618 – Coronation of the Chinese governor Li Yuan as Emperor Gaozu of Tang, the new Emperor of China, initiating three centuries of the Tang Dynasty’s rule over China.
860 – Swedish Vikings attack Constantinople
1178 – Five monks at Canterbury report explosion on moon (only known observation)
1682 – William Penn founds Philadelphia
1812 – War of 1812 begins as US declares war against Britain
1873 – Susan B Anthony fined $100 for voting for President
1936 – Polish parliament gives Ignacy Moscicki dictatorial power
1959 – First telecast transmitted from England to US
1959 – Governor of Louisiana Earl K. Long is committed to a state mental hospital; he responds by having the hospital’s director fired and replaced with a crony who proceeds to proclaim him perfectly sane.
1977 – Space Shuttle test model “Enterprise” carries a crew aloft for first time, It was fixed to a modified Boeing 747
1981 – The AIDS epidemic is formally recognized by medical professionals in San Francisco
1996 – Ted Kaczynski, suspected of being the Unabomber, is indicted on ten criminal counts.
When asked if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison, Kaczynski replied:
No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that’s what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit.
On May 24, 2012, Kaczynski submitted his current information to the Harvard University alumni association. He listed his eight life sentences as achievements, his current occupation as prisoner, and his current address as No. 04475-046, US Penitentiary-Max, P.O. Box 8500, Florence, CO 81226-8500
This is the text of a 35,000-word manifesto as submitted to The Washington Postand the New York Times by the serial mail bomber called the Unabomber. The manifesto appeared in The Washington Post as an eight-page supplement that was not part of the news sections. The author threatened to send a bomb to an unspecified destination “with intent to kill” unless one of the newspapers published this manuscript. The Attorney General and the Director of the FBI recommended publication.
Birthdays
1723 – Giuseppe Scarlotti, composer
1854 – Edward Wyllis Scripps, publisher/journalist
1886 – George Mallory, England, mountain climber (“because it is there”)
1913 – Sammy Cahn, lyricist
1915 – Red Adair, oilman (fought oil fires in Kuwait)
1942 – Paul McCartney, Liverpool UK. A Beatle
1952 – Isabella Rossellini, Rome Italy, actress (Big Night, Blue Velvet)
Deaths
1629 – Piet Hein, Dutch naval commander (Spanish silver fleet) and folk hero (b. 1577) shot by cannonball at 51
1982 – John Cheever, Pulitzer prize winning author, dies at 70 in Ossining
1984 – Alan Berg, American radio talk show host and attorney. An outspoken abrasive combative talk show host, he was murdered in his driveway by members of The Order, a white nationalist group who took umbrage at his comments.