Wednesday May 7,2014

KALW | By Ichabod Cranium

Published May 7, 2014 at 6:05 AM PDT

On This Day In …
1274 --- The Second Council of Lyons opened in France to regulate the election of the pope.

1789 --- The first Presidential Inaugural Ball was held in New York City. Each lady in attendance received as a gift a portrait of George Washington. Actually, the ball was the first such event held for the incoming President of the United States.

1800 --- Congress divided the Northwest Territory into two parts. The western part became the Indiana Territory and the eastern section remained the Northwest Territory.

1902 --- Martinique's Mount Pele begins the deadliest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The following day, the city of Saint Pierre, which some called the Paris of the Caribbean, was virtually wiped off the map.

1915 --- Earlier German attacks on merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel's course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7, in the waters of the Celtic Sea, the 32,000-ton ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship's boilers. The Lusitania sank within 20 minutes. Germany justified the attack by stating, correctly, that the Lusitania was an enemy ship, and that it was carrying munitions. It was primarily a passenger ship, however, and among the 1,201 drowned in the attack were many women and children, including 128 Americans.

1941 --- Glenn Miller and his Orchestra recorded one of the great American music standards, Chattanooga Choo Choo

1942 --- In the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese and American navies attacked each other with carrier planes. It was the first time in the history of naval warfare where two enemy fleets fought without seeing each other.

1945 --- The German High Command, in the person of General Alfred Jodl, signs the unconditional surrender of all German forces, East and West, at Reims, in northwestern France. At first, General Jodl hoped to limit the terms of German surrender to only those forces still fighting the Western Allies. But General Dwight Eisenhower demanded complete surrender of all German forces, those fighting in the East as well as in the West. If this demand was not met, Eisenhower was prepared to seal off the Western front, preventing Germans from fleeing to the West in order to surrender, thereby leaving them in the hands of the enveloping Soviet forces. Jodl radioed Grand Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler's successor, with the terms. Donitz ordered him to sign. So with Russian General Ivan Susloparov and French General Francois Sevez signing as witnesses, and General Walter Bedell Smith, Ike's chief of staff, signing for the Allied Expeditionary Force, Germany was-at least on paper-defeated.

1945 --- Baseball owner Branch Rickey announced the organization of the United States Negro Baseball League. There were 6 teams.

1954 --- In northwest Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces decisively defeat the French at Dien Bien Phu, a French stronghold besieged by the Vietnamese communists for 57 days. The Viet Minh victory at Dien Bien Phu signaled the end of French colonial influence in Indochina and cleared the way for the division of Vietnam along the 17th parallel at the conference of Geneva.

1960 --- Leonid Brezhnev, one of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's most trusted proteges, is selected as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet—the Soviet equivalent to the presidency. This was another important step in Brezhnev's rise to power in Russia, a rise that he later capped by taking control of the Soviet Union in 1964.

1965 --- In the early morning hours of May 7, 1965, in a Clearwater, Florida, motel room, Keith Richards awoke, grabbed a tape recorder and laid down one of the greatest pop hooks of all time: The opening riff of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." He then promptly fell back to sleep. "When I woke up in the morning, the tape had run out," Richards recalled many years later. "I put it back on, and there's this, maybe, 30 seconds of 'Satisfaction,' in a very drowsy sort of rendition. And then it suddenly—the guitar goes 'CLANG," and then there's like 45 minutes of snoring."

1966 --- The Mamas & The Papas made the climb to the top of the Billboard pop musicchart with Monday, Monday. For three weeks Monday, Monday stayed at the top of the pop music world.

1977 --- Seattle Slew won the Kentucky Derby. It was the first win on the way to hisTriple Crown victory. Seattle Slew was the tenth Triple Crown winner -- and the first unbeaten Triple Crown winner.

1984 --- A $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans who claimed they had suffered injury from exposure to the defoliant while serving in the armed forces.

1987 --- Shelly Long made her last appearance as a regular on the popular TV show,Cheers. Long, who played cocktail server, Diane Chambers, to often hilarious results, left the hit comedy to pursue a movie career.

1991 --- A judge in Macon, Georgia dismissed a wrongful death suit against Ozzy Osbourne. A local couple failed to prove their son was inspired to attempt suicide by Ozzy's music.

1994 --- Norway's most famous painting, "The Scream" by Edvard Munch, was recovered almost three months after it was stolen from a museum in Oslo. The fragile painting was recovered undamaged at a hotel in Asgardstrand, about 40 miles south of Oslo. This version of "The Scream", one of four different versions, was painted on paper.

1997 --- A report released by the U.S. government said that Switzerland provided Nazi Germany with equipment and credit during World War II. Germany exchanged for gold what had been plundered or stolen. Switzerland did not comply with postwar agreements to return the gold.

1998 --- German automobile company Daimler-Benz--maker of the world-famous luxury car brand Mercedes-Benz--announces a $36 billion merger with the -United States-based Chrysler Corporation.

1999 --- A jury ruled that "The Jenny Jones Show" and Warner Bros. were liable in the shooting death of Scott Amedure. He was killed by another guest on the show. The jury's award was $25 million.

2000 --- President Vladimir Putin took the oath of office in Russia's first democratic transfer of power.

KALW NEWSLETTERS