1875 ~ Birthday of Kimber James, transsexual Porn Actor.

There's a niche market for almost everybody. 137 year old trannies even.

April 4th
 

1884 ~ Birthday of Isoroku Yamamoto, naval commander.

1885 ~ Birthday of Arthur Murray, dancer.

1902 ~ British financier Cecil Rhodes left £6 million in his will to provide scholarships for Americans at Oxford University in England.

1949 ~ Twelve nations signed The North Atlantic Treaty creating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

1964 ~ The Beatles occupied all of the top five positions on the Billboard singles chart in the United States.

1968 ~ Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated.

1975 ~ Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen.

1979 ~ Death of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Pakistan Prime Minister (hanged).

1984 ~ Winston Smith, the main character of George Orwell's book Nineteen Eighty-Four, began writing in his secret diary.

1994 ~ Netscape Communications Corporation was founded by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark.

April 5th
 

1614 ~ In Virginia, Pocahontas married English colonist John Rolfe.

1792 ~ President Washington cast the first presidential veto, rejecting a congressional measure for apportioning representatives among the states.

1908 ~ Birthday of Herbert von Karajan, Austrian conductor.

1930 ~ In an act of civil disobedience, Mahatma Gandhi breaks British law after marching to the sea and making salt.

1942 ~ The Japanese Imperial Navy attacked Colombo, Sri Lanka, and sank the Royal Navy cruisers HMS Cornwall and HMS Dorsetshire southwest of the island.

1951 ~ Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were sentenced to death for spying for the Soviet Union.

1976 ~ Death of Howard Hughes, aviation pioneer.

1982 ~ Birthday of Lacey Duvalle, American pornographic actress.

2005 ~ Death of Saul Bellow, Canadian born writer, Nobel laureate.

2008 ~ Death of Charlton Heston, Actor & activist.

April 6th
 

1528 ~ Death of Albrecht Dürer, Artist.

1866 ~ Birthday of Butch Cassidy, Outlaw.

1909 ~ Robert Peary and Matthew Henson became the first men to reach the North Pole.

1917 ~ The United States declared war on Germany.

1928 ~ Birthday of James D. Watson, Geneticist, co-discoverer of structure of DNA, awarded 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

1933 ~ Hostess Twinkies were invented.

1983 ~ Birthday of Bobbi Starr, Porn Actress.

1992 ~ Death of Isaac Asimov, Science-fiction author.

1994 ~ The presidents of Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash near Rwanda's capital.

2001 ~ Algerian national Ahmed Ressam, accused of bringing explosives into the U.S. days before the millennium celebrations, was convicted twice in the same day - first in France for belonging to a group supporting Islamic militants, then in Los Angeles on terror charges.

April 7th
 

1614 ~ Death of El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos), artist.

1795 ~ France adopted the meter as the unit of length.

1862 ~ Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Confederates at the battle of Shiloh in Tennessee.

1891 ~ Death of P. T. Barnum, Circus Impresario.

1953 ~ Dag Hammarskjöld was elected United Nations Secretary General.

1964 ~ IBM announced the System/360.

1967 ~ Birthday of Runa Akasaka (赤坂ルナ), Japanese Porn actress.

1968 ~ Death of Jim Clark, racing driver.

1969 ~ The Internet's symbolic birth date: publication of First Request for Comment (RFC).

1978 ~ Development of the neutron bomb was canceled by President Carter.

April 8th
 

1820 ~ The Venus de Milo was discovered on the Aegean island of Melos.

1889 ~ Birthday of Sir Adrien Boult, English Conductor.

1945 ~ Pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer was executed at the POW camp at Flossenbürg.

1953 ~ Jomo Kenyatta was convicted of being a member of the Mau Mau.

1973 ~ Death of Pablo Picasso, artist.

1974 ~ Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves hit his 715th career home run, breaking Babe Ruth's record.

1975 ~ Frank Robinson managed his first game as major league baseball's first African American manager.

1982 ~ Birthday of Judy Star, Canadian porn actress.

1983 ~ Death of Omar Bradley, general.

2005 ~ The funeral of Pope John Paul II.

April 9th
 

1865 ~ Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Court House in Virginia.

1940 ~ Operation Weserübung: Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.

1942 ~ HMS Hermes and Royal Australian Navy Destroyer HMAS Vampire were sunk off Ceylon’s (Sri Lanka) east coast by Japanese naval aircraft.

1926 ~ Birthday of Hugh Hefner, Editor & Publisher.

1928 ~ Birthday of Tom Lehrer, Musician & Satirist.

1959 ~ Death of Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect.

1974 ~ Birthday of Jenna Jameson, Porn actress.

1991 ~ Georgia declared its independence from the Soviet Union.

2003 ~ Iraqis celebrated the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime, beheading a toppled statue of the dictator in downtown Baghdad.

2005 ~ Charles, Prince of Wales married Camilla Parker Bowles.

April 10th
 

1847 ~ Birthday of Joseph Pulitzer, Journalist & Publisher.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic left port in Southampton, England.

1919 ~ Mexican Revolution leader Emiliano Zapata was ambushed and killed by government forces.

1932 ~ Birthday of Omar Sharif, Egyptian actor (Doctor Zhivago, anad many others).

1947 ~ Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in MLB.

1954 ~ Death of Auguste Lumière, Cinema Pioneer.

1963 ~ The American submarine USS Thresher and its crew was lost off Cape Cod, Mass.

1966 ~ Death of Evelyn Waugh, Writer.

1970 ~ Paul McCartney announced that The Beatles had broken up.

1998 ~ The Belfast Agreement was signed.

1963 ~ The American submarine USS Thresher and its crew was lost off Cape Cod, Mass.

It was a harsh way to discover the max allowable depth for the hull type.

The sub loss was confirmed by the Trieste, the bathyscaphe Piccard and Walsh took to the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

The reactor was never recovered, a ticking ecological disaster.

As the lead ship of her class, all further subs of her pattern should have been "Thresher Class", but rather than name them for a sunken ship (unlucky), the class was named for the second hull, USS Permit.

It is amazing what has been dumped there.

April 11th
 

1814 ~ Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to Elba.

1893 ~ Birthday of Dean Acheson, former U.S. Secretary of State.

1932 ~ Birthday of Joel Grey, American singer and actor.

1945 ~ U.S. forces liberated Buchenwald concentration camp.

1951 ~ President Truman replaced General MacArthur with Lieutenant-General Ridgway.

1961 ~ Bob Dylan made his singing début in New York City.

1961 ~ Start of war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann.

1979 ~ Idi Amin deposed as president of Uganda.

1986 ~ Birthday of Roman Heart, American Porn actor.

2007 ~ Death of Kurt Vonnegut, American author.

April 12th
 

65 ~ Death of Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Philosopher, Dramatist & Statesman.

1861 ~ The American Civil War began when Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter in South Carolina.

1895 ~ Birthday of Lily Pons, Opera Soprano.

1937 ~ Frank Whittle ground-tested the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.

1940 ~ Birthday of Herbie Hancock, Musician.

1945 ~ President Franklin Roosevelt died.

1961 ~ Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space aboard Vostok 1.

1984 ~ Arthur Scargill, the man who led the destruction of the National Union of Mineworkers ruled out a national ballot of miners on whether to continue their strike.

1999 ~ President Clinton was cited for contempt of court for giving "intentionally false statements" in a sexual harassment civil lawsuit.

2009 ~ Death of Marilyn Chambers, Porn actress, best known for her performance in "Behind the Green Door".

April 13th
 

1598 ~ Henry IV of France granted freedom of religion to Hguenots.

1742 ~ George Frideric Handel's oratorio Messiah premiered in Dublin, Ireland.

1829 ~ The British Parliament granted freedom of religion to Roman Catholics.

1892 ~ Birthday of Arthur Harris, commander of RAF's Bomber Command in World War II.

1963 ~ Birthday of Garry Kasparov, Russian chess player.

1964 ~ Sidney Poitier broke the color barrier when he was awarded the “Best Actor” Oscar.

1970 ~ Apollo 13 was almost lost when a tank containing liquid oxygen burst.

1980 ~ Birthday of Jana Cova, Czech Porn actress.

1990 ~ The Soviet Union admitted committing the Katyn Massacre.

2008 ~ Death of John Wheeler, American physicist, inventor of the terms "black hole", "quantum foam" and "wormhole".

April 14th
 

1629 ~ Birthday of Christiaan Huygens, Mathematician.

1759 ~ Death of Georg Friedrich Handel, Composer.

1865 ~ President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth.

1904 ~ Birthday of Sir John Gielgud, Actor.

1935 ~ Death of Emmy Noether, Mathematician.

1939 ~ ''The Grapes of Wrath'' by John Steinbeck was published.

1964 ~ Death of Rachel Carson, Writer & Ecologist.

1988 ~ The USSR pledged to leave Afghanistan.

1999 ~ A hailstorm in Sydney, Australia caused at least A$1.7 billion damages.

2003 ~ The Human Genome Project was completed with 99% of the human genome sequenced.

April 15th
 

1452 ~ Birthday of Leonardo da Vinci.

1912 ~ The RMS Titanic sank.

1924 ~ Birthday of Sir Neville Marriner, Conductor.

1945 ~ British & Canadian troops liberate Bergen-Belsen

1955 ~ The first McDonald's restaurant opened in Des Plaines, Illinois.

1959 ~ Birthday of Emma Thompson, English actress.

1985 ~ Birthday of Amy Reid, Porn actress.

1989 ~ The Tiananmen Square protests began.

1994 ~ Representatives of 124 countries signed the Marrakesh Agreements which replaced the GATT with the WTO.

1998 ~ Death of Pol Pot, Cambodian Dictator.

April 16th
 

1867 ~ Birthday of Wilbur Wright, Pioneer Pilot.

1889 ~ Birthday of Charlie Chaplin, Actor, Writer & Film Producer.

1912 ~ Harriett Quimby became the first woman to fly an airplane across the English Channel.

1918 ~ Birthday of Spike Milligan, Comedian.

1927 ~ Birthday of Joseph Ratzinger, German Shepard.

1943 ~ Dr. Albert Hofmann discovered the psychedelic effects of LSD.

1947 ~ The explosive nature of ammonium nitrate fertilizer first tested in the wild.

1947 ~ Bernard Baruch coined the term Cold War to describe the relationship between the U.S. and the USSR.

1963 ~ Dr. Martin Luther King wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail.

1993 ~ The UN voted to make Srebrenica a 'safe haven'.

April 17th
 

1521 ~ Martin Luther appeared before the Holy Roman Emperor at Worms, Germany, and was cross-examined about his thoughts on religious reform.

1741 ~ Birthday of Samuel Chase, Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

1790 ~ Death of Benjamin Franklin, Politician, Inventor, Diplomat, & Printer.

1861 ~ The Virginia State Convention voted to secede from the Union.

1894 ~ Birthday of Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet politician & Premier 1958-1964.

1903 ~ Birthday of Gregor Piatigorsky, Russian cellist.

1961 ~ Cuba was invaded at the “Bay of Pigs” by a U.S. supported invasion force of 1,500 Cuban exiles, who were defeated by Fidel Castro's forces.

1964 ~ Geraldine "Jerrie" Mock became the first woman to circumnavigate the world by air.

1984 ~ Police Constable Yvonne Fletcher was killed by gunfire coming from the Libyan People's Bureau in central London.

2003 ~ Death of Dr. Robert Atkins, noted for the Atkin's Diet.

April 18th
 

1772 ~ Birthday of David Ricardo, Economist.

1775 ~ Paul Revere, William Dawes and Samuel Prescott rode to warn of impending arrests of Samuel Adams and John Hancock and seizure of weapons.

1819 ~ Birthday of Franz von Suppé, Croatian /Austrian composer.

1955 ~ Death of Albert Einstein, Physicist.

1958 ~ A federal court ruled that poet Ezra Pound should be released from an insane asylum.

1980 ~ Independence Day in Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia).

1978 ~ The U.S. Senate narrowly backed President Carter's controversial Panama Canal treaty.

1983 ~ A suicide bomber destroyed the United States embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

1999 ~ Wayne Gretzky played his last National Hockey League game, at Madison Square Garden in New York.

2002 ~ Death of Thor Heyerdahl, Norwegian explorer.

Here lies the body

of Ezra Pound

who was lost at sea

and never was found.


I heard that as a kid and found it so funny I never forgot it.

For a little extra reading:-

http://www.jacanaent.com/Library/Humour/Epitaphs.htm

April 19th
 

1881 ~ Death of Benjamin Disraeli, former Prime Minister of the U.K.

1882 ~ Death of Charles Darwin, Biologist & Author.

1912 ~ Birthday of Glenn Seaborg, Chemist and Nobel Prize winner.

1956 ~ Actress Grace Kelly married Rainier III of Monaco.

1975 ~ India launched its first satellite: Aryabhata.

1989 ~ Death of Daphne du Maurier, Author.

1993 ~ A siege at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, ended when fire destroyed the structure after federal agents smashed their way in.

1995 ~ Oklahoma City bombing: The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma was bombed, killing 168.

2005 ~ Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany was elected pope; he took the name Benedict XVI.

2011 ~ Fidel Castro resigned from the Communist Party of Cuba's central committee after 45 years.

April 20th
 

1657 ~ The Jews of New York City (then New Amsterdam) were granted freedom of religion.

1862 ~ The first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur.

1889 ~ Birthday of Adolf Hitler, German dictator, "Der Führer".

1912 ~ Death of Bram Stoker, Author (Dracula).

1918 ~ Manfred von Richthofen shot down his 79th and 80th victims - his final victories.

1937 ~ Birthday of George Takei, American actor.

1968 ~ English politician Enoch Powell made his controversial Rivers of Blood speech.

1971 ~ The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the use of busing to achieve racial desegregation in schools.

1999 ~ The Columbine High School Massacre

2010 ~ The Deepwater Horizon oil well exploded in the Gulf of Mexico.

April 21st
 

1649 ~ The Maryland Toleration Act, which provided for freedom of worship for all Christians, was passed by the Maryland assembly.

1836 ~ Republic of Texas forces under Sam Houston defeat Mexican troops under General Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto.

1838 ~ Birthday of John Muir, Environmentalist.

1910 ~ Death of Mark Twain, author.

1912 ~ The New York Giants and New York Yankees played an exhibition game to benefit survivors of the RMS Titanic.

1926 ~ Birthday of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

1944 ~ Women in France were enfranchised.

1960 ~ Brazil inaugurated its new capital, Brasilia, transferring the seat of national government from Rio de Janeiro.

1991 ~ Death of Willi Boskovsky, Austrian violinist and conductor.

1992 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan.

"1992 ~ The first extrasolar planets were announced by astronomer Alexander Wolszczan."

Reminds me of a bit from the book "Fly for your Life" where a seacaptain said to the young Bob Tuck, "If they're flyshit, we're OK, if they're rocks, we're fucked."

Momentary visions of dust on the telescope, LOL.

They use a bizarre method of measuring variations of light during planetary transit and the incredibly tiny wobble in the sun created by the mass of the orbiting planet.

Yessir! It is all in how one interprets the data, and what one considers data!

April 22nd
 

1724 ~ Birthday of Immanuel Kant, Philosopher.

1870 ~ Birthday of Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary.

1889 ~ The Oklahoma Land Rush began.

1904 ~ Birthday of Robert Oppenheimer, American physicist.

1943 ~ Albert Hofmann wrote his first report about the hallucinogenic properties of LSD.

1970 ~ First Earth Day celebrated.

1984 ~ Death of Ansel Adams, Photographer.

1997 ~ A four-month siege of the Japanese embassy in Peru ended when commandos stormed and captured the building, rescuing 71 hostages. Interestingly, all 14 rebels died.

2000 ~ In a pre-dawn raid, armed immigration agents seized Elian Gonzalez from his relatives' home in Miami; the 6-year-old boy was reunited with his father.

2002 ~ Death of Linda Lovelace, Porn actress.


Feastdays & Holidays

Earth Day : Canada, U.S.

April 23rd
 

1564 ~ Birthday of William Shakespeare, Playwright.

1858 ~ Birthday of Max Planck, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in physics 1918.

1891 ~ Birthday of Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet Composer.

1954 ~ Hank Aaron hit his first major league home run.

1968 ~ Birthday of Timothy McVeigh, American Terrorist.

1969 ~ Sirhan Sirhan was sentenced to death for assassinating Sen. Robert Kennedy.

1984 ~ American announcement of the isolation of the AIDS virus.

1985 ~ Coca-Cola changed its formula and released New Coke.

2004 ~ President Bush eased Reagan-era sanctions against Libya in return for Moammar Gadhafi's giving up weapons of mass destruction.

2007 ~ Death of Boris Yeltsin, Soviet strongman and the architect of the dismantling of the USSR.

April 24th
 

1731 ~ Death of Daniel Defoe, English Writer.

1898 ~ Spain declared war on the U.S. over Cuba.

1905 ~ Birthday of Robert Penn Warren, Writer, Pulitzer Prize winner, first American Poet Laureate.

1916 ~ The Easter uprising began when some 1,600 Irish nationalists seized several key sites in Dublin.

1942 ~ Birthday of Barbra Streisand, American Singer & Actress.

1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1.

1986 ~ Death of Wallis Simpson, Mistress & Wife of The Duke of Windsor.

1990 ~ The Hubble Space Telescope was launched by Space Shuttle Discovery.

1996 ~ The main assembly of the Palestine Liberation Organization voted to revoke clauses in its charter that called for an armed struggle to destroy Israel.

1997 ~ Death of Pat Paulsen, American comedian and politician.

1967 ~ Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov died in Soyuz 1.

There is a story, possibly true, I heard of a young man about an amateur radio buff who picked up and recorded a signal. It was later identified as the heartbeats of a dying man. Propaganda, or some poor bastard dying a lonely death?

Robert Heinlein may have written about it in his article Pravda means 'Truth', that while traveling in Vilnius, in the USSR, he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a man into orbit that day, but that later the same day their claim was denied.

I suspect that the facts would have been uncovered and published sometime during or following the downfall of the Soviet Union, as has the Katyn Massacre.

For the sake of the poor cosmonaut, I'm hoping it was Yankee propaganda.

April 25th
 

1792 ~ The French national anthem, “La Marseillaise” was composed.

1840 ~ Birthday of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Composer.

1900 ~ Birthday of Wolfgang Pauli, Physicist. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics 1945.

1906 ~ Birthday of William J. Brennan, U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice.

1915 ~ Allied soldiers invaded the Gallipoli Peninsula in an unsuccessful attempt to remove the Ottoman Turkish Empire from WWI.

1917 ~ Birthday of Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz Singer.

1945 ~ The United Nations was organized in San Francisco, California, by 50 nations.

1953 ~ Francis Crick and James Watson published MOLECULAR STRUCTURE OF NUCLEIC ACIDS: A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid describing the double helix structure of DNA.

1980 ~ Tehran hostage rescue mission failed.

1983 ~ Pioneer 10 passed beyond the orbit of Pluto.

Feastdays & Holidays

Australia, New Zealand ~ ANZAC Day

April 26th
 

1711 ~ Birthday of David Hume, Philosopher & Historian.

1785 ~ Birthday of John Audubon, Naturalist & Illustrator.

1935 ~ Birthday of Carol Burnett, Singer, Actress & Comedienne.

1937 ~ Planes from the Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe, bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War.

1945 ~ The Battle of Bautzen: The last successful German armoured offensive of WWII.

1964 ~ Tanganyika and Zanzibar merged to form Tanzania.

1986 ~ The world's worst nuclear accident occurred at the Chernobyl plant in the Soviet Union.

1989 ~ Death of Lucille Ball, Actress & Comedienne.

1994 ~ South Africa held its first multiracial elections.

2005 ~ Syria's 29-year military presence in Lebanon ended.

"1937 ~ Planes from the Condor Legion, an adjunct of the Luftwaffe, bombed the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War."

Germany's version of the Eagle Squadrons. What is it about birds of prey?

April 27th
 

1521 ~ Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan was killed in the Philippines.

1667 ~ John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost for £10.

1791 ~ Birthday of Samuel Morse, inventor of Morse code.

1813 ~ U.S. troops captured York (present day Toronto), the capital of Ontario.

1822 ~ Birthday of Ulysses S. Grant, 18th U.S. President.

1891 ~ Birthdayof Sergei Prokofiev, Soviet composer.

1904 ~ The Australian Labor Party became the first such party to gain national government, under Chris Watson.

1945 ~ Soviet and American armies linked up at the Elbe.

1999 ~ Death of Al Hirt, Musician.

2007 ~ Death of Mstislav Rostropovich, Russian cellist and conductor.

April 28th
 

1906 ~ Birthday of Kurt Gödel, mathematician.

1937 ~ Birthday of Saddam Hussein, former leader of Iraq.

1941 ~ Birthday of Ann-Margret, Swedish-born actress.

1945 ~ Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by members of the Italian resistance movement while trying to flee Italy.

1947 ~ Thor Heyerdahl and five crewmates set out from Peru on the Kon-Tiki.

1952 ~ The U.S. occupation of Japan ended.

1969 ~ Charles de Gaulle resigned as President of France.

1977 ~ The Red Army Faction trial concluded. The defendants, Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin & Jan-Carl Raspe were convicted.

2001 ~ Dennis Tito became the world's first space tourist.

2003 ~ Apple Computer's iTunes Music Store launched.

April 29th
 

1893 ~ Birthday of Harold Urey, American chemist, awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.

1945 ~ Start of Operation Manna.

1945 ~ American soldiers liberated the Dachau concentration camp in Germany.

1951 ~ Death of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Austrian-born philosopher.

1958 ~ The Broadway musical, My Fair Lady, opened in London.

1968 ~ Hair opened on Broadway.

1980 ~ Death of Alfred Hitchcock, director.

1992 ~ Rioting broke out in Los Angeles following the acquittal of four police officers accused of beating Rodney King.

1997 ~ The Chemical Weapons Convention, a worldwide treaty to ban chemical weapons, went into effect.

2008 ~ Death of Albert Hofmann, the Swiss chemist who first synthesized LSD.

April 30th
 

1877 ~ Birthday of Alice B. Toklas, Muse and Brownie Chef.

1916 ~ Birthday of Claude Shannon, the "father of information theory”.

1938 ~ Birthday of Larry Niven, Science Fiction author.

1945 ~ Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide after being married for one day.

1948 ~ The Land Rover was introduced.

1973 ~ President Nixon took responsibility for the Watergate scandal.

1975 ~ The South Vietnamese government in Saigon fell to Communist forces.

1980 ~ Accession of Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.

1993 ~ CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to everyone.

2009 ~ Chrysler automobile company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

May 1st
 

1840 ~ The Penny Black postage stamp put on sale in the UK.

1869 ~ The Folies Bergères opened in Paris. Edouard Manet’s “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère” recalls the lot of one of the employees.

1904 ~ Death of Antonín Dvořák, Czech Composer.

1941 ~ Orson Welles's Citizen Kane premiered in New York City.

1944 ~ Birthday of Rita Coolidge, Singer.

1960 ~ Gary Powers was shot down in a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union.

1978 ~ Death of Aram Khachaturian, Armenian composer.

1982 ~ RAF aircraft attack two airstrips near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

2004 ~ Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia join the European Union.

2008 ~ Death of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the "DC Madam".

May 2nd
 

1729 ~ Birthday of Empress Catherine II of Russia.

1892 ~ Birthday of "The Red Baron", Manfred von Richthofen.

1933 ~ The first modern sighting of the Loch Ness monster was reported.

1945 ~ The Soviet Union announced the capture of Berlin.

1952 ~ The De Havilland Comet 1, the world's first jet airliner, launched the jet age.

1955 ~ Tennessee Williams won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

1982 ~ The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

1997 ~ Tony Blair became Prime Minister of the UK.

1999 ~ Death of Oliver Reed, English actor.

2011 ~ Death of Osama bin Laden, by U.S. Special Forces.

1982 ~ The British submarine HMS Conqueror sank the Argentine cruiser ARA General Belgrano.

She survived Pearl Harbour but couldn't survive the Brits.