Back in Time – This Day in History – May 9

 By Mick Ferris, Press Association, AP, UPI, calendar.songfacts.com, classicbands.com and thisdayinmusic.com

1092: Lincoln Cathedral was consecrated. It was the tallest building in the world for 238 years (1311–1548). The central spire collapsed in 1548 and was not rebuilt. The cathedral is still the fourth largest in the UK (in floor area) at around 5,000 square metres. (From Prof. Frank McDonough@FXMC1957)

1502: Christopher Columbus leaves Spain on his fourth and final trip to the New World.

1671: Colonel Thomas Blood attempts to steal the Crown Jewels.

1689: William III declares war on France.

1712: The Carolina Colony was officially divided into two entities: North Carolina and South Carolina.

1753: Louis XV disbands the French parliament.

1788: British parliament accepts the abolition of the slave trade.

1816: Lady Caroline Lamb publishes “Genarvon”, a thinly disguised account of her affair with Lord Byron.

1860: J.M. Barrie was born in Kirriemuir, Scotland. He was the creator of the fictional ageless boy Peter Pan and an ordinary girl named Wendy who have adventures in the fantasy setting of Neverland. (From Prof. Frank McDonough@FXMC1957)

1865: President Andrew Johnson issues a proclamation declaring armed resistance in the South is virtually at an end; this is the commonly accepted end date of the American Civil War.

1868: Premiere of Anton Bruckner’s 1st Symphony in C.

1873: Born on this day: Howard Carter, British Egyptologist who made one of the richest and most celebrated contributions to Egyptology: the discovery (27 Nov 1922) of the largely intact tomb of King Tutankhamen. In 1891, at age 17, with a talent for drawing and an interest in Egyptian antiquities, he was hired by the Egypt Exploration Fund in London to help with the epigraphic recording of tombs in Middle Egypt. At the beginning of 1900 Howard Carter was appointed Chief Inspector of Antiquities to the Egyptian Government with responsibilities for Upper Egypt. The Earl of Carnarvon, visited Egypt for health reasons in 1905, became interested in Egyptian antiquities and decided to finance some archaeological work. He funded Carter's excavation work beginning in 1909. Howard Carter died 2 Mar 1939 at age 65.

1874: Victoria Embankment opens in London.

1904: The locomotive City of Truro becomes the first steam engine to exceed 100mph.

1914: President Woodrow Wilson, acting on a joint congressional resolution, signed a proclamation designating the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day.

1926: Americans Richard Byrd and Floyd Bennett supposedly became the first men to fly over the North Pole. (However, U.S. scholars announced in 1996 that their examination of Byrd’s flight diary suggested he had turned back 150 miles short of his goal.)

1927: Canberra replaces Melbourne as the capital of Australia.

1930: John Masefield is appointed Poet Laureate by George V.

1936: Italy annexes Abyssinia.

1937: Happy Birthday!!!: Sonny Curtis, from American rock and roll band The Crickets, who had the 1957 US No.1 single 'That'll Be The Day', the 1959 UK No.1 single 'It Doesn't Matter Anymore' plus over 15 other UK Top 40 singles. He wrote 'Walk Right Back', which was a 1960 hit for the Everly Brothers.

1941: Alan Turing at Bletchley Park breaks German spy codes after capturing Enigma machines aboard the weather ship Muenchen.

1943: 5th German Panzer army surrenders in Tunisia.

1943: Happy Birthday!!!: American pop singer, songwriter Tommy Roe, singer, who scored the 1962 hit 'Sheila' and the 1969 UK & US No.1 single 'Dizzy' as well as 10 other US Top 40 hits.

1944: Russians recapture Crimea by taking Sevastopol.

1945: With World War II in Europe at an end, Soviet forces liberated Czechoslovakia from Nazi occupation. U.S. officials announced that a midnight entertainment curfew was being lifted immediately.

1945: Norwegian prime minister Vidkun Quisling is arrested as a Nazi collaborator and Hermann Goering is captured by US troops.

1946: King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy abdicates and is succeeded by his son Umberto II who reigns for only 34 days before the monarchy is abolished.

1949: Britain’s first launderette opens in Queensway, London. On the same day, Prince Rainier III becomes monarch of Monaco.

1955: West Germany joins NATO.

1958: “Vertigo,” Alfred Hitchcock’s eerie thriller starring James Stewart and Kim Novak, premiered in San Francisco, the movie’s setting.

1959: UK music paper Melody Maker introduced a Juke Box Top 20 Chart compiled from 200 Juke Boxes around the UK.

1960: Nigeria becomes a member of the Commonwealth. On the same day, the US becomes the first country to legalize the birth control pill.

1961: In a speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton N. Minow decried the majority of television programming as a “vast wasteland.”

1962: Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology succeeded in reflecting a laser beam off the surface of the moon.

1962: The Beatles sign a recording contract with EMI Parlophone. On the same day, a laser beam is bounced off the moon for the first time.

1963: Civil rights demonstrators and law enforcement officials agreed upon an 11th-hour truce in Birmingham, Ala., preventing widespread protests.

1964: Gene Vincent and the Shouts appeared at The Rhodes Centre, Bishop's Gate, England. The poster advertised that the first 50 girls would be admitted free; tickets cost six shillings and six pence, ($0.94).

1964: Chuck Berry began his first ever UK tour at The Astoria Theatre, London, supported by The Animals, The Swinging Blue Jeans, Karl Denver and the Nashville Teens.

1964: Louis Armstrong went to No.1 on the US singles chart with 'Hello Dolly' making him the oldest artist to hit No.1 at the age of 62. In 2011, 85 year-old Tony Bennett broke this record when his Duets album topped the US album chart.

1964: US TOP 20 : Singles chart:

1. Louis Armstrong And The All Stars - Hello, Dolly!

2. The Beatles - Do You Want To Know A Secret

3. Mary Wells - My Guy

4. The Dave Clark Five - Bits And Pieces

5. The Beatles - Can't Buy Me Love

6. The Serendipity Singers - Don't Let The Rain Come Down (Crooked Little Man)

7. The 4 Seasons Featuring the "Sound of Frankie Valli" - Ronnie

8. Jan & Dean - Dead Man's Curve

9. Terry Stafford - Suspicion

10. Danny Williams - White On White

11. The Beatles - Twist And Shout

12. The Beatles - Love Me Do

13. Roy Orbison - It's Over

14. The Dave Clark Five - Glad All Over

15. Robert Maxwell His Harp And Orchestra - Shangri-La

16. Betty Everett - The Shoop Shoop Song (It's In His Kiss)

17. Lesley Gore - That's The Way Boys Are

18. Irma Thomas - Wish Someone Would Care

19. The Impressions - I'm So Proud

20. Major Lance - The Matador

***

1967: Sandie Shaw was at No.1 on the UK singles chart with 'Puppet On A String'. This week's two highest new entries were Jimi Hendrix with 'The Wind Cries Mary' and The Kinks 'Waterloo Sunset'.

1970: President Richard Nixon made a surprise and impromptu pre-dawn visit to the Lincoln Memorial, where he chatted with a group of protesters who’d been resting on the Memorial steps after protests against the Vietnam War and the Kent State shootings.

1970: Guess Who started a three-week run at No.1 on the US singles chart with 'American Woman', it was the group's sixth Top 30 hit and only chart topper. The song was born by accident when guitarist Randy Bachman was playing a heavy riff on stage after he had broken a string, the other members joined in on the jam. A fan in the audience who had recorded the gig on tape presented it to the group after the show and they developed it into a full song.

1978: The corpse of kidnapped Italian ex-premier Aldo Moro is found in the back of a Renault 4 after being shot 10 times by the Red Brigade.

1979: The United States and Soviet Union reached a basic accord on the SALT II nuclear arms treaty. The accord was signed in June, but never formally went into effect.

1980: A Liberian freighter rammed a bridge in Florida's Tampa Bay, collapsing part of the span and dropping 35 people to their deaths. A new $240 million Sunshine Skyway Bridge opened April 30, 1987.

1980: ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by The Boomtown Rats won the best pop song and outstanding British lyric categories at the Ivor Novello Awards.

1986: Death of Tenzing Norgay, sherpa for Edmund Hillary in the first ascent of Mt Everest, aged 71.

1987: A Polish airliner bound for New York crashed near Warsaw, killing 183 people.

1987: Tom Cruise marries actress Mimi Rogers.

1988: Australia’s new parliament house in Canberra is opened by HM The Queen.

1990: Sampdoria win the European Cup Winner’s Cup 2-0 against Anderlecht in Gothenburg.

1993: UK TOP 20: Album chart:

1. New Order - Republic

2. REM - Automatic For The People

3. Sting - Ten Summoners Tales

4. Terence Trent D'Arby - Symphony Or Damn

5. Clannad - Banba

6. World Party - Bang

7. Duran Duran - Duran Duran the wedding album

8. Cliff Richard - The Album

9. Dina Carroll - So Close

10. Kenny G - Breathless

11. PJ Harvey - Rid of me

12. Eric Clapton - Unplugged

13. Aerosmith - Get A Grip

14. Annie Lennox - Diva

15. Take That - Take That & Party

16. Lenny Kravitz - Are You Gonna Go My Way

17. Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine

18. Bruce Springsteen - In concert MTV plugged

19. Arrested Development - 3 Years 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of Arrested Development

20. Depeche Mode - Songs of faith and devotion

***

1994: South Africa’s newly elected parliament chose Nelson Mandela to be the country’s first black president.

1998: Dana International wins the Eurovision Song Contest for Israel singing “Diva” in Birmingham.

1999: Father Ted wins best comedy at the BAFTA TV awards.

2001: 129 Ghanian football fans die in a stampede at Accra Sports Stadium caused by the firing of teargas by police following a decision by the referee in a match between arch-rivals Accra Hearts of Oak and Kumasi Asante Kotoko.

2004: Chechen president Akhmad Kadyrov is killed in a land mine bomb blast under a VIP stage during a World War II memorial victory parade in Grozny.

2005: Launch of website The Huffington Post.

2008: Jury selection began in the Chicago trial of R&B superstar R. Kelly, accused of videotaping himself having sex with a girl as young as 13. (Kelly was later acquitted on all counts.)

2009: Jacob Zuma, African National Congress leader, was sworn in as president of South Africa.

2010: Actress and singer Lena Horne dies aged 92.

2012: President Barack Obama declared his unequivocal support for same-sex marriage in a historic announcement that came three days after Vice President Joe Biden spoke in favor of such unions on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

2012: Death of hair stylist Vidal Sassoon aged 84.

2013: Authorities in Pakistan said Taliban gunmen kidnapped Ali Haider Gilani, son of former Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani. He was rescued May 10, 2016, in a joint operation by Afghan and U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

2013: Everton Manager David Moyes is announced as Sir Alex Ferguson’s successor at Manchester United.

2014: Russian President Vladimir Putin made his first trip to Crimea since its annexation, calling it “historic justice” during a Victory Day display of military pomp and patriotism. 

2017: President Donald Trump abruptly fired FBI Director James Comey, ousting the nation’s top law enforcement official in the midst of an FBI investigation into whether Trump’s campaign had ties to Russia’s meddling in the election that sent him to the White House.

2017: South Koreans elected Moon Jae-in as president in a snap election after the ouster of Park Gun-hye.

2018: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in North Korea to finalize plans for a summit between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Three Americans who had spent more than a year in prison in North Korea were freed during his visit and left North Korea aboard Pompeo’s plane.

2019: Pope Francis introduced a major change in Catholic law, requiring all priests and nuns worldwide to report incidents of sex abuse and attempts to cover them up.

2020: Little Richard died of bone cancer at the age of 87. He had his biggest hits in the 1950s and was known for his exuberant performances and flamboyant outfits. With the likes of Chuck Berry and Elvis, he was one of the handful of US acts who mixed blues, R&B and gospel that led to the evolution of rock 'n' roll. He sold more than 30 million records worldwide with hits including 'Good Golly Miss Molly', 'Lucille', 'Tutti Frutti' and 'Long Tall Sally'.