© 2024 KALW 91.7 FM Bay Area
KALW Public Media / 91.7 FM Bay Area
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Friday May 16, 2014

  • 136th Day of 2014 229 Remaining
  • Summer Begins in 36 Days
  • Sunrise 5:58
  • Sunset 8:14
  • 14 Hours 16 Minutes

  • Moon Rise 10:25pm
  • Moon Set 7:46am
  • Phase 95%
  • Next Full Moon June 12 @ 9:13pm
  • Full Strawberry Moon
  • This name was universal to every Algonquin tribe. However, in Europe they called it the Rose Moon. Also because the relatively short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June . . . so the full Moon that occurs during that month was christened for the strawberry!

  • High Tide 1:44pm
  • Low Tide 6:44am/6:36pm

  • Holidays

  • Biographer’s Day

  • On This Day In …
  • 1717 --- Writer Francois-Marie Arouet, better known as Voltaire, is imprisoned in the Bastille. The outspoken writer was born to middle-class parents, attended college in Paris, and began to study law. 
    However, he quit law to become a playwright and made a name for himself with classical tragedies. Critics embraced his epic poem, La Henriade, but its satirical attack on politics and religion infuriated the government, and Voltaire was arrested. He spent nearly a year in the Bastille.

  • 1770 --- At Versailles, Louis, the French dauphin (15), marries Marie Antoinette (14), the daughter of Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa and Holy Roman Emperor Francis I. France hoped their 
    marriage would strengthen its alliance with Austria, its longtime enemy. In 1774, with the death of King Louis XV, Louis and Marie were crowned king and queen of France.

  • 1849 --- The New York City Board of Health is finally able to establish a hospital to deal with a cholera epidemic that, before it 
    ends, kills more than 5,000 people. The rapidly growing city was ripe for an epidemic of this kind because of poor health conditions and its status as a destination for immigrants from around the world.

  • 1866 --- Congress authorized the minting of a 5 cent coin made of copper-nickel, and referred to as a 'nickel'.  Silver 5 cent pieces had been called half dimes.

  • 1888 --- The capitol of Texas was dedicated in Austin.

  • 1888 --- The first demonstration of recording on a flat disc was demonstrated by Emile Berliner.

  • 1929 --- The first Academy Awards were presented on this night, hosted by Douglas Fairbanks and William C. de Mille. This first awards ceremony of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was held at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles. It attracted an audience of 200 people. (The statuette we know so well as Oscar was not included in this first presentation for films made in 1927-1928. Oscar didn’t make an appearance until 1931.) Janet Gaynor was named Best Actress for her performance in Seventh Heaven, which also won the Best Director / Dramatic Picture for Frank Borzage, and the Best Writing/Adaptation forBenjamin Glazer. Lewis Milestone was named Best Director/Comedy Picture for Two Arabian Knights. Emil Jannings received two Best Actor awards, one for the 1927 flick,The Way of All Flesh, the other for The Last Command (1928) and Wings was selected as Best Film Production. A second Best Film award was presented to Sunrise for Unique and Artistic Production. It also won for Best Cinematography (Charles Rosher and Karl Struss). 

  • 1939 --- The Philadelphia Athletics and the Cleveland Indians met at Shibe Park in Philadelphia for the first baseball game to be played under the lights in the American League. The Indians beat Philly 8-3 in 10 innings.

  • 1943 --- In Poland, the Warsaw Ghetto uprising comes to an end as Nazi soldiers gain control of Warsaw's Jewish ghetto, blowing up the last remaining synagogue and beginning the mass deportation of the ghetto's remaining dwellers to the Treblinka extermination camp.

  • 1946 --- The Irving Berlin musical, "Annie Get Your Gun," opened at New York’s Imperial Theatre for the first of 1,147 performances. 

  • 1946 --- Jack Mullin showed the world the first magnetic tape recorder. 

  • 1960 ---  In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting 
    between the two heads of state. Khrushchev's outburst angered Eisenhower and doomed any chances for successful talks or negotiations at the summit.

  • 1964 --- Mary Wells gave Motown its first #1 hit when "My Guy" reached the top of theBillboard pop chart .

  • 1965 --- Spaghetti-O's were sold for the first time.

  • 1968 --- In France, the May 1968 crisis escalates as a general strike spreads to factories and industries across the country, shutting down newspaper distribution, air transport, and two major 
    railroads. By the end of the month, millions of workers were on strike, and France seemed to be on the brink of radical leftist revolution.

  • 1969 --- Venus 5, a Russian spacecraft, landed on the planet Venus.

  • 1969 --- Jack Cassady (Jefferson Airplane) was arrested for possession of marijuana at the Royal Orleans Hotel in New Orleans. 

  • 1969 --- Pete Townsend (Who) was arrested onstage after mistakenly kicking a New York police officer. 

  • 1975 --- Via the southeast ridge route, Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei becomes the first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the tallest mountain in the world. Located in the central Himalayas on the border of China and Nepal, Everest stands 29,035 feet above sea level. Called Chomo-Lungma, or "Mother Goddess of the Land," by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, an early 19th-century British surveyor of the Himalayas. In 
    May 1953, climber and explorer Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay of Nepal made the first successful climb of the peak. Hillary was later knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for the achievement. Ten years later, American James Whittaker reached Everest's summit with his Sherpa climbing partner, Nawang Gombu. In 1975, Junko Tabei conquered the mountain, and in 1988 Stacy Allison became the first American woman to successfully climb Everest.

  • 1977 --- Five people were killed when a New York Airways helicopter, idling on top of the Pan Am Building in Manhattan, toppled over, sending a huge rotor blade flying. 

  • 1987 --- It was a grand day in New York Harbor. Bobro 400, a huge barge, set sail within eyesight of the Statue of Liberty with 3,200 tons of garbage that nobody wanted. The floating trash heap soon 
    became America’s most well-traveled garbage can as it began an eight-week, 6,000 mile odyssey in search of a willing dumping site. Bobro 400 returned to New York Harbor after the lengthy journey -- and brought all that garbage back with it!

  • 1988 --- A report released by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop declared that nicotine was addictive in similar ways as heroin and cocaine. 

  • 1991 --- Queen Elizabeth II became the first British monarch to address the U.S. Congress.

  • 2000 ---“The Artist” announced that he was reclaiming the name “Prince” since his contract with Warner-Chappell had expired. The contract officially ended on December 31, 1999. 

  • 2005 --- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Michigan and New York could not prohibit people from buying wine online from out of state wineries.  Some 23 other states have similar laws that presumably would also be affected by the ruling.

  • 2005 --- Newsweek magazine retracted a story that claimed investigators had found evidence the Quran was desecrated by interrogators at the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay. The story had sparked deadly protests in Afghanistan.

  • Birthdays
  • Liberace
  • Anne O’Hare McCormick
  • Janet Jackson
  • Sen John Conyers
  • Margaret Rey
  • Peirce Brosnan
  • Olga Korbut
  • Studs Terkel
  • Debra Winger
  • Mare Winningham
  • Tori Spelling
  • Elizabeth Palmer Peabody
  • Henry Fonda
  • Woody Herman
  • Billy Martin
  • Betty Carter
  • Yvonne Craig