It's Patrick Henry's birthday today...the American patriot who may have measured his words differently in a pandemic, "Give me Liberty or give me Death!" - he might've ended up with both!
Today is Friday, May 29, 2020, the 149th day of the year, with 216 days remaining. 22 days till summer, and only 158 days until presidential elections (if civilization survives).
- Sunrise: 5:50am
- Sunset: 8:25pm ...giving us 14 hours and 33 minutes of daylight. 35% of the waxing moon will be visible, rising at 12:26pm.
Tides at the Golden Gate
- High: 4:36am/7:06pm
- Low: 11:28am
Special celebrations & commemorations today…
- Heat Awareness Day
- International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers
- Learn About Composting Day
- Mike, The Headless Chicken Day
- National Coq Au Vin Day
- World Biscuit Day
On this day in…
1453 - Constantinople fell to Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II, ending the Byzantine Empire.
1660 - Charles II was restored to the English throne after the Puritan Commonwealth.
1721 - South Carolina was formally incorporated as a royal colony.
1765 - Patrick Henry denounced the Stamp Act before Virginia's House of Burgesses.
1790 - Rhode Island became the last of the original thirteen colonies to ratify the U.S. Constitution.
1827 - The first nautical school opened in Nantucket, MA, under the name Admiral Sir Isaac Coffin’s Lancasterian School.
1848 - WIsconsin became the 30th state to join the United States.
1849 - A patent for lifting vessels was granted to Abraham Lincoln.
1910 - An airplane raced a train from Albany, NY, to New York City. The airplane pilot Glenn Curtiss won the $10,000 prize.
1912 - Fifteen women were dismissed from their jobs at the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia, PA, for dancing the Turkey Trot while on the job.
1916 - The official flag of the president of the United States was adopted.
1916 - U.S. forces invaded Dominican Republic and remained until 1924.
1922 - Ecuador became independent.
1922 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that organized baseball was a sport, not subject to antitrust laws.
1932 - World War I veterans began arriving in Washington, DC. to demand cash bonuses they were not scheduled to receive for another 13 years.
1951 - C.F. Blair became the first man to fly over the North Pole in a single engine plane.
1953 - Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the top of Mount Everest.
1962 - Buck (John) O’Neil became the first black coach in major league baseball when he accepted the job with the Chicago Cubs.
1965 - Ralph Boston set a world record in the broad jump at 27-feet, 4-3/4 inches, at a meet held in Modesto, CA.
1973 - Tom Bradley was elected the first black mayor of Los Angeles.
1974 - U.S. President Nixon agreed to turn over 1,200 pages of edited Watergate transcripts.
1978 - In the U.S., postage stamps were raised from 13 cents to 15 cents.
1981 - The U.S. performed a nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site.
1985 - Thirty-nine people were killed and 400 were injured in a riot at a European Cup soccer match in Brussels, Belgium.
1986 - Colonel Oliver North told National Security Advisor William McFarlane that profits from weapons sold to Iran were being diverted to the Contras.
1988 - U.S. President Reagan began his first visit to the Soviet Union in Moscow.
1990 - Boris Yeltsin was elected president of the Russian republic by the Russian parliament.
1997 - The ruling party in Indonesia, Golkar, won the Parliament election by a record margin. There was a boycott movement and rioting that killed 200 people.
1999 - Space shuttle Discovery completed the first docking with the International Space Station.
2000 - Fiji's military took control of the nation and declared martial law following a coup attempt by indigenous Fijians in mid-May.
2001 - In New York, four followers of Osama bin Laden were convicted of a global conspiracy to murder Americans. The crimes included the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa that killed 224 people.
2001 - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that disabled golfer Casey Martin could use a cart to ride in tournaments.
2015 - The Obama adminstration removed Cuba from the U.S. terrorism blacklist. The two countries had severed diplomatic relations in January of 1961.
If today’s your birthday, you share it with…
- Charles II 1630 - Monarch of England, Scotland and Ireland
- Patrick Henry 1736 - one of the Founding Fathers of the United States
- Isaac Albeniz 1860 - Composer
- Gilbert Keith Chesterton 1874 - Writer of philosophy, ontolory, poetry
- Oswald Spengler (Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler) 1880 - German historian and philosopher
- Erich Wolfgang Korngold 1897 - Composer
- Bob Hope 1903 - Comedian, actor
- John Fitzgerald Kennedy (U.S.) 1917 - 35th President of the United States
- Stacy Keach, Sr. (Walter Stacy Keach) 1941 - Actor, narrator
- Bob Simon 1941 - Broadcast journalist
- Kevin Conway 1942 - Actor
- Helmut Berger (Helmut Steinberger) 1944 - Actor
- Gary Brooker 1945 - Musician (Procol Harum)
- Anthony Geary 1948 - Actor ("General Hospital")
- Francis Rossi 1949 - Musician (Status Quo)
- Danny Elfman (Daniel Robert "Danny" Elfman) 1953 - Musician
- LaToya Jackson 1956 - Singer, songwriter, musician, actress
- Annette Bening 1958 - Actress
- Rupert Everett (Rupert James Hector Everett) 1959 - Actor
- Adrian Paul (Adrian Paul Hewett) 1959 - Actor (TV's "Highlander")
- Melissa Etheridge 1961 - Singer, musician
- Jumping Jack Frost 1967 - Musician
- Melanie Janine Brown 1975 - Scary Spice of Spice Girls
- Sébastien René Grosjean 1978 - Tennis player
