Milestones

[Eulalia]

May 22nd: Julia of Carthage and Corsica, Virgin Martyr, one of the few who were reasonably certainly crucified.

(edited from Wiki)
According to her Vita by African Bishop VistorVitensis, Julia was a Carthaginia girl who was "led from it a captive" and "her lot" was that she came into the service of a man named Eusebius. Vitensis does not say how she came into service, but the statement is usually interpreted that she was sold as a slave after Gaiseric captured Carthage in 439. It is known that he disposed of many recalcitrant Christians in this way, especially women. As a young and strong female, Julia would have brought a good price for the Vandals (who later turned to piracy, including slave-dealing.)
Vitensis says that she served "a fleshly master" but she followed the instructions of St Paul and obeyed her master Even though he was a pagan he admired so great a virtue in service. When her own duties were done and she was granted the servant's time off, she spent her spare time either in reading or insisting on praying. She grew pale and thin from fasting despite the threats and blandishments of her master, but her mind, intent on Heaven, fed daily on God's words.
Eusebius, a citizen of Syria (then part of Palestine), rowing hard for Gaulwith an expensive cargo, anchored at Cap Cprse for the night. From a distance he saw that sacrifices were about to be conducted by the pagans and immediately descended with all his people to attend. On that day they were slaying a bull "to their devils." The use of mercimonia for cargo identifies it as goods for sale, from which it is often inferred that Eusebius was a merchant. The bishop quips that he disagrees, that Eusebius left his precious cargo (Julia) in Corsica. The choice of a bull, Poseidon's animal, suggests that they had intruded on the yearly rites of the Holy Headland (Sacrum Promontorium).
While they were celebrating by becoming intoxicated and SaintJulia was sighing deeply for their error it was announced to Felix by his satellites that there was a girl in the ship who derided the worship of the gods. This "son of the serpent" asked Eusebius, "Why did not all who are with you come down to worship our gods? I heard that there is a girl who derides the names of our gods." Eusebius replied "I was not successful in moving the girl from the superstition of the Christians nor was I able to bring her to our religion by threatening. If she were not necessary because of her most faithful service I would already have had her tortured."
Then FelixSaxo gave him some options: "Either compel her to give offerings to our gods, or give her to me in exchange for any four of my slavegirls that please you, or for the price that you paid for her." Eusebius replied: "If you wanted to give me all your property it would not equal the value of her service to me."
Who Felix Saxo was either to offer such options or to allow Eusebius to refuse them is explained by Ferrarius in his "Catalog of the Saints of Italy" – he calls him Felix Tribunus, so he had the tribunician power, which would have made him a high-level magistrate, perhaps even provincial governor.
The "Saxo" part of the name appears out of context, as it is also the Latin for "Saxon." Ruinart suggests Sago for Sagona (or Sagone as it is still sometimes listed on the map), a vanished ancient town of western Corsica, the former port of Vico, dept. Corse du Sud, diocese of Ajaccio. Apparently the Romans had given the tribunate to a native Corsican.
As to why he did not just take the girl by seineurial right, Vitensis gives the answer by calling Eusebius civis. The penalty for disrespecting the rights of Roman citizens was severe, and the girl was the property of Eusebius. He could do as he liked with her. However, disrespecting the state gods was a crime punishable by death, which the magistrate could only overlook at his own risk.
Having taken counsel the "most poisonous serpent" prepared the banquet, where Eusebius became intoxicated and fell into a deep sleep. Straightway "a raging mob of gentiles" boarded the ship and placed Julia on the shore. Felix said: "Sacrifice to the gods, girl. I will give your master as much as he likes and dissolve the bond of your state." The tribunician power included manumission. However, Julia repled:
"Libertas mea Christi servitium est, cui ego quotidie pura mente deservio. Ceterum istum vestrum errorem non solum non veneror, verum etiam detestor."
"My liberty is the service of Christ, whom I serve every day with a pure mind. As for that error of yours, I not only do not venerate it, I detest it."
The tribune ordered that she be struck blows to the face. That done, she said that as Christ was struck for her, why should she not be struck for him? Then "the most cruel serpent" ordered that she be "tortured by the hair", later described as mollitia, "diminishment", tearing out, of her hair. Then she was flogged, to which she repled in the same way, that if Christ was flogged and crowned with thorns for her, why should she not endure this diminishment of the hair, which she calls the vexillum fidei, the "flag of faith?" The "serpent", fearful of being indicted for cruelty, hurried the process along by ordering "the handmaiden of Christ" to be placed on the patibulum of a cross. As Eusebius awoke form his drunken sleep, the saint, released from the flesh, victress over her suffering, took happy flight with the angels to the stars of heaven. Another manuscript cited by Ruinart has a columba, a "dove", flying from her mouth.

 

[admihoek]

Tot 1900

A pair of American outlaws were ambushed and killed on May 23 in what legal scholars have called a case of cold blooded murder. Also on this date a famous pirate was hanged for killing a crew member with a bucket.
1430. Joan of Arc is captured by the Burgundians while leading an army to relieve Compiègne. The Siege of Compiègne was Joan of Arc's final military action. Her career as a leader ended with her capture during a skirmish outside the town. Although this was otherwise a minor siege, both politically and militarily, the loss of France's most charismatic and successful commander was an important event of the Hundred Years' War.
1498. Girolamo Savonarola is burned at the stake, in Florence, Italy, on the orders of Pope Alexander VI. Savonarola was an Italian Dominican priest and leader of Florence from 1494 until his execution in 1498. He was known for religious reform, anti-Renaissance preaching, book burning, and destruction of what he considered immoral art. He vehemently preached against what he saw as the moral corruption of the clergy, and his main opponent was Pope Alexander VI. He is sometimes seen as a precursor of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, though he remained a devout and pious Roman Catholic during his whole life.
Pope Alexander VI,born Roderic Llançol, later Roderic de Borja y Borja, was Pope from 1492 to 1503. He is the most controversial of the secular popes of the Renaissance, and his surname (Italianized as Borgia) became a byword for the debased standards of the papacy of that era. Alexander VI had four children by his mistress, three sons and a daughter: Giovanni, Cesare, Goffredo and Lucrezia.
In spite of the splendors of the pontifical court, the condition of Rome was deplorable. The city swarmed with Spanish adventurers, assassins, prostitutes and informers; murder and robbery were committed with impunity, and the Pope himself cast aside all show of decorum, living a purely secular life; indulging in the chase, and arranging dancing, and stage plays.
1533. The marriage of King Henry VIII to Catherine of Aragon is declared null and void. Catherine of Aragon was the first wife of Henry VIII of England. Henry tried to have their twenty-four year marriage annulled in part because all their male heirs apparently died in childhood.
By 1525 Henry was infatuated with his mistress Anne Boleyn and dissatisfied that his marriage to Catherine had produced no surviving sons, leaving their daughter, the future Mary I of England, as heiress presumptive at a time when there was no established precedent for a woman on the throne. He sought to have their marriage annulled, setting in motion a chain of events that led to England's break with the Roman Catholic Church. When Pope Clement VII refused to annul the marriage, Henry defied him by assuming supremacy over religious matters. In 1533 their marriage was declared invalid and Henry married Anne on the judgement of clergy in England, without reference to the Pope. Catherine refused to accept Henry as Supreme Head of the Church of England and considered herself the King's rightful wife and Queen until her death. Now acknowledged by Henry only as Dowager Princess of Wales, she lived out the remainder of her life at Kimbolton Castle, and died there on 7 January 1536.
1568. The Netherlands declares its independence from Spain as Dutch rebels led by Louis of Nassau, brother of William I of Orange, defeat Jean de Ligne, Duke of Aremberg and his loyalist troops in the Battle of Heiligerlee, opening the Eighty Years' War.
1618. The Second Defenestration of Prague precipitates the Thirty Years' War. "Defenestration" is the act of throwing somebody from a window. Some members of the Bohemian aristocracy rebelled following the 1617 election of Ferdinand (Duke of Styria and a Catholic) as King of Bohemia to succeed the aging Emperor Matthias. In 1617, Roman Catholic officials ordered the cessation of construction of some Protestant chapels on land of which the Catholic clergy claimed ownership. On May 23, 1618, an assembly of Protestants, led by Count Thurn, who had exhorted his followers into throwing the Regents appointed by the Emperor out the window in Prague Castle, bribed their way into the Castle where the Regents were meeting.
The Regents were thrown out the third floor window along with the Regents' secretary. Some texts say they fell 70 feet (21 meters) and landed on a large pile of manure in a dry moat and survived. Roman Catholic Imperial officials claimed that the three men survived due to the mercy of angels assisting the righteousness of the Catholic cause. Protestant pamphleteers asserted that their survival had more to do with the horse excrement in which they landed than the benevolent acts of the angels.
1701. After being convicted of piracy and of murdering William Moore, Captain William Kidd is hanged in London. Some modern historians deem his piratical reputation unjust, as there is evidence that Kidd acted only as a privateer.
Kidd killed one of his own crewmen on October 30, 1697. While Kidd's gunner, William Moore, was on deck sharpening a chisel, a Dutch ship hove in sight. Moore urged Kidd to attack the Dutchman, an act not only piratical but also certain to anger the Dutch-born King William. Kidd refused, calling Moore a lousy dog. Moore retorted, "If I am a lousy dog, you have made me so; you have brought me to ruin and many more." Kidd snatched up and heaved an ironbound bucket at Moore. Moore fell to the deck with a fractured skull and died the following day.
While English admiralty law allowed captains great leeway in using violence against their crew, outright murder was not permitted. But Kidd seemed unconcerned, later telling his surgeon that he had "good friends in England, that will bring me off for that."He was tried without representation and was shocked to learn at trial that he was charged with murder. He was found guilty on all charges (murder and five counts of piracy) and was hanged on May 23 , 1701, at "Execution Dock," Wapping, in London. During the execution, the hangman's rope broke and Kidd was hanged on the second attempt. His body was gibbeted -- left to hang in an iron cage over the River Thames, London, as a warning to future would-be pirates for two years.
1777. At Sag Harbor, New York, Patriot troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Meigs capture several British vessels and burn Redcoat supplies during the American Revolution. With the help of two local men, Meigs and his Connecticut raiders grabbed the British commander from his bed in the wee hours of the morning, firing only one gunshot. Instead of guns, the Patriots used silent but deadly bayonets to capture the British fort, successfully avoiding announcing their presence with gunfire.
With six Redcoats dead and 53 captive from their success on land, the Patriots moved from the hilltop fort towards the harbor. The British ships anchored there eventually noticed the body of men moving towards them and opened fire. The Patriots, though, went on to burn 24 British ships and their cargoes of hay, rum, grain and other merchandise. With an additional 37 prisoners in custody, the 170 Yankee raiders returned to Connecticut without having lost a single man in their party.
The Sag Harbor raid was the only successful Patriot attack on Long Island between the British takeover in 1776 and their departure following the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
1788. South Carolina ratifies the Constitution as the 8th American state.
1805. Napoleon Bonaparte is crowned King of Italy with the Iron Crown of Lombardy in the Cathedral of Milan.
1813. South American independence leader Simón Bolívar enters Mérida, leading the invasion of Venezuela, and is proclaimed El Libertador ("The Liberator").
1844. In the Declaration of the Báb, a merchant of Shiraz announces that he is a Prophet and founds a religious movement that would later be brutally crushed by the Persian government. He is considered to be a forerunner of the Bahá'í Faith, and Bahá'ís celebrate the day as a holy day.
1846. In the Mexican-American War, Mexico declares war on the United States.
1873. The Canadian Parliament establishes the North West Mounted Police, the forerunner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

 

[admihoek]

vanaf 1900


1911. In a ceremony presided over by President William Howard Taft, the New York Public Library, the largest marble structure ever constructed in the United States, is dedicated in New York City.
1915. During World War I, Italy joins the Allies after they declare war on Austria-Hungary.
1923. The Crow scout Curley, the last man on the army side to see Custer and the 7th Cavalry alive, is buried at the National Cemetery of the Big Horn Battlefield in Montana. From an early age Curley had participated in fights with the Crow's hated enemy, the Sioux. Like many of his people, Curley viewed the Anglo-American soldiers as allies in the Crow war with the Sioux. When he was in his late teens, he signed on as a cavalry scout to aid the army's major campaign against the Sioux and Cheyenne in the summer of 1876. On the morning of June 25, 1876, Curley and the other scouts warned Custer that a massive gathering of Indians lay ahead that far outnumbered his contingent of 187 men. Custer dismissed the report and made the unusual decision to attack in the middle of the day. Both the Crow and Arikara scouts believed this would be suicidal and prepared to die.
Right before the battle began, however, Custer released the Crow scouts from duty. All of the scouts, except for Curley, obeyed and rode off to relative safety. However, since the hills were now swarming with small war parties of Sioux and Cheyenne, Curley initially thought he would be safer if he remained with the soldiers. As the fighting gradually began to heat up, Curley reconsidered. He left Custer and rode to the east. Concealing himself in coulees and ravines, Curley avoided attack and made his way to a ridge about a mile and a half to the east. There he watched much of the battle through field glasses, the last man from the army side to see Custer and his men alive. When it had become clear that Custer's men were going to be wiped out, Curley abandoned his looking post and rode away to warn the approaching Generals Terry and Gibbon of the disaster.
In the weeks following the battle, Curley provided an accurate and valuable account of the final moments of Custer's 7th Cavalry. Unfortunately, some interviewers later pushed the eager-to-cooperate Curley to revise his account and others simply misrepresented his testimony to fit their own theories. Consequently, for many years Curley was dismissed as a liar. Later historians, however, have vindicated the accuracy of Curley's initial story.
1929. The first talking cartoon of Mickey Mouse, The Karnival Kid, is released.
1933. Legendary American racehorse Seabiscuit is born
1934. American bank robbers Bonnie and Clyde are ambushed by police and killed in Black Lake, Louisiana. Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow (see picture) were notorious outlaws, robbers and criminals who travelled the Central United States during the Great Depression. They captivated the attention of the American press and its readership during what is sometimes referred to as the "public enemy era" between 1931 and 1935. Although this couple and their gang were notorious for their bank robberies, Clyde Barrow preferred to rob small stores or gas stations.
Bonnie and Clyde were killed May 23, 1934, on a desolate road near their Bienville Parish, Louisiana, hideout. They were shot by a posse of four Texas and two Louisiana officers (the Louisiana pair added solely for jurisdictional reasons). Some sources say Bonnie and Clyde were shot more than 50 times, while other sources claim a total closer to 25 bullet wounds per corpse, or fifty total.
In a grisly aftermath, the men who were left to guard the bodies allowed people to cut off bloody locks of Bonnie's hair and tear pieces from her dress, which were sold as souvenirs.
All told, the Barrow Gang was believed responsible for the deaths of 13 people, including nine police officers. Parker and Barrow are still seen by many as romantic figures, however, especially after the success of the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, starring Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty.
1941. During World War II, Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten, second cousin of King George VI of Britain and the only man other than the king to hold rank in all three military services simultaneously, is among those thrown into the Mediterranean Sea when his destroyer, the HMS Kelly, is sunk. The Kelly was attacked by 24 bombers; 130 crew members were killed. Mountbatten was still on the bridge of the ship when it finally flipped over; nevertheless, he managed to swim to shore and take control of the rescue operation. He would ultimately accept, as senior Allied officer present, the surrender of Japanese land forces within Southeast Asia by General Sieshiro Itagaki.
Mountbatten survived the terror of war against the Axis powers, only to be killed by an Irish Republic Army bomb, planted on his boat, on August 26, 1979.
1941. Joe Louis beats Buddy Baer to retain his heavyweight title. The fight was widely considered the most exciting heavyweight match-up since Dempsey vs. Firpo in 1923. Baer proved to be more than Louis bargained for, and he shocked fans by sending the champ to the canvas for four seconds in the first round. Louis clawed his way back, however, and eventually gutted out a victory in front of 35,000 people at Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C.
1945. At the close of World War II, Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, committs suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule while in Allied custody.
Himmler was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany. As Reichsführer-SS he oversaw all police and security forces, including the Gestapo. Shortly before the end of the war, he offered to surrender to the Allies if he were spared from prosecution. After being arrested by British forces, he committed suicide before he could be questioned.
1949. The Federal Republic of Germany is established, and the Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany proclaimed.
1951. Tibetans are forced to sign the "Seventeen Point Agreement for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet" with the People's Republic of China. According to the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Tibetans and the Dalai Lama never accepted this agreement.
1958. Explorer 1 ceases transmission. Explorer 1 was the first Earth satellite of the United States, launched as part of its participation in the International Geophysical Year. The mission followed the first two Earth satellites the previous year, the Soviet Union's Sputnik 1and 2, beginning the Cold War Space Race between the two nations.
1960. A tsunami caused by an earthquake off the coast of Chile travels across the Pacific Ocean and kills 61 people in Hilo, Hawaii. The massive 8.5-magnitude quake had killed thousands in Chile the previous day.
The earthquake, involving a severe plate shift, caused a large displacement of water off the coast of southern Chile at 3:11 p.m. Traveling at speeds in excess of 400 miles per hour, the tsunami moved west and north. On the west coast of the United States, the waves caused an estimated $1 million in damages, but were not deadly.
The tsunami destroyed Hilo Bay on the island of Hawaii. Thirty-five-foot waves bent parking meters to the ground and wiped away most buildings. A 10-ton tractor was swept out to sea. Reports indicate that the 20-ton boulders making up the sea wall were moved 500 feet. Sixty-one people died in Hilo, the worst-hit area of the island chain.
The tsunami continued to race further west across the Pacific. Ten thousand miles away from the earthquake's epicenter, Japan, despite ample warning time, was not able to warn the people in harm's way. At about 6 p.m., more than a day after the earthquake, the tsunami struck the Japanese islands of Honshu and Hokkaido. The crushing wave killed 180 people, left 50,000 more homeless and caused $400 million in damage.
1967. Egypt closes the Straits of Tiran and blockades the port of Eilat at the northern end of the Gulf of Aqaba to Israeli shipping, laying the foundations for the Six Day War.
1971. English model Charmaine Sinclair is born. Most of her modeling was glamour and softcore in British men's magazines such as Fiesta. For over two years in the mid-1990s, she was featured monthly in Club magazine. She was a popular Page 3 girl. Sinclair appeared in nine Playboy lingerie special editions, sometimes as "Charmaine Garth." She was also a lingerie model for various mail order companies. (See pictures.)
1977. Two terrorist actions unfold in The Netherlands. Several dozen hostages are taken onboard a train, and about 100 others (mostly children) are held at a Dutch school. The train siege lasts until June 11.
1985. U.S. engineer Thomas Patrick Cavanagh is sentenced to life in prison for attempting to sell stealth bomber secrets to the Soviet Union.
1989. An estimated one million people in Beijing (and tens of thousands in other Chinese cities) march to demand the resignation of Premier Li Peng.
1994. Funeral services are held at Arlington National Cemetery for former U.S. first lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
1997. Iranians elect a moderate president, Mohammad Khatami, over hard-liners in the ruling Muslim clergy.
1999. World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) superstar Owen Hart falls to his death during the Pay Per View "Over the Edge" at the Kemper Arena in Kansas City, Missouri after a botched entrance stunt.
2003. 25-year-old Nepalese Sherpa, Pemba Dorjie Sherpa, makes the fastest-ever ascent of Mount Everest, in 12 hours 45 minutes. This is broken by his rival Sherpa Lakpa Gelu only three days later.
2008. The International Court of Justice awards Middle Rocks to Malaysia and Pedra Branca (Pulau Batu Puteh) to Singapore, ending a 29-year territorial dispute between the two countries.
2011. The National Weather Service continues issuing tornado warnings for parts of the Central United States, including Arkansas, Oklahoma and Missouri. The death toll from the Joplin, Missouri, tornado reaches 116, becoming the deadliest single US tornado since 1947.
Elsewhere, Iceland's main airport remains closed following the worst eruption of the Grímsvötn volcano since 1873, with the ash cloud starting to spread towards Europe. Airlines cancel flights to and from Scotland as the ash reaches northern Britain.

 

[Eulalia]

May 24th: Afra of Brescia, Virgin Martyr. Really nothing reliable known about her, she's usually associated with two other saints of Brescia, Faustinus and Jovita who were beheaded some time in the 2nd century. A fine painting by Paolo Veronese in her church in Brescia shows her (magnificently attired) kneeling on a scaffold, being hauled into position for execution, presumably by beheading (the heads of the two male saints are on the ground, but various bits of sinister apparatus and dismembered limbs hint at something more gruesome) - shame I can only find thumbnail-sized images of it online.

It's also the feast day of David I, King of Scots, one of our best (died 1153).

 

[admihoek]

It's also the feast day of David I, King of Scots, one of our best (died 1153).

Y're right:
1153. King David I of Scotland dies. The term "Davidian Revolution" is used by many scholars to summarize the changes which took place in the Kingdom of Scotland during his reign. These included his foundation of burghs, implementation of the ideals of Gregorian Reform, foundation of monasteries, Normanization of the Scottish government, and the introduction of feudalism through immigrant French and Anglo-French knights.
AND FOUND THIS ONE ON FLICKR

 

[admihoek]

1725. English criminal Jonathan Wild is hanged. Wild was perhaps the most infamous criminal of London -- and possibly Great Britain -- during the 18th century, both because of his own actions and the uses novelists, playwrights, and political satirists made of them. He invented a scheme which allowed him to run one of the most successful gangs of thieves of the era, all the while appearing to be the nation's leading policeman. He manipulated the press and the nation's fears to become the most loved public figure of the 1720s; this love turned to hatred when his villainy was exposed. After his death, he became a symbol of corruption and hypocrisy.
Wild's hanging was a great event, and tickets were sold in advance for the best vantage points. Even in a year with a great many macabre spectacles, Wild drew an especially large and boisterous crowd. On the morning of his execution, in fear of death, he attempted suicide by drinking a large dose of laudanum, but because he was weakened by fasting, he vomited violently and sank into a coma from which he would not awaken. He was unconscious during his execution. Wild's skeleton remains on public display in the Royal College's Hunterian Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields.

 

[admihoek]

and her some about the ancestors our beloved half elfgirl EIRIN

1487. The ten-year-old Lambert Simnel is crowned in Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland with the name of Edward VI in a bid to threaten King Henry VII's reign. Simnel was born around 1477. His real name is not known - contemporary records call him John, not Lambert, and even his surname is suspect. Different sources have different claims of his parentage, from a baker and tradesman to organ builder. Most definitely, he was of humble origin. At the age of about ten, he was taken as a pupil by an Oxford-trained priest named Richard Simon (or Richard Symonds / Richard Simons / William Symonds) who apparently decided to become a kingmaker.
Simon noticed a striking resemblance between Lambert and the supposedly murdered sons of Edward IV, so he initially intended to present Simnel as Richard, Duke of York, son of King Edward IV, the younger of the vanished Princes in the Tower. Simnel's army — mainly Flemish and Irish troops — landed on Piel Island in the Furness area of Lancashire on 5 June 1487 and were joined by some English supporters. However, most local nobles, with the exception of Sir Thomas Broughton, did not join them. They clashed with the King's army on 16 June at the Battle of Stoke Field and were defeated. King Henry pardoned young Simnel (probably because he had mostly been a puppet in the hands of adults) and gave him a job in the royal kitchen as a spit-turner. When he grew older, he became a falconer. He died around 1525.

1798. The Irish Rebellion of 1798 against British rule begins. The United Irishmen, a republican revolutionary group influenced by the ideas of the American and French revolutions, were the main organizing force behind the rebellion. The uprising lasted several months.
The Establishment responded to widespread disorders by launching a counter-campaign of martial law. It used tactics including house burnings, torture of captives, pitchcapping and murder, particularly in Ulster as it was the one area of Ireland where large numbers of Catholics and Protestants had effected common cause.
"Pitchcapping" refers to a form of torture devised by British forces in 18th century Ireland. The process involved pouring hot pitch, or tar into a conical shaped paper "cap", which was forced onto a bound suspect's head and then allowed to cool. Less elaborate versions included smearing a cloth or piece of paper with pitch and pressing onto the head of the intended victim. The "pitchcap" was then torn off, taking lumps of skin and flesh with it, which usually left the victim disfigured for life.

 

[admihoek]

May 24 has seen a massacre, and the publication of a children's poem that has become an American classic.
15 BC. Roman general Germanicus Julius Caesar is born. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty of the early Roman Empire, he was called either Nero Claudius Drusus or Tiberius Claudius Nero at birth and received the agnomen "Germanicus," by which he is principally known, in 9, when it was awarded to his father in honor of his victories in Germania.
Germanicus was very popular among the citizens of Rome, who enthusiastically celebrated all his victories. He was also a favorite with Augustus, his great-uncle and his wife's grandfather, who, for some time, considered him as heir to the Empire until Augustus named Tiberius as his heir. After the death of Augustus in AD 14, the Senate appointed Germanicus commander of the forces in Germania. A short time after, the legions rioted on the news that the succession befell on the unpopular Tiberius. Refusing to accept this, the rebel soldiers cried for Germanicus as emperor. But he chose to honor Augustus' choice and put an end to the mutiny, preferring to continue only as a general.
Germanicus was sent to Asia, where in AD 18 he defeated the kingdoms of Cappadocia and Commagena, turning them into Roman provinces. In the following year, he died suddenly in Antioch, Syria, of a wasting illness -- or poison.
The death of Germanicus in what can only be described as dubious circumstances greatly affected Tiberius' popularity in Rome, leading to the creation of a climate of fear in Rome itself. Also suspected of connivance in his death was Tiberius' chief advisor, Sejanus, who would then turn the empire into a frightful tyranny throughout the 20s, before himself being removed and executed by Tiberius in a bloody purge in AD 31.
1218. The Fifth Crusade leaves Acre for Egypt. The Fifth Crusade was an attempt to take back Jerusalem and the rest of Holy Land by first conquering the powerful Ayyubid state in Egypt.
After occupying the port of Damietta, the Crusaders marched south towards Cairo in July of 1221, but were turned back after their dwindling supplies led to a forced retreat. A nighttime attack by Sultan Al-Kamil resulted in a great number of crusader losses and eventually in the surrender of the army. Al-Kamil agreed to an eight-year peace agreement with Europe.
1543. Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus dies in what is now Frombork, Poland. The father of modern astronomy, he was the first modern European scientist to propose that Earth and other planets revolve around the sun.
1626. Peter Minuit buys Manhattan from the Canarsee tribe. However, the Canarsees were actually native to Brooklyn, where Manhattan was home instead to the Weckquaesgeek, who were not pleased by the exchange and later battled the Dutch.
1689. The English Parliament passes the Act of Toleration protecting Protestants (Roman Catholics are intentionally excluded).
The Act of Toleration -- the long title of which is An Act for Exempting their Majestyes Protestant Subjects dissenting from the Church of England from the Penalties of certaine Lawes -- granted freedom of worship to Nonconformists i.e., Protestants who dissented from the Church of England such as Baptists, Congregationalists and Quakers, but not to Catholics.

1738. John Wesley is converted, essentially launching the Methodist movement; the day is celebrated annually by Methodists as Aldersgate Day.
1819. Queen Victoria, Britain's longest-reigning monarch, is born.
1830. Mary Had a Little Lamb by Sarah Hale is published. There are two competing theories on the origin of this poem. One holds that another author wrote the first four lines and that the final twelve lines, more moralistic and much less childlike than the first, were composed by Sarah Hale; the other is that Hale was responsible for the entire poem. The poem was based on Mary Sawyer and her pet lamb.
Mary Sawyer's house can still be visited in Sterling, Massachusetts. A statue representing Mary's Little Lamb stands in the town center. The schoolhouse (where Mary went) was purchased by Henry Ford and relocated to Sudbury, Massachusetts. It now sits on the grounds of Longfellow's Wayside Inn.
1844. In a demonstration witnessed by members of Congress, American inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatches a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland. The message --"What Hath God Wrought?" -- was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The question was taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23).
1856. John Brown and his men murder five slavery supporters at Pottawatomie Creek, Kansas. The Pottawatomie Massacre occurred during the night of May 24 and the morning of May 25, 1856. In reaction to the sacking of Lawrence, Kansas, by pro-slavery forces, John Brown and a band of abolitionist settlers killed five pro-slavery settlers north of Pottawatomie Creek in Franklin County, Kansas. This was one of the many bloody episodes in Kansas preceding the American Civil War, which came to be known collectively as Bleeding Kansas.
1883. The Brooklyn Bridge in New York is opened to traffic after 14 years of construction.
1899. The first public parking garage in the United States is opened in Boston, Massachusetts.
1901. Seventy-eight miners die in the Caerphilly pit disaster in South Wales.
1917. Driven by the spectacular success of the German U-boat submarines and their attacks on Allied and neutral ships at sea in World War I, the British Royal Navy introduces a newly created convoy system, whereby all merchant ships crossing the Atlantic Ocean would travel in groups under the protection of the British navy.
The introduction of the convoy system finally marked the beginning of a sharp decline in the scale of German submarine damage and the death of German hopes to starve Britain into submission.
1921. The trial of Sacco and Vanzetti begins. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were two Italian-born American anarchists, who were arrested, tried, and executed via electrocution in Massachusetts.
Sacco and Vanzetti were accused of the killings of a shoe factory paymaster and a security guard, and of robbery of $15,766.51 from the factory's payroll in South Braintree, Massachusetts during the afternoon of April 15, 1920.
In spite of major protests and strikes all over the world, they were executed in the electric chair on August 23, 1927. The execution sparked riots in London and Germany. The American Embassy in Paris was besieged by protestors and the facade of the Moulin Rouge was wrecked.
1930. Amy Johnson lands in Darwin, Northern Territory, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia (she left on May 5 for the 11,000 mile flight).
1935. Crosley Field in Cincinnati, Ohio, hosts major-league baseball's first night game ever as the Cincinnati Reds beat the Philadelphia Phillies 2-1. (That score suggests great pitching or primitive lighting.)
1941. During World War II, the German Battleship Bismarck sinks the then pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Hood, killing all but three crewmen.
1945. American actress Priscilla Presley is born in Brooklyn, New York, She is a model, author and actress and ex-wife of rock 'n' roll icon Elvis Presley and mother of singer Lisa Marie Presley.
Their marriage took place on May 1, 1967.
After her divorce from Elvis, Priscilla bought into a boutique and ran it for a few years before getting into modeling and acting. Priscilla made her television debut in 1980 as a co-host of the ABC series Those Amazing Animals with the legendary Burgess Meredith. She went on to portray the lead role of Jenna Wade on the popular television series Dallas from 1983 to 1988 and starred opposite Leslie Nielsen in The Naked Gun gag movie trilogy as Jane Spencer Drebin. (See pictures.)
1956. The first Eurovision Song Contest is held in Lugano, Switzerland and is won by the host nation.
1958. United Press International is formed through a merger of the United Press and the International News Service. UPI was once a mainstay in the newswire business along with the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. At its peak, it had more than 6,000 media subscribers; 2,000 full time employees; and 200 news bureaus in 92 countries. The company began to decline as the circulation of afternoon newspapers, its chief client category, began to fail with the rising popularity of television news. Its decline accelerated after the 1982 sale of UPI by the founding Scripps family, culminating in two bankruptcies.
1964. A referee's call in a soccer match between Peru and Argentina sparks a riot. More than 300 fans were killed and another 500 people were injured in the violent melee that followed at National Stadium in Lima, Peru.
1968. FLQ separatists bomb the U.S. consulate in Quebec City.
1970. The drilling of the Kola Superdeep Borehole begins in the Soviet Union. The project attempted to drill as deep as possible into the Earth's crust. A number of boreholes were drilled by branching from a central hole. The deepest reached 12,262 metres (40,230 ft) in 1989, and is the deepest hole ever drilled, and the deepest artificial point on the earth.
1976. London to Washington, DC Concorde service begins.
1982. Iranians recapture of the port city of Khorramshahr from the Iraqis during the Iran–Iraq War.
1989. Sonia Sutcliffe, wife of the Yorkshire Ripper, is awarded a six-figure sum in damages after winning a libel action against Private Eye. She sued after allegations that she used her connection to her husband, the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, to make money. She won £600,000 which was later reduced to £60,000 on appeal.
1992. The last Thai dictator, General Suchinda Kraprayoon, resigns following pro-democracy protests.
1994. Four men convicted of bombing New York's World Trade Center in 1993 are each sentenced to 240 years in prison.
2001. The Democrats gain control of the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1994 when Senator James Jeffords of Vermont abandons the Republican Party and declares himself an independent.
2004. North Korea bans mobile phones.
2011. The search continues for survivors of the 2011 Joplin tornado as 1,500 people are unaccounted for in the U.S. town. At least five people die and many more are injured as tornadoes and severe storms hit near the U.S. city of Oklahoma City while two people are killed in a tornado in central Kansas.
Smoke is seen rising from Muammar Gaddafi's compound in Tripoli, Libya, following a NATO airstrike which reportedly kills three people. Meanwhile, clashes break out in southern Tunisia between local residents and Libyan refugees fleeing that country's civil war.

 

[thehangingtree]

'gn2' (above) looks amazingly like Madame Wu, whome I have crucified...

...Admi, you must join us for one of the endevors...

Tree

 

[Eulalia]

'gn2' (above) looks amazingly like Madame Wu, whome I have crucified...
Tree

without letting us watch? ​

 

[admihoek]

without letting us watch? ​

but he, my friend the old Oak prommessed a aftermath though?

 

[admihoek]

On May 25 the U.S. state of Florida executed a convict who was already dead (according to several witnesses). Otherwise, this date has seen the usual run of battles and disasters as well as two record-setting feats.
567 BC. Servius Tullius, king of Rome, celebrates a triumph for his victory over the Etruscans. Servius was a popular king, and one of Rome's most significant benefactors. Despite the opposition of Rome's patricians, he expanded the Roman franchise and improved the lot and fortune of Rome's lowest classes of citizens and non-citizens. According to Livy, he reigned for 44 years, until murdered by his treacherous daughter Tullia and son-in-law Tarquinius Superbus. In consequence of this "tragic crime" and his hubristic arrogance as king, Tarquinius was eventually removed. This cleared the way for the abolition of Rome's monarchy and the founding of the Roman Republic, whose groundwork had already been laid by Servius' reforms.
615. Pope Boniface IV dies. During Boniface's reign, Muhammad began to preach in Mecca, forming the basis of Islam.
During the pontificate of Boniface there was much distress in Rome owing to famine, pestilence, and fllods, and the pope, since he was considered to be the closest link between God and man, was often blamed by proxy for these misfortunes. The pontiff died in monastic retirement (he had converted his own house into a monastery) and was buried in the portico of St. Peter's Basilica. His remains were three times removed -- in the tenth or eleventh century, at the close of the thirteenth under Boniface VIII, and to the new St. Peter's on October 21, 1603.
1085. Alfonso VI of Castile takes Toledo back from the Moors. Despite this, Alfonso was very open to Arabic influence. He protected the Muslims among his subjects and struck coins with inscriptions in Arabic letters. He also admitted to his court and to his bed the refugee Muslim princess Zaida of Seville.
1521. The Diet of Worms ends when Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, issues the Edict of Worms, declaring Martin Luther an outlaw.
1659. Richard Cromwell resigns as Lord Protector of England following the restoration of the Long Parliament, beginning a second brief period of the republican government called the Commonwealth.
Richard Cromwell was the third son of Oliver Cromwell, and the second Lord Protector of England, Scotland and Ireland, for little over eight months, from September 3, 1658, until this date in 1659. Richard Cromwell's enemies called him "Tumbledown Dick" and "Queen Dick."
1660. Under invitation by leaders of the English Commonwealth, Charles II, the exiled king of England, lands at Dover, England, to assume the throne and end 11 years of military rule. Prince of Wales at the time of the English Civil War, Charles fled to France after Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentarians defeated King Charles I's Royalists in 1646.
On May 25, 1660, Charles landed at Dover and four days later entered London in triumph. It was his 30th birthday, and London rejoiced at his arrival. In the first year of the Restoration, Oliver Cromwell was posthumously convicted of treason and his body disinterred from its tomb in Westminster Abbey and hanged from the gallows at Tyburn.
1738. A treaty between Pennsylvania and Maryland ends the Conojocular War with settlement of a boundary dispute and exchange of prisoners.
The war was a border conflict between Pennsylvania and Maryland, fought in the 1730s. Hostilities erupted in 1730 with a series of violent incidents prompted by disputes over property rights and law enforcement, and escalated through the first half of the decade, culminating in the deployment of military forces by Maryland in 1736 and by Pennsylvania in 1737. The armed phase of the conflict ended in May 1738 with the intervention of King George II, who compelled the negotiation of a cease-fire. A final settlement was not achieved until 1767 when the Mason-Dixon Line was recognized as the permanent boundary between the two colonies.
1787. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, delegates convene a Constitutional Convention to write a new Constitution for the United States. George Washington presides.
1793. In Baltimore, Maryland, Father Stephen Theodore Badin becomes the first Catholic priest to be ordained in the United States. Badin was ordained by Bishop John Carroll, an early advocate of American Catholicism, and appointed to the Catholic mission in Kentucky.
In colonial America, there were few English-speaking Catholics outside of Maryland, which was established in 1634 as a haven for Roman Catholics persecuted in England. In 1735, some 100 years after the establishment of Maryland, John Carroll was born in Baltimore into a prominent Catholic family. As secondary Catholic education was forbidden by the British colonial authorities, Carroll traveled to Europe, where he was ordained in 1769. Returning to America, he was sympathetic to the Patriot cause during the Revolutionary War and in 1790 was chosen by the Vatican to become the first bishop of the American Catholic Church.
Carroll supported the separation between church and state, and advocated an autonomous American clergy that would elect its own bishops and carry out its own training. In his early years as bishop, he endorsed the use of English in the liturgy, and on May 25, 1793, presided over the first ordination of a Catholic priest on U.S. soil.
1810. Citizens of Buenos Aires expel Viceroy Baltasar Hidalgo de Cisneros during the May Revolution, starting the Argentine War of Independence.
1844. The first telegraphed news dispatch, sent from Washington, DC, to Baltimore, appears in the Baltimore Patriot.
1861. John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could examine the charges. However, President Abraham Lincoln decided to suspend the right of habeas corpus, and the general in command of Fort McHenry refused to turn Merryman over to the authorities.
Federal judge Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court (and also the author of the infamous Dred Scott decision), issued a ruling that President Lincoln did not have the authority to suspend habeas corpus. Lincoln didn't respond, appeal, or order the release of Merryman. But during a July 4 speech, Lincoln was defiant, insisting that he needed to suspend the rules in order to put down the rebellion in the South.
1865. In Mobile, Alabama, 300 people are killed when an ordnance depot explodes. A reporter for a local newspaper described "bursting shells, flying timbers, bales of cotton, horses, men, women, and children co-mingled and mangled into one immense mass." He continued: "The heart stood still, and the stoutest cheek paled as this rain of death fell from the sky and crash after crash foretold a more fearful fate yet impending ... old and young, soldier and citizen vied with each other in deeds of daring to rescue the crumbled and imprisoned."
1895. Playwright, poet and novelist Oscar Wilde is convicted of "committing acts of gross indecency with other male persons" and sentenced to serve two years in prison.

 

[admihoek]

1914. The United Kingdom's House of Commons passes Home Rule Act for devolution in Ireland.
1915. In the latest of a disturbing series of Turkish aggressions against Armenians during World War I, Mehmed Talat, the Ottoman minister of the interior, announces that all Armenians living near the battlefield zones in eastern Anatolia (under Ottoman rule) will be deported to Syria and Mosul. Large-scale deportations began five days later, after the decision was sanctioned by the Ottoman council of ministers.
It is impossible to state exactly how many Armenians died in the Ottoman Empire during World War I, due in part to the uncertainty about how many were living there before the war. The number of dead -- and the degree of intent and responsibility of the Turkish government -- is disputed to this day: some calculations range from 1.3 million to about 2.1 million, and others are much lower. It seems, though, that estimates of one million are reasonable.
1925. John T. Scopes is indicted for teaching Darwin's theory of evolution. The Scopes Trial, often called "the Scopes Monkey Trial," was a watershed in the creation-evolution controversy that pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow against each other (the latter representing teacher John Thomas Scopes) in an American legal case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."
John Scopes, a high school teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution from a chapter in a textbook which showed ideas developed from those set out in Charles Darwin's book The Origin of Species. After eight days of trial, it took the jury only nine minutes to deliberate. Scopes was found guilty on July 21 and ordered to pay a $100.00 fine.
Scopes' lawyers appealed, challenging the conviction on several grounds. Having found the statute to be constitutional, the Tennessee Supreme Court set aside the conviction on appeal because of to a legal technicality: the jury should have decided the fine, not the judge, since Tennessee judges could not at that time set fines above 50 dollars. The prosecution did not seek a retrial.
1926. Sholom Schwartzbard assassinates Symon Petliura, head of the Paris-based government-in-exile of the Ukrainian People's Republic.
1935. Babe Ruth hits his 714th and last home run at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, setting a baseball record that will stand for 39 years.
1938. The bombing of Alicante takes place during the Spanish Civil War. Alicante was the last city loyal to the Republican government to be occupied by dictator Franco's troops. Even if not as famous as the bombing of Guernica by the German Luftwaffe, Alicante was the target of some vicious air bombings during the three years of civil conflict, most remarkably the bombing by the Italian Aviazione Legionaria on 25 May 1938 in which 313 civilians perished.
1940. During World War II, the Battle of Dunkirk begins. The Battle of Dunkirk was the defense and evacuation of the British and Allied forces that had been separated from the main body of the French defenses by the German advance. For reasons known only to Hitler, his lightly opposed German panzer divisions were halted outside Dunkirk on May 24.
The battle of Dunkirk poses one of the great "what-ifs" of World War II, which has attracted speculation from many military historians If Hitler had not ordered the German panzer divisions to halt from, but instead ordered an all-out attack on Dunkirk, the retreating Allies could have possibly been cut off from the sea and destroyed. If the whole of the British Expeditionary Force had been captured or killed at Dunkirk, not only would have Britain been vulnerable to invasion but morale in Britain could have possibly sunk so low as to have toppled the government and replaced it with one more disposed to making an accommodation with Nazi Germany, similar to the Vichy regime in France. Without the need to oppose the British in the Atlantic and North Africa -- or even with the assistance of a Quisling government in Britain -- perhaps the troops and resources thus freed would have been enough to wholly defeat the Soviet Union in 1941 and led to German conquest of the whole of Europe and Asia.
The successful evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk ended the first phase in the Battle of France. It provided a great boost to British morale, but left the remaining French to stand alone against a renewed German assault southwards. German troops entered Paris on June 14 and accepted the surrender of France on June 22.
1946. Transjordan became a kingdom as it proclaims its new monarch, King Abdullah Ibn Ul-Hussein.
1953. The first public television station in the United States officially begins broadcasting as KUHT from the campus of the University of Houston.
1955. In the United States, a night time F5 tornado strikes the small city of Udall, Kansas, killing 80 and injuring 273. It was the deadliest tornado to ever occur in the state and the 23rd deadliest in the U.S.
1961. U.S. president John F. Kennedy announces before a special joint session of Congress his goal to initiate a project to put a "man on the moon" before the end of the decade.
1966. The first prominent dàzìbào during the Cultural Revolution in China is posted at Peking University. Dàzìbào; literally "big-character reports," are handwritten, wall-mounted posters using large-sized Chinese characters, used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication. They have been used in China since imperial times, but became more common when literacy rates rose after the 1911 revolution.
A key trigger in the Cultural Revolution was the publication of a dàzìbào on May 25, 1966, by Nie Yuanzi and others at Peking University, claiming that the university was controlled by bourgeois anti-revolutionaries. The poster came to the attention of Mao Zedong, who had it broadcast nationally and published in the People's Daily. Big-character posters were soon ubiquitous, used for everything from sophisticated debate to satirical entertainment to rabid denunciation; being attacked in a big-character poster was enough to end one's career.
1973. American model and actress Molly Sims is born in Murray, Kentucky. She was an official spokesmodel for Old Navy ads known for using the tag line "You gotta get this look!" She appeared in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue in 2000, 2001, and 2006 as well as MTV's House of Style. In the 2006 issue of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit she appeared in a photo wearing an extremely skimpy bikini worth 30 million dollars that was made of diamonds. She is a CoverGirl model. She also appeared as Delinda Deline in the series Las Vegas. (See pictures.)
1979. Florida executes John Spenkelink, the first non-voluntary execution in the United States in more than 10 years. John Arthur Spenkelink was the first man to be executed in the electric chair after the reintroduction of the death penalty in the United States in 1976. He struggled violently as he was being brought to his death.
After the execution, rumors spread that the fighting, shouting Spenkelink was dragged to the electric chair, gagged, beaten and had his neck broken. The rumors caused Spenkelink's body to be exhumed for an autopsy and the State further decided to perform autopsies on all executed inmates. Some witnesses believe Spenkelink was already dead when placed in the electric chair.
He is known for his quote: "Capital punishment: those without the capital get the punishment."
1979. On Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, American Airlines Flight 191, a Los Angeles-bound DC-10, takes off at 3:03 p.m. from Chicago-O'Hare International airport with 271 aboard. As Flight 191 raised its nose during the initial stage of the takeoff, an engine under the left wing broke off with its pylon assembly and fell to the runway. The aircraft climbed to about 350 feet above the ground and then began to spin to the left, continuing its leftward roll until the wings were past the vertical position, with the nose pitched down below the horizon. Moments later, the aircraft crashed into an open field about a half-mile from its takeoff point, killing all 271 people aboard and two others in a nearby trailer park. It was the worst domestic air crash in U.S. history.
1982. HMS Coventry is sunk by Argentine Air Force A-4 Skyhawks during the Falklands War.
1985. Bangladesh is hit by a tropical cyclone and storm surge, which kills approximately 10,000 people.
1997. A military coup in Sierra Leone replaces President Ahmad Tejan Kabbah with Major Johnny Paul Koromah.
1999. The United States House of Representatives releases the Cox Report which details the People's Republic of China's nuclear espionage against the U.S. over the prior two decades.
2001. 32-year-old Erik Weihenmayer, of Boulder, Colorado, becomes the first blind person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. He also completed the Seven Summits in September 2002. His story was covered in a Time article in June 2001 titled "Blind Faith." He is author of Touch the Top of the World: A Blind Man's Journey to Climb Farther Than the Eye can See, his autobiography.
2009. North Korea tests its second nuclear device. Following the nuclear test, Pyongyang also conducted several missile tests building tensions in the international community.
2011. Barack Obama, the President of the United States, addresses the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Meanwhile, powerful storms and tornadoes continue across the Central United States, claiming at least 10 more lives across Arkansas, Kansas and Oklahoma.


Elsewhere, Germany shuts down part of its airspace as volcanic ash from the eruption of Iceland's Grímsvötn reaches northern Europe. Flights are also cancelled in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia.

 

[thehangingtree]

without letting us watch? ​

I told you 'Plans go awry' was a hot bed of sequels. There will be time to look back...

T

 

[thehangingtree]

...Meanwhile, Ulreka practices satisfying Admi...

 

[admihoek]

...Meanwhile, Ulreka practices satisfying Admi...

that's a real cute waitress slave isn't and she is also very well trained in hunting cute women virgin or not
Our Vessel is already a nice whorehouse and she is a real madame.
But I'm missing my Connie who could help in the hunt on labor slaves for our grinding machine because she was a good trainer with her whip.

 

[admihoek]

May 26 seems to favor battles, bloodshed, and, in retrospect, strange bedfellows, or at least unlikely allies (considering how it all turned out). This is also the anniversary of a record-setting tornado and a trio of deadly earthquakes.
17. Germanicus returns to Rome as a conquering hero; he celebrates a triumph for his victories over the Cherusci, Chatti and other German tribes west of the Elbe. Germanicus Julius Caesar, commonly known as Germanicus, was a member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty and a prominent general of the early Roman Empire. His campaigns in Germania made him famous after avenging the defeat at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and retrieving the legion's eagles lost during the battle. Germanicus was the grandson-in-law and great-nephew of the Emperor Augustus, nephew and adoptive son of the Emperor Tiberius, father of the Emperor Caligula, brother of the Emperor Claudius, and the maternal grandfather of the Emperor Nero.
In the midst of a feud with Piso, governor of Syria, Germanicus was stricken with a mysterious illness and died shortly thereafter in Antioch.. His death aroused much speculation, with several sources blaming Piso, acting under orders from Emperor Tiberius. This was never proven, and Piso later died while facing trial (ostensibly by suicide, but Tacitus supposes Tiberius may have had him murdered before he could implicate the emperor in Germanicus' death). He feared the people of Rome knew of the conspiracy against Germanicus, but Tiberius' jealousy and fear of his nephew's popularity and increasing power was the true motive as understood by Tacitus. The death of Germanicus in what can only be described as dubious circumstances greatly affected Tiberius' popularity in Rome, leading to the creation of a climate of fear in Rome itself.
451. The Battle of Avarayr between Armenian rebels and the Sassanid Empire takes place. The Armenians are defeated militarily but are guaranteed freedom to openly practice Christianity. Armenia has been called "a Christian island in a Muslim sea."
1293. A powerful Earthquake strikes Kamakura, Japan, and kills 30,000 people.
1328. William of Ockham, Franciscan Minister-General Michael of Cesena, and two other Franciscan leaders secretly leave Avignon, fearing a death sentence from Pope John XXII. Ockham is considered, along with Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus, to be one of the major figures of Medieval thought
1538. Geneva expels John Calvin and his followers from the city. Calvin lives in exile in Strasbourg for the next three years.
1637. In New England's Pequot War, a combined Puritan and Mohegan force under English Captain John Mason attacks a Pequot village in Connecticut, massacring approximately 500 Native Americans.
The Pequot War was an armed conflict in 1637 between an alliance of Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth colonies, with American Indian allies (the Narragansett, and Mohegan Indians), against the Pequot Indians. This war saw the elimination of the Pequot as a viable polity in what is present-day southern New England.
400-700 Pequot people were killed by the colonists and their allies; hundreds more were captured and sold into slavery in Bermuda. Those who managed to evade death or capture and enslavement dispersed. It would take the Pequot more than three and a half centuries to regain their former political and economic power in their traditional homeland region along the Pequot (present-day Thames) and Mystic Rivers in what is now southeastern Connecticut. They have done it with a resort and casino that has made the tribe incredibly wealthy and a power to be reckoned with.
1647. Alse Young becomes the first person executed as a witch in the American colonies, when she is hanged in Hartford, Connecticut.
Very little is recorded of Alse Young; her existence is only known through her reputation as a witch. She had a daughter, Alice Young Beamon, who would be accused of witchcraft in nearby Springfield, Massachusetts, some 30 years later.
The execution was noted by the town clerk and in the governor's diary but there is no further record of Young's trial or the specifics of the charge, only that Alse Young was a woman. Early historical record hints at the possibility that there may have been some sort of epidemic in the town of Windsor in early 1647. Alse Young was hanged at the Meeting House Square in Hartford, Connecticut, on what is now the site of the Old State House.
In 1642, witchcraft became punishable by death in the Connecticut Colony. This capital offense was backed by references to the King James version of the Bible: Exodus (22:18) says, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. And Leviticus (20:27) says, A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood (shall be) upon them. In Connecticut, witchcraft was last listed as a capital crime in 1715. The crime of witchcraft disappeared from the list of capital crimes when the laws were next issued in 1750.
1736. In the Battle of Ackia, British and Chickasaw soldiers repel a French and Choctaw attack on the Chickasaw village of Ackia, near present-day Tupelo, Mississippi. The French, under Louisiana governor Jean Baptiste Le Moyne, Sieur de Bienville, had sought to link Louisiana with Acadia and the other northern colonies of New France.
Acadia ( l'Acadie in French)) was the name given to a colonial territory in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day New England, stretching as far south as Philadelphia. Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies which were to become Canadian provinces and American states.
1782. American Colonel William Crawford marches his army towards the Ohio River, where General George Washington has charged him with attacking local Indians who had sided with the British in the American Revolution.
The expedition ended in a slow, harrowing death for Crawford. On June 6, his supply chain disintegrated and Wyandot Indians surrounded Crawford and his men. The Indians of the Ohio region were enraged by the recent slaughter of pacifist Christian Indians at the Moravian mission in Gnadenhutten, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for Crawford, some of the perpetrators of the Gnadenhutten Massacre were among his men.
The Wyandots, under Chief Konieschguanokee (Captain Pipe), took their revenge by torturing the members of Crawford's party. Crawford and his son-in-law William Harrison were scalped and burned at the stake; Crawford finally died after two hours of torment. At least 250 members of Crawford's party were killed in the disastrous encounter.
1822. 116 people die in the Grue Church fire, the deadliest fire disaster in Norway's history. The exterior of the church was covered with pine tar. An estimated 17 tons of tar had been applied between 1600 and 1822.
On Pentecost the church was filled to capacity.It was a bright and hot day early in the summer.In the middle of the sermon, a fire broke out on the outer wall. Within 10-15 minutes the church was completely engulfed, Evacuation was hampered by the way in which the doors had been constructed -- they swung inward -- and a panic arose inside the church where everyone fought each other to escape.
The official death toll is 113, however the figures 116 and 117 are also mentioned. Among the people who were incinerated there were a mere 7 adult men. At least 45 of the fatalities were children under 16 years. Many were trapped in the stairs coming down from the galleries, where the unmarried women used to sit. Those who had managed to get out tried to keep the doors open, but this was made difficult by the pressure on the doors from the inside and the ferocious heat.
1830. The Indian Removal Act is passed by the U.S. Congress; it is signed into law by President Andrew Jackson two days later. The Removal Act was strongly supported in the South, where states were eager to gain access to lands inhabited by the "Five Civilized Tribes."
The "Five Civilized Tribes" is the term applied to five Native American nations, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole, considered "civilized" by white society because they had adopted many of the colonists' customs and had generally good relations with their neighbors.
1865. Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, surrenders; he was one of the last Confederate generals to capitulate at the end of the American Civil War.. Twenty-three days after Smith's surrender, Brigadier General Stand Watie, a Cherokee, became the last Confederate field general to surrender.
1868. The impeachment trial of U.S. President Andrew Johnson ends, with Johnson being found not guilty by one vote. At the end of a historic two-month trial, the U.S. Senate narrowly fails to convict President Andrew Johnson of the impeachment charges levied against him by the House of Representatives three months earlier. The senators voted 35 guilty and 19 not guilty.
Ten days earlier, the Senate had likewise failed to convict Johnson on another article of impeachment, voting an identical 35 for conviction and 19 for acquittal. Because both votes fell short -- by one vote -- of the two-thirds majority needed to convict Johnson, he was judged not guilty and remained in office.
1869. Boston University is chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
1896. Nicholas II becomes Czar of Russia. He ruled from 1894 until his forced abdication in 1917. Nicholas proved unable to manage a country in political turmoil and command its army in World War I. His rule ended with the Russian Revolution of 1917, after which he and his family were executed by Bolsheviks.
1897. Horror writer Bram Stoker's classic vampire tale, Dracula, is first offered for sale in London. Stoker wrote several other novels before his death in London in 1912, but none equaled the popularity of Dracula.

 

[admihoek]

1908. At Masjed Soleyman in southwest Persia, the first major commercial oil strike in the Middle East is made. The rights to the resource are quickly acquired by the United Kingdom.
1917. A powerful F4 tornado rips Mattoon, Illinois apart, killing 101 persons and injuring 689. It was the world's longest-lasting tornado, lasting for over 7 hours and traveling 293 miles, spreading death and destruction along its path.
1924. President Calvin Coolidge signs into law the Comprehensive Immigration Act, the most stringent immigration policy up to that time in the nation's history. The new law reflected the desire of Americans to isolate themselves from the world after fighting the terrible First World War in Europe, which exacerbated growing fears of the spread of communist ideas. It also reflected the pervasiveness of racial discrimination in American society at the time. A quota was set that limited immigration to two percent of any given nation's residents already in the U.S. as of 1890, a provision designed to maintain America's largely Northern European racial composition.
1938. The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session. House Committee on Un-American Activities (1938–1975) was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives.
The Committee grew from a special investigating committee established in May 1938, chaired by Martin Dies and co-chaired by Samuel Dickstein, himself named in Soviet NKVD documents as a Soviet agent. In pre-war years and during World War II, it was known as the Dies Committee.
Its work was supposed to be aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity. As to investigations into the activities of the Klan, the Committee actually did little. When HUAC's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe," committee member John E. Rankin added: "After all, the KKK is an old American institution." Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project.
1940. American President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes known the dire straits of Belgian and French civilians suffering the fallout of the British-German battle to reach the northern coast of France, and appeals for support for the Red Cross.
"Tonight, over the once peaceful roads of Belgium and France, millions are now moving, running from their homes to escape bombs and shells and machine gunning, without shelter, and almost wholly without food," broadcast FDR.
On May 26, the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk in France. Ships arrived at Calais to remove the Force before German troops occupied the area, and it was hoped that 45,000 British soldiers could be shipped back to Britain within two days. Determined to prevent the evacuation, the Luftwaffe initiated a bombing campaign in Dunkirk and the surrounding area. British, Polish, and Canadian fighter pilots succeeded in fending off the German attack in the air, allowing finally for a delayed, but successful, evacuation nine days later. But the cost to civilians was great, as thousands of refugees fled for their lives to evade the fallout of the battle.
1942. The Battle of Bir Hakeim takes place during World War II. Bir Hakeim is a remote oasis in the Libyan desert, and the former site of a Turkish fort. During the Battle of Gazala, the 1st Free French Division of Général de brigade Marie Pierre Kœnig defended the site from 26 May-11 June 1942 against attacking German and Italian forces directed by Generaloberst Erwin Rommel. Resisting the much larger Axis forces for 16 days was certainly an enormous achievement of Kœnig and his men. The battle was later greatly used for propaganda purposes by all involved parties which explains the mystification of it. Tobruk was taken 10 days later by Rommel's troops. Rommel continued to advance against delaying actions by the British until halted at First Battle of El Alamein in July.
1956. The aircraft carrier Bennington burns off Rhode Island, killing 103.
1959. Harvey Haddix of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches 12 perfect innings against the Milwaukee Braves, only to lose the game on a two-run double by Braves’ first baseman Joe Adcock in the 13th inning. It was the first time a pitcher threw more than nine perfect innings in major league history.
1960. During a meeting of the United Nations Security Council, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Henry Cabot Lodge charges that the Soviet Union has engaged in espionage activities at the U.S. embassy in Moscow for years. The charges were obviously an attempt by the United States to deflect Soviet criticisms following the downing of an American U-2 spy plane over Russia earlier in the month.
Embarrassed U.S. officials, including President Dwight D. Eisenhower, were forced to publicly admit that the United States was indeed spying on the Soviet Union with the high altitude planes. However, the U.S. government consistently declared that it was doing nothing that the Soviets themselves were not doing. As evidence of that charge, Henry Cabot Lodge brought the issue before the U.N. Security Council. There, he produced a wooden reproduction of the Great Seal of the United States. Nestled inside was a small listening and transmitting device. Lodge said that the seal had been presented to the U.S. embassy in Moscow in 1945 by a group of Russian citizens.
1966. English actress Helena Bonham Carter is born in Golders Green, London. She made her professional acting debut at the age of 16, in a television commercial. She also had a part in a minor TV film A Pattern of Roses (1983).
Her first starring film role was in Lady Jane (1984, released 1986) which had mixed reviews. Her breakthrough performance was in the role of Lucy Honeychurch in A Room with a View (1985, released 1986) which was filmed after Lady Jane, but released first.
These early films led to her being typecast as a "corset queen," and "English rose," playing pre- and early 20th century characters, particularly in Merchant-Ivory films. However she eventually expanded her range, and now has a high profile for more recent films such asFight Club, Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Corpse Bride and Big Fish, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. (See pictures.)
1969. Apollo 10 returns to Earth after a successful eight-day test of all the components needed for the forthcoming first manned moon landing.
1972. The United States and the Soviet Union sign the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
1977. George H. Willig scales the outside of the south tower of New York's World Trade Center; he is arrested at the top of the 110-story building.
1979. American model and WWE Diva Ashley Massaro is born Ashley Marie Massaro. A professional wrestler as well as a cover girl, she is currently working for World Wrestling Entertainment on its SmackDown! brand. She was the winner of the RAW Diva Search 2005 and was on the cover of the April 2007 issue of Playboy Magazine. (See pictures.)
1983. A strong 7.7 magnitude earthquake strikes Japan, triggering a tsunami that kills at least 104 people, and injuring thousands. Thousands of buildings are destroyed.
1986. The European Community adopts the European flag.
1992. Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems, Inc. is kidnapped at gunpoint from the Adobe parking lot in Mountain View, California, and is held hostage for a $650,000 ransom in a rented house in Hollister, California. The FBI rescues him four days later.
1998. The Supreme Court of the United States rules that Ellis Island, the historic gateway for millions of immigrants, is mainly in the state of New Jersey, not New York.
2003. Only three days after a previous record, Sherpa Lakpa Gelu climbs Mount Everest in 10 hours 56 minutes. The tourism ministry of Nepal confirms this record in July that year.
Maybe it's the weather but May 25-26 favors "firsts" on Mount Everest. Yesterday was the anniversary of the first blind person to reach the summit; on the same date, two women became the first mother-daughter team to successfully scale the peak.
2004. The New York Times publishes an admission of journalistic failings, claiming that its flawed reporting and lack of skepticism towards sources during the buildup to the 2003 war in Iraq helped promote the belief that Iraq possessed large stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction.
2006. The 2006 Java earthquake kills over 5,700 people, and leaves 200,000 homeless.
2011. Thousands of civilians are reportedly at risk of dying from starvation in the Libyan city of Yafran, as Muammar Gaddafi's forces have blockaded the city for over 7 weeks, and what food the people have left is quickly running out. Meanwhile, the United States House of Representatives votes overwhelmingly against funding the involvement of ground troops in Libya as NATO launches a fourth night of air strikes on Tripoli.
Elsewhere, severe storms in the U.S. city of Atlanta, Georgia, kill at least three people and leave 193,000 people without power

 

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May 27 has witnessed a massacre and natural disasters, as well as the end of an era an automotive history.
366. Roman usurper Procopius is killed. Procopius' forces were defeated by co-emperor Valens. Procopius fled the battlefield, but was betrayed to Valens by two of his remaining followers. Valens had all three executed 27 May 366.
893. Simeon I of Bulgaria is crowned Emperor of the first Bulgarian empire. Simeon's successful campaigns against the Byzantines, Magyars and Serbs led Bulgaria to its greatest territorial expansion ever, making it the most powerful state in contemporary Eastern Europe. His reign was also a period of unmatched cultural prosperity and enlightenment, later deemed the Golden Age of Bulgarian culture.
927. In the Battle of the Bosnian Highlands, Simeon I of Bulgaria is decisively defeated by King Tomislav of Croatia. According to Byzantine historian Constantine Porphyrogenitus, King Tomislav had an army of 160,000 soldiers (60,000 cavalry and 100,000 infantry), The strength of Simeon's army is unknown but was probably 30,000-70,000.
1120. Richard III of Capua is anointed as prince two weeks before his untimely death. Historians suspect he was murdered by his uncle.
1153. Malcolm IV becomes King of Scotland. Called "Malcolm the Maiden" by later chroniclers, a name which may incorrectly suggest weakness or effeminacy to modern readers, he was noted for his religious zeal and interest in knighthood and warfare. For much of his reign he was in poor health and died unmarried at the age of 25.
1529. Thirty Jews are burned at the stake is Posing, Hungary, after being charged with blood ritual.
1610. François Ravaillac, French assassin of Henry IV of France, is executed. He was taken to the Place de Grève in Paris and was tortured before being pulled apart by four horses, a method of execution reserved for regicides. Alistair Horne describes the torture Ravaillac suffered: "Before being drawn and quartered... he was scalded with burning sulphur, molten lead and boiling oil and resin, his flesh then being torn by pincers." Following his execution, Ravaillac's parents were forced into exile, and the rest of his family was ordered never to use the name "Ravaillac" again.
1703. Russian Czar Peter the Great founds the city of Saint Petersburg.
1798. The Battle of Oulart Hill takes place in Wexford, Ireland, when a rebel gathering of 1,000 annihilates a detachment of militia sent from Wexford town to stamp out the spreading rebellion in county Wexford.
The militia advanced and fired a couple of loose volleys but the rebels held their positions until the soldiers reached killing range, then poured concentrated gunfire upon the soldiers. The rebels then unleashed a ferocious charge on the surviving militiamen who were quickly overwhelmed and pursued for miles across the surrounding countryside, only four of them escaping to the temporary safety of Wexford. Following this victory, in which the rebels lost only six of their number, almost all of North Wexford joined the rebellion and Crown forces and loyalists civilians ceded control of the countryside, withdrawing to towns such as Enniscorthy, Gorey and Wexford.
1813. American forces capture Fort George in Canada during the War of 1812. Fort George was built by the British Army after Jay's Treaty (1796) required Britain to withdraw from Fort Niagara. The new fort was completed in 1802 and became the headquarters for the British Army and the local militia.
Fort George was captured by U.S. forces in May 1813 at the Battle of Fort George. The American Army used the fort as a base to invade Upper Canada, but were repelled at the Battles of Stoney Creek and Beaver Dams. The fort was recaptured by the British Army in December.
1813. Former President Thomas Jefferson writes former President John Adams to let him know that their mutual friend, Dr. Benjamin Rush, has died. Rush's passing caused Jefferson to meditate upon the departure of the Revolutionary generation. He wrote, "We too must go; and that ere long. I believe we are under half a dozen at present; I mean the signers of the Declaration."
Although Jefferson and Adams were bitter political enemies by the time of the presidential election of 1800, in which Jefferson narrowly defeated Adams, the two leading intellectuals and politicians of Virginia and Massachusetts had been allies and confidants during the heady, revolutionary days of the late 1770s. Following 12 years of bitter silence caused by their disagreement over the role of the new federal government, the two old friends managed to reestablish the discourse of their younger years spent in Philadelphia, where they both served in the Continental Congress.. In 1812, Benjamin Rush, a Patriot and physician from Philadelphia, initiated a renewed correspondence and reconciliation between his two friends and ex-presidents. The correspondence continued until Adams and Jefferson both died on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that all three friends had signed in 1776.
1831. Jedediah Smith, one of America's most important trapper-explorers, is killed by Commanche Indians on the Santa Fe Trail. Smith's role in opening up the Far West was not fully appreciated until modern scholars examined the records of his far-ranging journeys. Beginning in 1822 when he made his first expedition with the fur trader William Ashley, Smith's travels provided information on western geography and potential trails that were invaluable to later pioneers. Smith's most important accomplishment was his rediscovery in 1824 of the South Pass, an easy route across the Rocky Mountains in modern-day western Wyoming.
With a party of 83 men, Smith left St. Louis in early 1831 and headed south along the Cimarron River, a region known to be nearly devoid of potable water. Despite his years of wilderness experience, Smith was apparently overconfident in his ability to find water and did not take adequate supplies from St. Louis. By mid-May, the party's water supplies were almost exhausted, and the men started separating each day to search for waterholes. On this day in 1831, Smith was riding alone when a hunting party of Commanche Indians attacked him. Dazed and weakened by lack of water, Smith nonetheless managed to shoot one of the Commanche before he was overwhelmed and killed.
1860. Giuseppe Garibaldi begins his attack on Palermo, Sicily, as part of the Italian Unification.
1863. In the American Civil War, Chief Justice Roger B. Taney of Maryland issues Ex parte Merryman, challenging the authority of President Abraham Lincoln and the U.S. military to suspend the writ of habeas corpus (the legal procedure that prevents the government from holding an individual indefinitely without showing cause) in Maryland.
On May 25, John Merryman, a vocal secessionist, was arrested in Cockeysville, Maryland. He was held at Ft. McHenry in Baltimore, where he appealed for his release under a writ of habeas corpus. The federal circuit court judge was Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, who issued a ruling, Ex parte Merryman, denying the president's authority to suspend habeas corpus. Taney denounced Lincoln’s interference with civil liberties and argued that only Congress had the power to suspend the writ.
Although military officials continued to arrest suspected Southern sympathizers, the incident led to a softening of the policy. Concern that Maryland might still secede from the Union forced a more conciliatory stance from Lincoln and the military. Merryman was remanded to civil authorities in July and allowed to post bail. He was never brought to trial, and the charges of treason against him were dropped two years after the war.
1896. An F4-strength tornado hits St. Louis, Missouri and East Saint Louis, Illinois, killing at least 255 people and incurring billions in damages. This is the third deadliest and costliest tornado in United States history.
It touched down in St. Louis, Missouri, then one of the largest and most influential cities in the country. 137 people died as the tornado traversed the core of the city leaving a mile wide continuous swath of destroyed homes, schools, saloons, factories, mills, churches, parks, and railroad yards. More people probably died on boats on the Mississippi River as the bodies may have gone downriver.
When the tornado crossed the river and hit East Saint Louis, Illinois, it was smaller but more intense. An additional 118 people were killed. The confirmed death toll is 255, with some estimates above 400. More than 1,000 were injured. The tornado was later rated F4 on the Fujita scale. Adjusted for wealth and inflation, it is the costliest tornado in U.S. history at an estimated $2.9 billion.

 

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1905. During the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian Baltic Fleet is nearly destroyed at the Battle of Tsushima Strait. The decisive defeat, in which only 10 of 45 Russian warships escaped to safety, convinced Russian leaders that further resistance against Japan's imperial designs for East Asia was hopeless. In August, a stunning string of Japanese victories convinced Russia to accept the peace treaty mediated by U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (Roosevelt was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for this achievement.)
1907. A Bubonic plague outbreak begins in San Francisco, California.
1918. In the early morning hours, 4,000 German guns open fire on a 24-mile-long stretch of the Allied lines, beginning the Third Battle of the Aisne in World War I. The Germans advanced 12 miles deep through the French sector of the lines near Chemin des Dames, demolishing four entire French divisions. Four more French and four British divisions fell between the towns of Soissons and Reims, as the Germans reached the Aisne in less than six hours. By the end of the day, German troops had driven a wedge 40 miles wide and 15 miles deep through the Allied lines.
1927. The Ford Motor Company ceases manufacturing the Ford Model T and begins to retool plants to make Ford Model A's.
1930. The 1,046 feet (319 m) Chrysler Building in New York City, the tallest man-made structure at the time, opens to the public.
1937. In California, the Golden Gate Bridge opens to pedestrian traffic, creating a vital link between San Francisco and Marin County.
1941. During World War II, the German battleship Bismarck is sunk in the North Atlantic, killing 2,300 men.
1942. Reinhard Heydrich is assassinated in Prague. Heydrich was a high-ranking German Nazi official during World War II, and one of the main architects of the Holocaust. He was SS-Obergruppenführer (General) and General der Polizei, chief of the Reich Main Security Office (including the Gestapo, and Kripo) and Stellvertretender Reichsprotektor (Deputy Reich-Protector) of Bohemia and Moravia. Historians regard him as the darkest figure within the Nazi elite; Hitler christened him "the man with the iron heart."
Heydrich was attacked in Prague on 27 May 1942 by a British-trained team of Czech and Slovak soldiers who had been sent by the Czechoslovak government-in-exile to kill him in an operation code named Operation Anthropoid. He died from his injuries a week later. Intelligence falsely linked the assassins to the towns of Lidice and Ležáky. Lidice was razed to the ground; all adult males were executed, and all but a handful of its women and children were deported and killed in Nazi concentration camps.
1957. Toronto's CHUM-AM, (1050 kHz) becomes Canada's first radio station to broadcast only top 40 Rock n' Roll music format.
1958. American actress Linnea Quigley is born in Davenport, Iowa. Quigley is a well-known scream queen, B-movie actress, and model. (See pictures.)
Quigley moved to Los Angeles, California in the late 1970's to pursue her dreams of acting. She quickly established herself in the arena of Independent Films. She went on to appear in over one-hundred feature films.
Quigley is perhaps most famous for her role in The Return of the Living Dead. She also starred in Night of the Demons; Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers; Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama ; Silent Night, Deadly Night; Creepozoids; and Assault of the Party Nerds. In addition, she made a cameo appearance in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master. Her recent films include Lost Girls (2005).
1960. In Turkey, a military coup removes President Celal Bayar and the rest of the democratic government from office.
1963. Folk music singer Bob Dylan releases The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan album, which features Blowin' in the Wind and several other of his best-known songs.
1971. The Dahlerau train disaster kills 46 people and injures 25 near Wuppertal, West Germany. A passenger and a freight train collided in the worst accident in West Germany since its foundation in 1949. Among the dead were 41 students.
1975. The Dibble's Bridge coach crash near Grassington, North Yorkshire, England kills 32 -- the highest ever death toll in a road accident in the United Kingdom.
1980. The Gwangju Massacre erupts as airborne and army troops of South Korea retake the city of Gwangju from civil militias, killing at least 207 and possibly many more.
The Gwangju massacre was the violent suppression of a popular and armed uprising in the city of Gwangju, South Korea from May 18 to May 27.
For the period of Chun Doo-hwan's reign, the incident was officially regarded as a rebellion inspired by Communist sympathizers. But after civil rule was reinstated, the incident received recognition as an effort to restore democracy from military rule. The government made a formal apology for the incident, and a national cemetery was established for the victims.
The death toll of the 1980 Gwangju Massacre has been subject to considerable dispute. Estimates prepared by dissident groups during the period of military government rule, and opposition parties in the late-1980s claimed that one to two thousand had died.
1981. Would-be presidential assassin John Hinckley attempts suicide by overdosing on Tylenol.
1994. The Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn returns to his native Russia after 20 years of exile in the United States.
1997. The U.S. Supreme Couet rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sex harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office.
1999. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, Netherlands indicts Slobodan Milošević and four others for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Kosovo.
The trial began at The Hague on February 12, 2002, with Milošević defending himself while refusing to recognize the legality of the court's jurisdiction
Milošević was found dead in his cell on March 11, 2006, in the UN war crimes tribunal's detention center, located in the Scheveningen section of The Hague.
2005. Carl Edward Roland, 41, wanted by police in connection with the murder of his ex-girlfriend Jennifer Gonzalez, spends his third day perched on a crane 18 stories above Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood.
Police in Pinellas County, Florida, discovered the badly beaten body of Gonzalez, 36, in a retention pond on May 24. She had been last seen with Roland, for whom police issued an arrest warrant after he did not return to his Clearwater, Florida, home. The next day, Roland showed up at an Atlanta construction site, where he told a worker he had "hurt someone" before taking the crane’s elevator up 18 stories and crawling out onto its horizontal arm.
For the next day three days, area business and traffic was disrupted while authorities attempted to convince Roland to come down. Finally, after ignoring the authorities’ offers of food and water for more than 56 hours, Roland agreed to accept some water at about 12:30 a.m. on May 28. He edged toward police, who then tasered, tackled and restrained him. He was then wrapped onto a stretcher and lowered down the 350-foot crane. After a visit to a nearby hospital, Roland was taken to the Fulton County Jail to await extradition to Florida.
2006, The Java earthquake strikes at 5:53:58 AM local time (22:53:58 UTC May 26) devastating Bantul and the city of Yogyakarta killing over 6,600 people.
2011. In the Libyan civil war, the cities of Yafran and al-Qalaa in the Nafusa Mountains are in critical condition following ongoing attacks by Muammar Gaddafi's forces, with heavy artillery shelling continuing, water supplies shut off, and no food or medical supplies coming into the towns for weeks.
In the United States, a wildfire causes the evacuation of hundreds of homes in Lake Isabella, California