1639 – Massachusetts grants 500 acres of land to erect a gunpowder mill
1664 – New Amsterdam renamed New York
1683 – The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, England, opens as the world’s first university museum.
1816 – 10″ snowfall in New England, “year without a summer”
Mount Tambora was an active volcano on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia and swelled to14,100 feet before erupting on April 10th 1815.
The estimated volume of ejected material was thought to be about 38 cubic miles,making it one of the largest eruptions in recorded history. The explosion was heard1,200 miles away on Sumatra. About 70,000 people died, most from starvation and disease as the plume caused the phenomenon known as ‘volcanic winter.’ 1816 was knows as the ‘year without a summer,’ as crops failed and livestock died causing the worst famine in the 19th century.
1938 – Sigmund Freud arrives in London
1844 – Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) forms in London
1850 – Levi Strauss make his first pair of blue jeans
1882 – Electric iron patented by Henry W Seely, in New York City
1896 – Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo leave New York harbor to row across Atlantic. Dr. Stein Hoff is rowing his way across the Atlantic right now as you sip your morning coffee. He left New York on May 15th.
1912 – The eruption of Novarupta in Alaska begins. It is the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century.
1933 – First drive-in theater opens in Camden NJ.
1942 – First nylon parachute jump
1944 – 82nd Airborne division D-day-landing at Ste Mere Eglise
WWII D-Day: 150,000 Allied Expeditionary Force lands in Normandy, France
1968 – Senator Robert Kennedy dies from his wounds after he was shot the previous night
1988 – 3 giant turtles found in Bronx sewage plant
2002 -A near-Earth asteroid estimated at 10 metres diameter explodes over the Mediterranean Sea between Greece and Libya. The resulting explosion is estimated to have a force of 26 kilotons, slightly more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb.
Birthdays
1436 – Regiomontanus (Johannes Muller), prepared astronomical tables
1599 – Diego Velázquez, Spanish painter (d. 1660)
1755 – Nathan Hale, hanged patriot, had and gave but one life for his country
1875 – Thomas Mann, Germany, novelist (Magic Mountain-Nobel 1929)
1906 – Max Zorn, German mathematician (lemma of Zorn)
Deaths
1799 – Patrick Henry, American revolutionary (b. 1736)
1941 – Louis Chevrolet, American automotive pioneer (b. 1878)
1961 – Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss Psychiatrist, dies at 85
1968 – Robert Kennedy, assassinated in LA by Sirhan Sirhan at 42
1968 – Randolph Churchill, son of Winston Churchill (b. 1911)
1979 – Jack Haley, American actor (The Wizard of Oz), dies of a heart attack at 80
2006 – Arnold Newman, American photographer (b. 1918) |
