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Thursday May 10, 2012

1994 - Inauguration of Nelson Mandela (highlighted story below)
1994 - Inauguration of Nelson Mandela (highlighted story below)
  • 131st Day of 2012 / 235 Remaining
  • 41 Days Until Summer Begins
  • Sunrise:6:04
  • Sunset:8;09
  • 14 Hours 5 Minutes of Daylight
  • Moon Rise:12:11am
  • Moon Set:10:36am
  • Moon’s Phase: 72 %
  • The Next Full Moon
  • June 4 @ 4:11am
  • Full Strawberry Moon
  • Full Rose Moon
  • Full Milk 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!

  • Tides
  • High:2:05am/4:17pm
  • Low:9:05am/9:31pm
  • Rainfall
  • This Year:15.67
  • Last Year:26.17
  • Normal To Date:23.20
  • Annual Seasonal Average: 23.80
  • Holidays
  • Library Legislative Days and Virtual Library Legislative Days
  • National Shrimp Day
  • Trust Your Intuition Day
  • National Mom's Night Out
  • World Lupus Day
  • Vesak Day-Singapore
  • Birthday of the Buddha-Buddhism
  • Constitution Day-Micronesia
  • Día de la Madre (Mother's Day)-Mexico
  • On This Day In …
  • 1774 --- Louis XVI ascended the throne of France
  • 1775 --- Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold lead a successful attack on Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York, while the Second Continental Congress assembles in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Congress faced the task of conducting a war already in progress. Fighting had begun with the Battle of Lexington and Concord on April 19, and Congress needed to create an official army out of the untrained assemblage of militia laying siege on Boston. The transformation of these rebels into the Continental Army was assisted by the victory of the Vermont and Massachusetts militia under the joint command of Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold at the British garrison at Ticonderoga on Lake Champlain. Their major achievement was to confiscate enough British cannon to make the Patriot militias into an army capable of an artillery barrage. Allen and more than 100 of his Green Mountain Boys had already decided to take the fort when Arnold arrived with formal military commissions from Massachusetts and Connecticut and a militia of his own. The Green Mountain Boys were unwilling to follow anyone but Allen into battle, so Allen and Arnold shared command as the Patriot militia surprised and overwhelmed the 50 Redcoats in the isolated garrison, who were completely unaware of the bloodshed in Massachusetts. The cannon seized at Ticonderoga and the next day at Crown Point, also on Lake Champlain, allowed the new Continental Army under General George Washington to drive the British from Boston the following spring. Ironically, both Allen and Arnold would eventually be accused of treason against the Patriot cause they had served so well in its earliest and neediest moments. Allen avoided conviction for his attempt to reattach Vermont to the British empire in the unstable days of the new republic. Arnold's name, however, became synonymous with traitor for his attempt to sell the fort at West Point, New York, to the British in 1780.
  • 1869 --- The Union Pacific and the Central Pacific Railways met. There was a grand celebration at Promontory, Utah when, in honor of the linking of the two railways, a golden spike was driven into the railroad. The spike, valued at $400, was driven, along with bronze spikes into a laurelwood tie by the president of the Central Pacific, Leland Stanford. Some say Mr. Stanford missed on his first stroke. Immediately after the celebration, the spikes and tie were removed and replaced with the standard pine tie and steel spikes. Interestingly, the people involved in this historic moment were unaware of its significance in the great scheme of things; and no markings were left at the specific location of the meeting of the rails. It is possible that the point at Promontory is a little to the left or south or north or right of the true spot where the rails were joined. In other words, like Mr. Stanford, we may have missed the exact spot that marks the final link in the ocean-to-ocean railroad.
  • 1872 --- The first woman nominated to be President of the United States was Victoria Claflin Woodhull. She was chosen for the ballot by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York City.
  • 1877 --- President Rutherford B. Hayes has the White House's first telephone installed in the mansion s telegraph room. President Hayes embraced the new technology, though he rarely received phone calls. In fact, the Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. The White House phone number was "1." Phone service throughout the country was in its infancy in 1877. It was not until a year later that the first telephone exchange was set up in Connecticut and it would be 50 more years until President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone line installed at the president's desk in the Oval Office.
  • 1924 --- J. Edgar Hoover is named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation (now the FBI) on this day in 1924. By the end of the year he was officially promoted to director. This began his 48-year tenure in power, during which time he personally shaped American criminal justice in the 20th century. Hoover first became involved in law enforcement as a special assistant to the attorney general, overseeing the mass roundups and deportations of suspected communists during the Red Scare abuses of the late 1910s. After taking over the FBI in 1924, Hoover began secretly monitoring any activities that did not conform to his American ideal. Hoover approved of illegally infiltrating and spying on the American Civil Liberties Union. His spies could be found throughout the government, even in the Supreme Court. He also collected damaging information on the personal lives of civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King, Jr. While Hoover's success at legitimate crime fighting was modest, his hold over many powerful people and organizations earned him respect and kept him in power. He was extremely successful at attracting attention and favorable press to the FBI. It wasn't until after his death in 1972, right before the beginning of the Watergate scandal, that Hoover's corruption became known.
  • 1953 --- After seven years in the minors, Frank Verdi was inserted into the late-inning Yankee lineup. As he walked to the plate for his first major-league at bat, the opposing coach called time to change pitchers. Yankee manager Casey Stengel sent up a pinch-hitter for Verdi, who went back to the minors two days later and never got to swing at a major league pitch.
  • 1963 --- Decca Records signed The Rolling Stones. The group had been recommended by Beatle George Harrison.
  • 1994 --- Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela is sworn in as the first black president of South Africa. In his inaugural address, Mandela, who spent 27 years of his life as a political prisoner of the South African government, declared that "the time for the healing of the wounds has come." Two weeks earlier, more than 22 million South Africans had turned out to cast ballots in the country's first-ever multiracial parliamentary elections. An overwhelming majority chose Mandela and his African National Congress (ANC) party to lead the country. Mandela, born in 1918, was the son of the chief of the Xhosa-speaking Tembu people. Instead of succeeding his father as chief, Mandela went to university and became a lawyer. In 1944, he joined the African National Congress (ANC), a black political organization dedicated to winning rights for the black majority in white-ruled South Africa. In 1948, the racist National Party came to power, and apartheid--South Africa's institutionalized system of white supremacy and racial segregation--became official government policy. With the loss of black rights under apartheid, black enrollment in the ANC rapidly grew. Mandela became one of the ANC's leaders and in 1952 was made deputy national president of the ANC. He organized nonviolent strikes, boycotts, marches, and other acts of civil disobedience. After the massacre of peaceful black demonstrators at Sharpeville in 1960, Nelson helped organize a paramilitary branch of the ANC to engage in acts of sabotage against the white minority government. He was tried for and acquitted of treason in 1961 but in 1962 was arrested again for illegally leaving the country. Convicted and sentenced to five years at Robben Island Prison, he was put on trial again in 1963 with seven others on charges of sabotage, treason, and conspiracy. In the celebrated Rivonia Trial, named after the suburb of Johannesburg where ANC weapons were found, Mandela eloquently defended his actions. On June 12, 1964, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison. He was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and was forced to do hard labor in a quarry. He could write and receive a letter once every six months, and once a year he was allowed to meet with a visitor for 30 minutes. However, Mandela's resolve remained unbroken, and while remaining the symbolic leader of the anti-apartheid movement, he led a movement of civil disobedience at the prison that coerced South African officials into drastically improving conditions on Robben Island. In 1982 he was moved to Pollsmoor Prison on the mainland, and in 1988 to a cottage, where he lived under house arrest. In 1989, F.W. de Klerk became South African president and set about dismantling apartheid. De Klerk lifted the ban on the ANC, suspended executions, and on February 11, 1990, ordered the release of Nelson Mandela. Mandela subsequently led the ANC in its negotiations with the minority government for an end to apartheid and the establishment of a multiracial government. In 1993, Mandela and de Klerk were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. On April 26, 1994, the country's first free elections were won by Mandela and the ANC, and a "national unity" coalition was formed with de Klerk's National Party and the Zulus' Inkatha Freedom Party. On May 10, Mandela was inaugurated in a ceremony attended by numerous international dignitaries.As president, Mandela established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights violations under apartheid and introduced numerous initiatives designed to improve the living standards of South Africa's black population. In 1996, he presided over the enactment of a new South African constitution. Mandela retired from politics in June 1999 at the age of 80. He was succeeded as president by Thabo Mbeki of the ANC.
  • 1999 --- The Cezanne painting "Still Life With Curtain, Pitcher and Bowl of Fruit" sold for 60.5 million.
  • 2010 --- President Barack Obama nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court
  • Birthdays
  • Buddha
  • Fred Astaire
  • Ella Grasso
  • Maybelle Carter
  • Donovan
  • Krist Novoselic
  • Homer Simpson
  • Pat Summerall
  • David O. Selznick
  • Bono
  • Gary Owens
  • Dave Mason
  • John Wilkes Booth
  • Sir Thomas Lipton
  • Nancy Walker
  • Sly Dunbar
  • Sid Vicious