Monday, May 7, 2018

TODAY IN HISTORY ― MAY 7

May 7 is the 127th day of the year (128th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. There are 238 days remaining until the end of the year.

NATIONAL HOME BREW DAY



1429 
 Joan of Arc ends the Siege of Orléans, pulling an arrow from her own shoulder and returning, wounded, to lead the final charge. The victory marks a turning point in the Hundred Years' War



1700  Quaker William Penn began monthly meetings for blacks advocating emancipation.
1718  The city of New Orleans was founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.


1763 ― On this day in 1763, Major Henry Gladwin, British commander of Fort Detroit, foils Ottawa Chief Pontiac’s attempt at a surprise attack. Romantic lore holds that Gladwin’s Seneca mistress informed him of the western Indians’ plans for an uprising.

1824  Beethoven's 9th (Choral) Symphony premieres in Vienna. The symphony was the first example of a major composer using voices in a symphony (thus making it a choral symphony). The words are sung during the final movement by four vocal soloists and a chorus. They were taken from the "Ode to Joy", a poem written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785 and revised in 1803, with additions made by the composer. Today, it stands as one of the most played symphonies in the world.

1888  George Eastman patents the "Kodak box camera", the first camera to become widely adopted by the public. Its design became the archetype for box camera designs introduced by many different manufacturers.

1912  Columbia University approves plans for awarding the Pulitzer Prize in several categories The award is established by publisher Joseph Pulitzer.


1915  The English passenger ship RMS Lusitania is sunk by a German submarine off the southern coast of Ireland; 1260 lives are lost, including 128 American citizens. The ship's sinking provided Britain with a propaganda opportunity, which helped shift public opinion in the United States against Germany (WWI), and was a factor in the United States' declaration of war two years later, in 1917.

1942 
 A Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto (Lithuania) are executed.


1945 
 Branch Rickey announces formation of the U.S. Negro Baseball League. Prior to that time the term was used broadly to include professional black teams outside the leagues and it may be used narrowly for the seven relatively successful leagues beginning in 1920 that are sometimes termed "Negro Major Leagues".


1945 
 WWII: unconditional German surrender to the Allies is signed by General Alfred Jodl at Rheims.

1946 
 Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with 20 employees.


1960 
 Leonid Brezhnev replaces Kliment Voroshilov as president of the USSR.

1970 
 
"The Long and Winding Road" becomes the Beatles' last American single release.


1984 
 A $180M out-of-court settlement is reached in the Agent Orange suitDuring the late 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. and Britain collaborated on development of herbicides with potential applications in warfare. Some of those products were brought to market as herbicides. The British were the first to employ herbicides and defoliants to destroy the crops, bushes, and trees of communist insurgents in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency. These operations laid the groundwork for the subsequent use of Agent Orange and other defoliant formulations by the U.S.

1998  Mercedes-Benz buys Chrysler for $40 billion USD and forms DaimlerChrysler in the largest industrial merger in history. 


1999 
 Pope John Paul II travels to Romania becoming the first pope to visit a predominantly Eastern Orthodox country since the Great Schism in 1054.


2007 
 The location of the tomb of Herod the Great is discovered. The tomb was a 32-by-32-foot (10 by 10 meters) building with a pointy roof and three coffins. One of these coffins, an intricately carved red stone, was alleged to be the tomb of the great king. 


2014 
 Fighting between pro-Russian and Kiev forces continue amid fears internationally of a civil war in the Ukraine.


BORN TODAY

1812 – Robert Browning, English Romantic poet and playwright (d. 1889)

1833 – Johannes Brahms, German pianist and composer (d. 1897)

1840 – Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Russian composer and educator (d. 1893)

1917 – Domenico Bartolucci, Italian cardinal and composer (d. 2013)

1940 – Angela Carter, English English novelist, short story writer (d. 1992)

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

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