May 17th
 

1749 ~ Birthday of Edward Jenner, inventor of vaccination.

1838 ~ Death of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, French diplomat.

1935 ~ Death of Paul Dukas, French composer.

1936 ~ Birthday of Dennis Hopper, Actor & Director.

1943 ~ The RAF carried out the Dambusters raid.

1954 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court issued their decision in Brown v. Board of Education.

1974 ~ Thirty-three people were killed by terrorist bombings in Ireland.

1992 ~ Death of Lawrence Welk, American musician.

1996 ~ President Bill Clinton signed a measure requiring neighborhood notification when sex offenders move in - Megan's Law.

2004 ~ Same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts.

May 18th
 

1872 ~ Birthday of Bertrand Russell, Logician & Philosopher, awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature 1950.

1910 ~ The Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.

1911 ~ Death of Gustav Mahler, Austrian Composer.

1919 ~ Birthday of Dame Margot Fonteyn, Ballet dancer.

1937 ~ Birthday of Brooks Robinson, Baseball Hall of Famer.

1944 ~ Monte Cassino fell to the Allies.

1974 ~ India became the sixth nuclear nation by successfully detonated its first nuclear weapon.

1975 ~ Death of Leroy Anderson, American Composer.

1980 ~ Mount St. Helens in Washington state exploded, leaving 57 people dead or missing.

1995 ~ A man stole a tank and ran it through a suburb of San Diego.

May 21st
 

Sorry for the missing days ... life has been very complicated. :(


1881 ~ Clara Barton founded the American Red Cross.

1921 ~ Birthday of Andrei Sakharov, physicist and human rights activist, awarded the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize.

1924 ~ Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in a "thrill killing".

1933 ~ Birthday of Maurice André, trumpeter.

1956 ~ The U.S. detonated the first airborne hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll in the Pacific.

1978 ~ Birthday of Briana Banks, Porn Actress.

1979 ~ Birthday of Jesse Capelli, Canadian Porn Actress.

1991 ~ Former Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a female suicide bomber.

2000 ~ Death of Sir John Gielgud, British actor.

2004 ~ Stanislav Petrov was awarded the World Citizen Award for averting a potential World War III in 1983.

May 22nd
 

1813 ~ Birthday of Richard Wagner, Composer.

1840 ~ Transporting British convicts to the New South Wales colony was abolished.

1856 ~ In one of the more impressive expressions of American democracy, Congressman Preston Brooks of South Carolina beat Senator Charles Sumner with a cane in the hall of the U.S. Senate because of a speech Sumner had made which attacked Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas.

1859 ~ Birthday of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Physician & Writer.

1885 ~ Death of Victor Hugo, French author.

1907 ~ Birthday of Sir Laurence Olivier, Actor & Director.

1907 ~ Birthday of Hergé, comic book creator.

1947 ~ The Truman Doctrine was enacted.

1969 ~ The lunar module of Apollo 10 separated from the command module and flew to within nine miles of the moon's surface in a dress rehearsal for the first lunar landing.

1972 ~ Ceylon became the republic of Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and joined the British Commonwealth.

May 23rdd
 

1430 ~ Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians, who sold her to the English.

1701 ~ Captain William Kidd was hanged in London after being convicted of piracy and murder.

1848 ~ Birthday of Otto Lilienthal, aviation pioneer.

1873 ~ Canada's North West Mounted Police force was established.

1906 ~ Death of Henrik Ibsen, Norwegian writer.

1908 ~ Birthday of John Bardeen, the only man to have been awarded the Nobel prize in Physics twice; 1956 & 1972.

1934 ~ Death of Bonnie and Clyde, Outlaws.

1951 ~ The Tibetan government is forced to sign the Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet with the People's Republic of China.

1951 ~ Birthday of Anatoly Karpov, Russian chess grandmaster and former World Champion.

1962 ~ Raoul Salan, the leader of the Secret Army Organisation (OAS) was sentenced to life imprisonment.

May 24th
 

1819 ~ Birthday of Queen Victoria.

1844 ~ The first telegram was sent by Samuel Morse, from Baltimore, Maryland to Washington, D.C., saying "What hath God wrought?".

1883 ~ The Brooklyn Bridge was opened.

1941 ~ The German battleship Bismarck sank the battlecruiser HMS Hood in the North Atlantic, killing all but three crewmen.

1940 ~ Igor Sikorsky performs the first successful single-rotor helicopter flight.

1941 ~ Death of Lancelot Holland, British admiral, died in sinking of the HMS Hood.

1941 ~ Birthday of Bob Dylan, Singer and Songwriter.

1969 ~ Death of Willy Ley, rocket scientist.

1976 ~ BOAC and Air France opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington.

2001 ~ 23 people were killed and hundreds injured at a wedding party in Jerusalem when the floor collapsed.

May 25th
 

1803 ~ Birthday of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a Quotable Individual.

1889 ~ Birthday of Igor Sikorsky, developer of the helicopter.

1895 ~ Playwright Oscar Wilde was convicted of a morals charge in London and sentenced to prison.

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

1926 ~ Birthday of Miles Davis, Jazz Musician

1929 ~ Birthday of Beverly Sills, Soprano.

1953 ~ The U.S. conducted its only nuclear artillery test.

1961 ~ President Kennedy set the US goal to put the first man on the moon by the end of that decade.

1963 ~ The Organisation of African Unity was set up in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

1982 ~ HMS Coventry was sunk during the Falklands War.

May 26th
 

1703 ~ Death of Samuel Pepys, English civil servant, famous for his diary.

1868 ~ The Senate impeachment trial of President Andrew Johnson ended with his acquittal.

1896 ~ The first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average published

1907 ~ Birthday of Rachel Carson, Environmental writer.

1908 ~ The first commercial oil strike in the Middle East was made at Masjid-al-Salaman in southwest Iran.

1948 ~ Birthday of Stevie Nicks, Songwriter.

1951 ~ Birthday of Sally Ride, Astronaut.

2002 ~ The Mars Odyssey found signs of water ice deposits on the planet Mars.

2008 ~ Severe flooding began in eastern and southern China, killing 148 & forcing the evacuation of 1.3 million.

2011 ~ A suicide bomber detonated three bombs at government buildings in Fuzhou, Jiangxi, China.

Today (May 25th) marks the 35th anniversary of the theatrical release of Star Wars: A New Hope.

(I'm a geek) :)

I still remember the first time that battleship sailed over our heads, and just kept on coming.

May 27th
 

1877 ~ Birthday of Isadora Duncan, Dancer.

1923 ~ Birthday of Henry Kissinger, American diplomat, recipient of The Nobel Peace Prize 1973.

1933 ~ The Walt Disney Co. released the cartoon The Three Little Pigs, with its hit song Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

1934 ~ Birthday of Harlan Ellison, Science Fiction author.

1941 ~ The German battleship Bismarck was sunk.

1963 ~ Jomo Kenyatta led his party, Kenya African Nation Union, to victory in the Kenya’s first general election.

1964 ~ Death of Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first PM.

1976 ~ Birthday of Anita Blonde, Hungarian Porn Actress.

1995 ~ Actor Christopher Reeve (Superman) was paralyzed when he was thrown from his horse during a jumping event.

1997 ~ The Supreme Court ruled that Paula Jones could pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Clinton while he was in office.

May 28th
 

1908 ~ Birthday of Ian Fleming, author of James Bond books.

1925 ~ Birthday of Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, German baritone.

1934 ~ Birthday of The Dionne quintuplets, the world's first surviving quintuplets.

1936 ~ Alan Turing submitted On Computable Numbers for publication.

1964 ~ The Palestine Liberation Organization was formed.

1971 ~ Death of Audie Murphy, American actor & war hero.

1987 ~ Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old West German pilot, landed a private plane in Moscow's Red Square after evading Soviet air defenses.

1984 ~ President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War.

1998 ~ Pakistan matched India with five nuclear test blasts.

2002 ~ Mars Odyssey found evidence of large ice deposits on Mars.

May 29th
 

1903 ~ Birthday of Bob Hope, British-born Comedian & Actor.

1906 ~ Birthday of T.H. White, English author.

1913 ~ Igor Stravinsky's ballet score “The Rite of Spring” premiered in Paris.

1917 ~ Birthday of John Kennedy, U.S. President.

1919 ~ Arthur Eddington's observation of shifted star positions during a solar eclipse confirmed Albert Einstein's theory of relativity.

1953 ~ Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1972 ~ Three Japanese Red Army gunmen opened fire on crowds at Lod (now Ben Gurion) International Airport, Israel, killing 26 people and injuring dozens more.

1998 ~ Death of Barry Goldwater, U.S. senator & presidential candidate.

1999 ~ The Discovery Space Shuttle completed the first docking with the International Space Station.

2005 ~ French voters rejected the European Union's proposed constitution.

May 30th
 

1431 ~ Death of Joan of Arc, Condemned Heretic (burned at the stake in Rouen, France).

1778 ~ Death of Voltaire, French philosopher & Author.

1912 ~ Death of Wilbur Wright, aviation pioneer, the elder of the Wright Brothers.

1926 ~ Birthday of Christine Jorgensen, transsexual activist.

1942 ~ 1,047 British bombers launched a 90-minute attack on Cologne, Germany.

1964 ~ Death of Leó Szilárd, Hungarian-American nuclear physicist.

1982 ~ Baseball player Cal Ripken, Jr played the first of 2,632 consecutive games. His streak ended on September 20, 1998.

1989 ~ The 33-foot high "Goddess of Democracy" statue was unveiled in Tiananmen Square by student demonstrators.

1997 ~ Child molester Jesse K. Timmendequas was convicted in Trenton, N.J., of raping and strangling a 7-year-old neighbor, Megan Kanka - a case that inspired ''Megan's Law',' which requires that communities be notified when sex offenders move in.

2001 ~ Former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas was convicted of corruption.

June 1
 

(jseal sent me this to publish for today since he'll be gone. He indicated another was sent for the 31st but either I didn't get it ... or ... heaven forbid, I inadventently deleted it. In any case, here's the one for the 1st of June - DB)