the boy and his crew were caught in a violent storm, with their ship eventually washing up on a desert island 300 miles away from their coastal Japanese village. Rescued five months later by an American whaling ship, Manjiro was adopted by American Capt. William Whitfield, who renamed him John Mung and brought him back to the states to his home in Massachusetts.

Manjiro eventually returned to Japan, where he was named a samurai and worked as a political emissary between his home country and the West, the NEH reports.

According to the National Museum of American History, it was about 20 years later, in the 1860s, when groups of Japanese immigrants began arriving in the Hawaiian islands, where they worked in sugarcane fields. From there, many relocated to California, Washington and Oregon.

From 1886 to 1911, the Library of Congress adds, 400,000-plus Japanese women and men immigrated to America, particularly to Hawaii and the West Coast. In commemoration of Manjiro’s early arrival, Congress, in 1992, established May as Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.

 

May 8

1835 - First installment of Hana Christian Andersen "Fairy Tales" was published by C.A. Reitzelin in Copenhagen, Denmark.

1895 - China cedes Taiwan to Japan under the Treaty of Shimonoseki.

1884 - Harry Truman was born

1940 - Ricky Nelson was born

MOST IMPORTANTLY OF ALL
1945 - V+E Day. World War II ends in Europe with the unconditional surrender of Germany.

 

On May 8, 1886, former Confederate Colonel Dr. John Stith Pemberton, a local Atlanta GA pharmacist, invented Coca-Cola. He produced the syrup and carried a jug of the new product down the street to Jacobs' Pharmacy, where it was sampled, pronounced 'excellent' and placed on sale for five cents a glass as a soda fountain drink.

Carbonated water was teamed with the new syrup to produce a drink that was at once 'Delicious and Refreshing,' a theme that continues to echo today wherever Coca‑Cola is enjoyed.

At the time, carbonated water was thought to have great healing powers for all types of maladies, and Coca-Cola was marketed and sold as a patent medicine, with Pemberton claiming it a cure for many diseases, including morphine addiction, indigestion, nerve disorders, headaches, and impotence.

Thinking that "the two Cs would look well in advertising," Dr. Pemberton's partner and bookkeeper, Frank M. Robinson, suggested the name and penned the now famous trademark 'Coca‑Cola' in his unique script.

In 1894, Mississippi shop owner Joseph A. Biedenharn began bottling Coca‑Cola after he was impressed by its sales. He sold the drink to his customers in a common glass bottle called a Hutchinson.

As everyone knows, Coca-Cola (with and without cocaine) would go on to be the world's #1 soft drink.



History of Coca-Cola bottling: