Also on this day
Lead Story
1977
On this day in 1977, Memorial Day weekend opens with an intergalactic bang as the first of George Lucas’ blockbuster Star Wars movies hits American theaters.
The incredible success of Star Wars–it received seven Oscars, and earned $461 million in U.S. ticket sales and a gross of close to $800 million...
American Revolution
1787
With George Washington presiding, the Constitutional Convention formally convenes on this day in 1787. The convention faced a daunting task: the peaceful overthrow of the new American government as it had been defined by the Article of Confederation.
The process began with the proposal of James Madison’s Virginia Plan. Madison...
Automotive
1994
On this day in 1994, the ashes of 71-year-old George Swanson are buried (according to Swanson’s request) in the driver’s seat of his 1984 white Corvette in Hempfield County, Pennsylvania.
Swanson, a beer distributor and former U.S. Army sergeant during World War II, died the previous March 31 at the...
Civil War
1862
Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson notches a victory at the First Battle of Winchester, Virginia, as part of his brilliant campaign in the Shenandoah Valley. Jackson, with 17,000 troops under his command, was sent to the Shenandoah to relieve pressure on the Confederate troops near Richmond, Virginia, who were facing...
Cold War
1977
A new sign of political liberalization appears in China, when the communist government lifts its decade-old ban on the writings of William Shakespeare. The action by the Chinese government was additional evidence that the Cultural Revolution was over.
In 1966, Mao Tse-Tung, the leader of the People’s Republic of China, announced...
Crime
1861
John Merryman, a state legislator from Maryland, is arrested for attempting to hinder Union troops from moving from Baltimore to Washington during the Civil War and is held at Fort McHenry by Union military officials. His attorney immediately sought a writ of habeas corpus so that a federal court could...
1895
Playwright Oscar Wilde is taken toReading Gaolin London after being convicted of sodomy. The famed writer of Dorian Gray and The Importance of Being Earnest brought attention to his private life in a feud with Sir John Sholto Douglas, whose son was intimately involved with Wilde.
Homosexuality was a criminal offense...
Disaster
1979
Almost 300 people are killed on this day in 1979 when an American Airlines flight crashes and explodes after losing one engine just after takeoff.
It was the beginning of Memorial Day weekend in 1979 when 277 passengers filled Flight 191 from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport bound for Los Angeles. The...
General Interest
1660
Under invitation by leaders of the English Commonwealth, Charles II, the exiled king of England, lands at Dover, England, to assume the throne and end 11 years of military rule.Prince of Wales at the time of the English Civil War, Charles fled to France after Oliver Cromwell’s Parliamentarians defeated King...
1787
Four years after the United States won its independence from England, 55 state delegates, including George Washington, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin, convene in Philadelphia to compose a new U.S. constitution.The Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, provided for a loose confederation...
1979
On Friday afternoon, Memorial Day weekend, American Airlines Flight 191, a Los Angeles-bound DC-10, takes off at 3:03 p.m. from Chicago-O’Hare International airport with 271 aboard. As Flight 191 raised its nose during the initial stage of the takeoff, an engine under the left wing broke off with its pylon...
Hollywood
1977
Science-fiction fans and movie buffs in general have cause to celebrate on this day in 1977, when 20th Century Fox releases George Lucas’ space odyssey Star Wars.
After Lucas’ second feature film, American Graffiti (1973), became a hit, Fox agreed to put up $9.5 million for the writer-director’s next project. After...
Literary
1911
Thomas Mann visits the Lido in Venice on this day and is inspired with the idea for his novella Death in Venice.
Mann was born in Germany in 1875, the second son of a grain merchant who expected Thomas to take over the business. His father died when Mann was 15,...
1927
On this day in 1927, Robert Ludlum, the author of more than 20 thrillers, including the Jason Bourne spy novels, is born in New York City. Ludlum, who published his first novel when he was in his 40s, sold more than 200 million books by the time of his death...
Music
1878
By the spring of 1877, the English light-opera team of W.S. Gilbert and Richard Sullivan had established a strong reputation based on several well-received earlier works, but they had yet to have a true smash hit. That would change on this day in 1878, when Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore...
Old West
1975
In 1975, the grizzly bear–once the undisputed king of the western wilderness–is given federal protection as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
Before the Anglo-Americans began invading their territory, the grizzly bear inhabited most of the country west of the Mississippi from Mexico north to the Arctic Circle. ...
Presidential
1961
On this day in 1961, President John F. Kennedy announces to Congress his goal of sending an American to the moon by the end of the decade and asks for financial support of an accelerated space program. He made the task a national priority and a mission in which all...
Sports
1935
On May 25, 1935, at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Babe Ruth hits his 714th home run, a record for career home runs that would stand for almost 40 years. This was one of Ruth’s last games, and the last home run of his career. Ruth went four for four...
Vietnam War
1968
The communists launch their third major assault of the year on Saigon. The heaviest fighting occurred during the first three days of June, and again centered on Cholon, the Chinese section of Saigon, where U.S. and South Vietnamese forces used helicopters, fighter-bombers, and tanks to dislodge deeply entrenched Viet Cong...
1969
South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu assumes personal leadership of the National Social Democratic Front at its inaugural meeting in Saigon. Thieu said the establishment of this coalition party was “the first concrete step in unifying the political factions in South Vietnam for the coming political struggle with the communists,”...
World War I
1915
On this day in 1915, in the latest of a disturbing series of Turkish aggressions against Armenians during World War I, Mehmed Talat, the Ottoman minister of the interior, announces that all Armenians living near the battlefield zones in eastern Anatolia (under Ottoman rule) will be deported to Syria and...
World War II
1944
On this day in 1944, Germany launches Operation Knight’s Move, in an attempt to seize Yugoslav communist partisan leader Tito.
Using parachute drops and glider troops, German forces landed in the Yugoslavian village of Drvar, where Josep Broz Tito, leader of the anti-Axis guerilla movement, was believed to be. The village...