Monday, May 15, 2017

THIS DAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 15

May 15 is the 135th day of the year (136th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 230 days remaining until the end of the year. This date is slightly more likely to fall on a Tuesday, Friday or Sunday (58 in 400 years each) than on Wednesday or Thursday (57), and slightly less likely to occur on a Monday or Saturday (56).

NATIONAL CHOCOLATE CHIP DAY 



1248 ― Archbishop Konrad von Hochstaden lays the cornerstone for the Cologne cathedral.  It is the seat of the Archbishop of Cologne and of the administration of the Archdiocese of Cologne. It is a renowned monument of German Catholicism and Gothic architecture and was declared a World Heritage Site in 1996. It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day, currently the tallest twin spired church at 157 meters 515 feet tall. Its two huge spires give it the largest façade of any church in the world.


1252 ― Pope Innocent IV issues the papal bull ad exstirpanda, which authorizes, but also limits, the torture of heretics in the Medieval Inquisition. The Medieval Inquisition was established in response to movements considered apostate or heretical to orthodox Christianity.


1536 ― Henry VIII's wife, Anne Boleyn, and brother George, Lord Rochford, are accused of adultery and incest. Newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage valid. Shortly afterwards, the Pope decreed sentences of excommunication against Henry and Cranmer. As a result of this marriage and these excommunications, the first break between the Church of England and Rome took place and the Church of England was brought under the King's control. Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I. Modern historians view the charges against her, which included adultery,incest, and plotting to kill the king, as unconvincing.


1602 ― Cape Cod is discovered by English navigator Bartholomew Gosnold.

1618 ― Johannes Kepler discovers the harmonics law (his third law of planetary motion: the square of the orbital period of a planet is proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit).


1711 
― Alexander Pope's "An Essay on Criticism" is published anonymously.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring." (the Greek Muses metaphorical source of knowledge of art and science).

1756 ― The Seven Years War, a global conflict known in America as the French and Indian War, officially begins when England declares war on France. The war ended with the Treaty of Paris between France, Spain and Great Britain and the Treaty of Hubertusburg between Saxony, Austria and Prussia, in 1763.


1800 ― King George III survives a 2nd assassination attempt.

1817 ― Opening of the first private mental health hospital in the United States, the Asylum for the Relief of Persons Deprived of the Use of Their Reason (now Friends Hospital) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

1869 ― The National Woman Suffrage Association is formed in New York, founded by Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. It was created in response to a split in the American Equal Rights Association over whether the woman's movement should support the Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Its founders, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, opposed the Fifteenth Amendment unless it included the vote for women. Men were able to join the organization as members; however, women solely controlled the leadership of the group.


1911 
― The U.S. Supreme Court dissolves John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil Company under the Sherman Antitrust Act. Eventually, each of the companies into which Standard was broken would become larger than the original company.


1934 
― The US Department of Justice offers a $25,000 reward for gangster and bank robber John Dillinger, dead or alive.


1940 
― McDonald's opens its first restaurant in San Bernardino, California.


1941 
― The New York Yankees' Joseph Paul "Joe" DiMaggio, starts his record 56-game hitting streak; Yanks lose 13-1 to the Chicago White Sox. The streak ended on July 17 against Cleveland. Over the 56-game period DiMaggio batted .408 with 15 home runs and 55 RBIs.

1942 - Gasoline is first rationed in the U.S.,  starting with 17 Eastern States, during WWII.


1943 
― During WWII, The Warsaw ghetto uprising ends in its destruction by the Nazis.


1972 
― An assassination attempt is made on Alabama Governor George Wallace by Arthur Bremer in Laurel, Md.

1976 ― Patricia Columbo and Frank DeLuca are arrested for the brutal slaying of Columbo’s parents and brother in Elk Grove, Illinois.

1988 ― The USSR begins withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.


1989 
― Soviet President Gorbachev is in Beijing for the first Sino-Soviet summit in 30 years.


2010 ― Jessica Watson becomes the youngest person (at 16) to sail, non-stop and unassisted around the world solo.


BORN TODAY 

1856 L. Frank Baum, American novelist, The Wizard of Oz (d. 1919)

1859 Pierre Curie, French physicist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 1906)

1890 Katherine Anne Porter, American short story writer, novelist, and essayist (d. 1980)

1900 Ida Rhodes, American mathematician (d. 1986)

1915Paul Samuelson, American economist and academic, Nobel Prize laureate (d. 2009)

1930 Jasper Johns, American painter and sculptor

1949 Frank L. Culbertson Jr., American captain, pilot, and astronaut

1951 Frank Wilczek, American mathematician and physicist, Nobel Prize laureate

From Wikipedia and Google (images), ex as noted.   

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