Thursday, May 05, 2005

Thursday, May 5

This Day In History

  • 1494   During his second voyage to the Western Hemisphere, Christopher Columbus first sighted Jamaica.
  • 1818   Political philosopher Karl Marx was born in Prussia.
  • 1821   Napoleon Bonaparte died in exile on the island of St. Helena.
  • 1847   The American Medical Association was organized in Philadelphia, PA.
  • 1891   Carnegie Hall (then named Music Hall) opened in New York City.
  • 1892   Congress extended the Chinese Exclusion Act for 10 more years.
  • 1893   Panic hit the New York Stock Exchange; by year's end, the country was in the throes of a severe depression.
  • 1925   John T. Scopes was arrested in Tennessee for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution.
  • 1945   In the only fatal attack of its kind during World War II, a Japanese balloon bomb exploded on Gearhart Mountain in Oregon, killing the pregnant wife of a minister and five children.
  • 1955   West Germany became a sovereign state.
  • 1978   Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds smacked his 3,000th major-league hit. Not many years later, ‘Charlie Hustle’ would break Ty Cobb’s career record of 4,191 hits.
  • 1981   Irish Republican Army hunger-striker Bobby Sands died at the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland on his 66th day without food.
  • 1994   Singapore caned American teen-ager Michael Fay for vandalism.
  • 2000   Reformers swept Iran's run-off elections, winning control of the legislature from conservatives for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
  • 2002   French President Jacques Chirac was re-elected in a landslide victory over extreme-right leader Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Happy Birthday To
  • 1818   Karl Marx (socialist writer: Das Kapital, The Communist Manifesto; founder of communism; died Mar 14, 1883)
  • 1942   Tammy Wynette (Virginia Wynette Pugh) (Grammy Award-winning country singer)

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