147th day of 2015; 218 remaining
Tides at the Golden Gate
High: 7:53am/8:37pm
Low: 2:13am/1:40pm
Sunrise: 5:52am
Sunset: 8:22pm
Moonrise: 2:30am (60% visible)
Moonset: 2:51pm
Special celebrations & commemorations today include...
Abolition of Slavery - Guadeloupe
Mother's Day - Bolivia
National Grape Popsicle Day
Cellophane Tape Day (see 1930 below)
National Senior Health & Fitness Day
World MS Day (Multiple Sclerosis)
On this day in...
1647 - Alse Young (Achsah Young or Alice Young), a resident of Windsor, CT, was executed for being a "witch." It was the first recorded American execution of a "witch."
1668 - Three colonists were expelled from Massachusetts for being Baptists.
1813 - Americans captured Fort George, Canada.
1896 - 255 people were killed in St. Louis, MO, when a tornado struck.
1901 - The Edison Storage Battery Company was organized.
1907 - The Bubonic Plague broke out in San Francisco.
1919 - A U.S. Navy seaplane completed the first transatlantic flight.
1926 - Bronze figures of Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer were erected in Hannibal, MO.
1929 - Colonel Charles Lindbergh and Anne Spencer Murrow were married.
1930 Richard G. Drew of St. Paul, Minnesota patented removeable masking tape. He later worked out a deal with 3M to market it under the 'Scotch' brand.
1931 - Piccard and Knipfer made the first flight into the stratosphere, by balloon.
1933 - Walt Disney's "Three Little Pigs" was first released.
1933 - In the U.S., the Federal Securities Act was signed. The act required the registration of securities with the Federal Trade Commission.
1935 - The U.S. Supreme Court declared that President Franklin Roosevelt's National Industrial Recovery Act was unconstitutional.
1937 - In California, the Golden Gate Bridge was opened to pedestrian traffic. The bridge connected San Francisco and Marin County.
1941 - U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed an "unlimited national emergency" amid rising world tensions.
1941 - The German battleship Bismarck was sunk by British naval and air forces. 2,300 people were killed.
1942 - German General Erwin Rommel began a major offensive in Libya with his Afrika Korps.
1944 - U.S. General MacArthur landed on Biak Island in New Guinea.
1960 - A military coup overthrew the democratic government of Turkey.
1964 - Indian Prime Minister Jawaharla Nehru died.
1968 - After 48 years as coach of the Chicago Bears, George Halas retired.
1969 - Construction of Walt Disney World began in Florida.
1977 - George H. Willig was fined for scaling the World Trade Center in New York on May 26. He was fined $1.10.
1982 - Japan announced the elimination of tariffs on 96 industrial goods.
1985 - In Beijing, representatives of Britain and China exchanged instruments of ratification on the pact returning Hong Kong to the Chinese in 1997.
1986 - Mel Fisher recovered a jar that contained 2,300 emeralds from the Spanish ship Atocha. The ship sank in the 17th century.
1988 - The U.S. Senate ratified the INF treaty. The INF pact was the first arms-control agreement since the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) to receive Senate approval.
1994 - Nobel Prize-winning author Alexander Solzhenitsyn returned to Russia. He had been in exile for two decades.
1995 - In Charlottesville, VA, Christopher Reeve was paralyzed after being thrown from his horse during a jumping event.
1996 - Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated a cease-fire to the war in Chechnya in his first meeting with the leader of the rebels.
1998 - Charlie Sheen was admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles for a drug overdose.
1998 - Michael Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison for not warning anyone about the plot to bomb an Oklahoma City federal building.
1999 - In The Hague, Netherlands, a war crimes tribunal indicted Slobodan Milosevic and four others for atrocities in Kosovo. It was the first time that a sitting head of state had been charged with such a crime.
If today's your birthday, you share the special date with...
Cornelius Vanderbilt 1794
Amelia Jenks Bloomer 1818
Julia Ward Howe 1819
Wild Bill Hickok 1837
Arnold Bennett 1867
Isadora Duncan 1878
Dashiell Hammett 1894
Rachel Carson 1907
Vincent Price 1911
Hubert H. Humphrey 1911
John Cheever 1912
Herman Wouk 1915
Yasuhiro Nakasone 1917
Christopher Lee 1922
Henry Kissinger 1923
Ramsey Lewis 1935
Lee Ann Merriwether 1935
Louis Gossett, Jr. 1936
Don Williams 1939
Cilla Black 1943
Bruce Weitz 1943
Bruce Cockburn 1945
Richard Schiff 1955
Eddie Harsch 1957
Siouxsie Sioux 1957
Neil Finn 1958
Cathy Silvers 1961
Peri Gilpin 1961
Adam Carolla 1964
Todd Bridges 1965
Sean Kinney 1966
Jeff Bagwell 1968
Frank Thomas 1968
Dondre Whitfield 1969
Paul Bettany 1971
Left Eye 1971
Jack McBrayer 1973
Chris Colfer 1980
