1915: Lusitania
By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com
558: The dome of the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul collapses.
1429: The seige of Orleans is broken by Joan of Arc and the French Army.
1663: The Theatre Royal in Drury Lane London opens.
1718: New Orleans is founded by Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.
1763: Pontiac, chief of the Ottawa Indians, attempted to lead a sneak attack on British-held Fort Detroit, but was foiled because the British had been tipped off in advance.
1765: HMS Victory launched.
1789: America’s first inaugural ball was held in New York in honor of President George Washington, who had taken the oath of office a week earlier.
1812: Birth of poet Robert Browning.
1824: Beethoven’s 9th (Chorale) Symphony, premieres in Vienna.
1833: Birth of composer Johannes Brahms in Hamburg.
1840: Birth of composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Russia.
1866: German Premier Otto von Bismarck is seriously wounded in an assassination attempt.
1873: US marines attack Panama.
1913: The House of Commons rejects women’s right to vote.
1915: A German U-boat torpedoed and sank the British liner RMS Lusitania off the southern coast of Ireland, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans, out of the nearly 2,000 on board.
1919: Birth of Eva Peron in Argentina.
1921: In an exclusive interview with the United Press, Sun Yat Sen, president of the Canton Chinese government, outlined his policy proposals as he sought recognition for his fledgling government.
1928: The UK lowers the age of women voters from 30 to 21.
1931: Born on this day: American singer Teresa Brewer who had the 1952 US No.1 hit 'Till I Waltz Again with You', (one of Elvis Presley's first public singing experiences in 12th grade was performing 'Till I Waltz Again with You'). She was one of the most prolific and popular female singers of the 1950s, recording nearly 600 songs. Brewer died on 17 October 2007 age 76.
1939: Germany and Italy announced a military and political alliance known as the Rome-Berlin Axis.
1941: Glenn Miller records “Chattanooga Choo Choo” for RCA.
1942: A Nazi decree orders all Jewish pregnant women of Kovno Ghetto executed.
1945: U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower accepted the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany from Gen. Alfred Jodl.
1945: The 1944 Pulitzer Prizes were awarded; winners included John Hersey for his novel “A Bell for Adano,” Mary Chase for her play “Harvey,” and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal for his picture of the Iwo Jima flag-raising.
1946: Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering (later renamed Sony) is founded with around 20 employees.
1952: The concept of the integrated circuit, the basis for all modern computers, is first published by Geoffrey Dummer.
1954: The US, Great Britain and France reject Russian membership of NATO.
1954: The 55-day Battle of Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam ended with Vietnamese insurgents overrunning French forces.
1955: Ray Charles reaches the top of the US R&B chart for the first time with "I Got A Woman". It was later ranked #235 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
1958: US Air Force Major Howard Johnson sets world aircraft altitude record in a Lockhead F-104 Starfighter at 27,810m.
1960: Leonid Brezhnev replaces Kliment Voroshilov as President of the USSR.
1961; Tony Orlando makes his first appearance on Billboard's Hot 100 with "Halfway to Paradise", which peaks at #39. He'll have one more hit next year and then won't be heard from until 1970 when he reappears with his group, Dawn.
1961: UK TOP 20: Album chart:
1. Elvis Presley - G.I. Blues
2. Original Soundtrack - South Pacific
3. Cliff Richard - Listen To Cliff
4. George Mitchell Minstrels - The Black And White Minstrel Show
5. Frank Sinatra - Nice 'n' Easy
6. Ray Conniff - Hi-Fi Companion Album
7. The Everly Brothers - A Date With The Everly Brothers
8. Original Soundtrack - Seven Brides For Seven Brothers
9. Adam Faith - Adam
10. Original Soundtrack - Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!
11. Duane Eddy - A Million Dollars' Worth Of Twang
12. Original Soundtrack - The King And I
13. Original London Cast - Oliver
14. Bob Newhart - The Button Down Mind Of Bob Newhart
15. Original Television Soundtrack - Huckleberry Hound
16. Cliff Richard And The Shadows - Me And My Shadows
17. Nina And Frederik - Nina And Frederik
18. Dean Martin - This Time I'm Swinging
19. Temperance Seven - Temperance Seven Plus One
20. Crickets - In Style With The Crickets
***
1963: The United States launched the Telstar 2 communications satellite.
1966: The Mamas & the Papas started a three week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Monday Monday' becoming the first song with a day of the week in the title to top the chart. The group was reported, as saying they all hated the song except for its writer John Phillips. The Mamas & the Papas won a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for this song.
1975: President Gerald R. Ford formally declared an end to the “Vietnam era.” In Ho Chi Minh City _ formerly Saigon _ the Viet Cong celebrated its takeover.
1977: The Eagles went to No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Hotel California', the group's fourth US No.1, a No.8 hit in the UK. The Eagles also won the 1977 Grammy Award for Record of the Year for 'Hotel California' at the 20th Annual Grammy Awards in 1978. The song's guitar solo is ranked 8th on Guitar Magazine's Top 100 Guitar Solos and was voted the best solo of all time by readers of Guitarist magazine.
1983: Spandau Ballet were at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'True', the group's only No.1. The song spent four weeks at the top of the UK chart and was a hit in 20 other countries. Parts of the original version have been sampled and used in a number of songs - most notably PM Dawn's 1991 US No.1 hit 'Set Adrift on Memory Bliss', which contains a sample of the song's famous guitar hook.
1983: US TOP 20 : Singles chart:
1. Michael Jackson - Beat It
2. Greg Kihn Band - Jeopardy
3. David Bowie - Let's Dance
4. Dexys Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
5. After The Fire - Der Kommissar
6. Men At Work - Overkill
7. Thomas Dolby - She Blinded Me With Science
8. Styx - Mr. Roboto
9. Prince - Little Red Corvette
10. Toto - I Won't Hold You Back
11. Laura Branigan - Solitaire
12. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Even Now
13. Irene Cara - Flashdance...What A Feeling
14. Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
15. Def Leppard - Photograph
16. Duran Duran - Rio
17. Lionel Richie - My Love
18. Bryan Adams - Straight From The Heart
19. Culture Club - Time (Clock Of The Heart)
20. Rick Springfield - Affair Of The Heart
***
1984: A $180 million out-of-court settlement was announced in the Agent Orange class-action suit brought by Vietnam veterans who said they’d been injured by exposure to the defoliant.
1987: Rep. Stewart McKinney, R-Conn., died at age 56, the first member of Congress identified as a victim of AIDS. McKinney contracted the virus following a tainted blood transfusion.
1991: Wilson Pickett was arrested after running into an 86 year old man and yelling death threats whilst driving his car over the mayor’s front lawn in Englewood, New Jersey. Pickett was charged with driving with open bottles of alcohol in his car.
1992: The latest addition to America’s space shuttle fleet, Endeavour, went on its first flight.
1992: A leather Jacket worn by John Lennon during 1960-1963, was sold at Christies, London, England for £24,200.
1994: The Scream, Edvard Munch's famed expressionist painting, was found in a hotel room south of the Norwegian capital of Oslo three months after it was stolen. Thieves stole the painting again in 2004 and it was recovered a second time in 2006.
1995: Jacques Chirac wins the French presidential election.
1998: The parent company of Mercedes-Benz agreed to buy Chrysler Corp. for more than $37 billion. Londoners voted overwhelmingly to elect their own mayor for the first time in history. (In May 2000, Ken Livingstone was elected.)
1998: Eddie Rabbitt, US singer, songwriter died of lung cancer aged 56. During his career, he scored over 20 No.1's on Billboard's country singles chart including 1981 'I Love A Rainy Night'. Elvis Presley, Dr Hook, Tom Jones, Kenny Rogers, Crystal Gayle and Lynn Anderson all recorded his songs.
2000: Death of actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr aged 90.
2004: Army Pfc. Lynndie England, shown in photographs smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, was charged by the military with assaulting the detainees and conspiring to mistreat them. (England was later convicted of conspiracy, mistreating detainees and committing an indecent act, and sentenced to 36 months; she served half that term.)
2004: Rudy Maugeri, the baritone voice of the 1950s doo-wop group, The Crew Cuts, died of pancreatic cancer at his home in Las Vegas. He was 73. Taking their name from a popular hair style of the day, the quartet formed in Toronto and went on to have several hits in the US, including the number one "Sh-Boom" in 1954 and the number three "Earth Angel" in 1955.
2007: Officials reported no survivors in the crash of a Kenyan Airlines plane that went down in a Cameroon mangrove swamp with 114 people aboard.
2010: Dave Fisher, who formed The Highwaymen with four university pals in the late 1950s, died at the age of 69 after a battle with a bone marrow disorder. The quartet topped the Billboard chart in 1961 with "Michael (Row The Boat Ashore)".
2011: John Walker (Maus) best known as the founder of The Walker Brothers died of liver cancer. On the same day, golfer Seve Ballesteros dies from brain cancer aged 54.
2012: Vladimir Putin is sworn in for third six-year term as President of Russia.
2014: A Thai court, in an abuse-of-power ruling, removed Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra from office.
2015: The Tories win an outright majority in the general election and David Cameron returns as prime minister.
2015: Three of B.B. King's 11 surviving children lost a bid in a Las Vegas court to take control over their father's affairs after they said they suspect the 89-year-old Blues legend's manager of stealing his money and neglecting his medical care while blocking them from seeing him in home hospice care. King died in his sleep on May 14, 2015, at the age of 89.
2017: France elects Emmanuel Macron, of La République En Marche! Party, president over Marine Le Pen of the National Front.
2018: Vladimir Putin is sworn in as Russian President for another six years. On the same day, Mark Williams defeats John Higgins 18-16 to wins the World Snooker Championship at The Crucible in Sheffield.
2019: Denver residents voted in favor of decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms by a margin of fewer than 2,000 votes.
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