Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
Click on images to enlarge
May 9 is the 129th day of the year (130th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 236 days remaining until the end of the year.
On this day in 1860, James Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, is born in Scotland.
Sir James Matthew Barrie, 1st Baronet, OM (9 May 1860 – 19 June 1937) was a Scottish author and dramatist, best remembered today as the creator of Peter Pan. The child of a family of small-town weavers, he was educated in Scotland. He moved to London, where he developed a career as a novelist and playwright. There he met the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired him in writing about a baby boy who has magical adventures in Kensington Gardens (included in The ), then to write Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up, a “fairy play” about this ageless boy and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. This play quickly overshadowed his previous work and although he continued to write successfully, it became his best-known work, credited with popularising the name Wendy, which was very uncommon previously. Barrie unofficially adopted the Davies boys following the deaths of their parents. Before his death, he gave the rights to the Peter Pan works to Great Ormond Street Hospital, which continues to benefit from them.
The classic Peter Pan starring Mary Martin. This is the 1960 version for NBC. Has been very limited in its showing. The DVD is long out of print and expensive to own.
328 – Athanasius is elected Patriarch bishop of Alexandria.
1092 – Lincoln Cathedral is consecrated.
1450 – ‘Abd al-Latif (Timurid monarch) is assassinated.
1502 – Christopher Columbus leaves Spain for the fourth and final journey to the New World.
1671 – Thomas Blood, disguised as a clergyman, attempts to steal England’s Crown Jewels from the Tower of London.
1726 – Five men arrested during a raid on Mother Clap’s molly house in London are executed at Tyburn.
1864 – Second War of Schleswig: The Danish navy defeats the Austrian and Prussian fleets in the Battle of Heligoland.
1868 – The city of Reno, Nevada, is founded.
1873 – Der Krach: Vienna stock market crash heralds the Long Depression.
1874 – The first horse-drawn bus makes its debut in the city of Mumbai, traveling two routes.
1877 – Mihail Kogalniceanu reads, in the Chamber of Deputies, the Declaration of Independence of Romania. This day became the Independence Day of Romania.
1877 – A magnitude 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Peru kills 2,541, including some as far away as Hawaii and Japan.
1887 – Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show opens in London.
1901 – Australia opens its first parliament in Melbourne.
1904 – The steam locomotive City of Truro becomes the first steam engine in Europe to exceed 100 mph (160 km/h).
1911 – The works of Gabriele D’Annunzio placed by the Vatican in the Index of Forbidden Books.
1915 – World War I: Second Battle of Artois between German and French forces.
1926 – Admiral Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett claim to have flown over the North Pole (later discovery of Byrd’s diary seems to indicate that this did not happen).
1927 – The Australian Parliament first convenes in Canberra.
1936 – Italy formally annexes Ethiopia after taking the capital Addis Ababa on May 5.
1937 – Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy took to the airwaves becoming an overnight radio sensation.
1940 – World War II: The German submarine U-9 sinks the French coastal submarine Doris near Den Helder.
1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma cryptography machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages.
1942 – Holocaust: The SS murder 588 Jewish residents of the Podolian town of Zinkiv (Khmelnytska oblast, Ukraine). The Zoludek Ghetto is destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered or deported.
1945 – World War II: Ratification in Berlin-Karlshorst of the German unconditional surrender of May 8 in Rheims, France, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, and for the Western Headquarters Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower’s deputy, and for the German side of Colonel-General Hans-Jurgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine.
1945 – World War II: The Channel Islands are liberated by the British after five years of German occupation.
1946 – King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by Humbert II.
1949 – Rainier III of Monaco becomes Prince of Monaco.
1950 – Robert Schuman presents his proposal on the creation of an organized Europe, which according to him was indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the “Schuman declaration”, is considered by some people to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union.
1950 – L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health is released.
1955 – Cold War: West Germany joins NATO.
1955 – Sam and Friends debuts on a local United States television channel, marking the first television appearance of both Jim Henson and what would become Kermit the Frog and The Muppets.
1960 – The FDA announces it will approve birth control as an additional indication for Searle’s Enovid, making Enovid the world’s first approved oral contraceptive pill.
1961 – Jim Gentile of the Baltimore Orioles becomes the first player in baseball history to hit grand slams in consecutive innings.
1964 – Ngo Dinh Can, de facto ruler of central Vietnam under his brother President Ngo Dinh Diem before the family’s toppling, is executed.
1969 – Carlos Lamarca leads the first urban guerrilla action against the military dictatorship of Brazil in Sao Paulo, by robbing two banks.
1970 – Vietnam War: In Washington, D.C., 75,000 to 100,000 war protesters demonstrate in front of the White House.
1974 – Watergate Scandal: The United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee opens formal and public impeachment hearings against President Richard Nixon.
1980 – In Florida, Liberian freighter MV Summit Venture collides with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay, making a 1,400-ft. section of the southbound span collapse. 35 people in six cars and a Greyhound bus fall 150 ft. into the water and die.
2001 – In Ghana 129 football fans die in what became known as the Accra Sports Stadium Disaster. The deaths are caused by a stampede (caused by the firing of teargas by police personnel at the stadium) that followed a controversial decision by the referee.
2002 – The 38-day stand-off in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem comes to an end when the Palestinians inside agree to have 13 suspected terrorists among them deported to several different countries.
2002 – In Kaspiysk, Russia, a remote-controlled bomb explodes during a holiday parade killing 43 and injuring at least 130.
2004 – Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a land mine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny, Chechnya.
2006 – Estonia ratifies the European Constitution.
* Anniversary of Dianetics (Church of Scientology)
* Christian Feast Day
Beatus of Lungern
Beatus of Vendome
Christopher (Eastern Orthodox Church)
George Preca
Gerontius of Cervia
Pachomius
Tudy of Landevennec
May 9 (Eastern Orthodox liturgics)
* Europe Day, commemorating the Schuman Declaration. (European Union)
* Independence Day, celebrate the independence of Romania from the Ottoman Empire in 1877.
* Liberation Day, commemorating the end of the German Occupation of the Channel Islands during World War II). (Guernsey, Jersey)
* One of the three days of the Feast of the Lemures. (Roman Empire)
* Victory Day observances, celebration of the Soviet Union victory over Nazi Germany (Soviet Union, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan)
Victory and Peace Day, mark the capture of Shusha in the Karabakh War and the end of World War II. (Armenia)
1 comments
Now comes the hard part. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 is still being settled and prosecuted. Considerable resistance remains.
Lets hope that LGBTQ marriage rights are more readily accepted (like up here in MA). And a closing prayer that this doesn’t lead to a Romney presidency.
What a great day for America!